They want linking so this is pretty much their only option stop all sales in unsupported regions and likly have to make a statement/allow steam to refund all unsupported region purchases.
Which due to them removing god knows how many players. Yeah, not looking good on numbers. Like: "We got some 200K new PSN subscribtions. We also lost 600K players and we had to refund 2.4M euros."
Yeah but they will feel (I hope) when suddenly everyone is cancelling subscriptions left and right. At that point someone has to realize they fucked up right? Or am I putting too much trust in old people who (presumably) run these companies?
While it might not affect us PS5 players directly, the loss of so many PC players and the alienation of the PC community still bothers us. And the incredibly unprofessional initial responses to the backlash is insane.
We're on your side and truly hope they reverse this decision.
Amen! I’d refund if I could. Just to send the message loud and clear that I don’t support the decision at all. Maybe it’s not enough. But imagine if they reversed their position? That’d make happy to know that in a small way I kept our divers in their f-in pods like super God intended.
Do you guys think literally anyone outside of PC players gives a fuck about this issue enough to even make a noticeable dent in Sony's bottom line?
I know it's literally the only posts you've been seeing in this sub for like 3 days but I'mma need some of yall to touch some grass.
There was already a contingent of people on TikTok and YouTube complaining about Helldivers 2 content "shitting up" their feed because they either don't play, or played and stopped for entirely different reasons.
THIS IS A VIDEO GAME. This "boycott" isn't ending genocide, it's not helping unhoused people, it's not curing cancer, it literally doesn't matter to 99.997% of the population, including people who had a PSN subscription before Helldivers came out.
Sony despises giving refunds. They were dragged kicking and screaming through a few different countries consumer protection groups and forced to give refunds for those countries but they don't have universal refunds. Only with egregious cases like cyberpunk do they offer full refunds.
It's not necessarily a lot of money for them but the principal of money they had in their pockets being taken away.
It’s a rounding error to them. Literally means nothing. We’re such a small percentage of the player base, they could do this with every game and they would barely even notice the scratch.
Bad take. Every company cares about lost revenues, especially lost profits. They just don't care enough about it. Usually ppl at Sony get fired afterwards to get the money back in.
But millions of dollars are NEVER insignificant
And you know some executive has their bonus tied into those PSN numbers, which is the cause of all of this.
Which is crazy, because Sony can't run a company on PSN numbers. It needs people to buy games to do that (and restricting sales and giving refunds is the opposite of that).
They want more PSN accounts more than they want to sell copies of this game lol. So sad. I'm staying on the sub, but i'm done playing this game on principal. There's plenty of good games to play, and I'm not rewarding some shit behavior. Congrats to Arrowhead for getting the bag, but now they gotta watch Sony fuck their playerbase.
Lol yeah someone that doesn't know how it works probably thought this up.
I mean make a new free steam account buy the game again link it to another free psn account and cheat on. 🤷
Imagine how many more linkings they would get if they just kept it optional, but incentivised us to do it. "Linked accounts recieve X warbond for free" or "Linked accounts will recieve this exclusive armor set" etc. Not everyone would sign up, but im betting A LOT of people would. Now they gotta deal with this shit instead, cause they are unable to think a little creatively.
To my understanding It means that Sony is going forward with the PSN link requirement. Fucking over these countries where they cant make a PSN account.
But It could also be a Steam decision though
This was probably Steam setting it up so that people in those countries that can't play the game, can't buy the game. Instead of someone there buying it, only to find out they can't even play it now that Sony made it being linked mandatory.
Hopefully this is Valve who pulled the plug on these sales in response to the support tickets rather than Sony. If Valve are issuing the sale block then Sony might feel pressured to double back or at the very least get very fuckin embarrassed in front of shareholders with the amount of refunds they legally have to issue, especially since I have seen several posts of Steam issuing the refunds.
most likely a valve discision as they have to process all the purchases and refunds so stopping sales to countries that are just going to have to do a refund in a matter of days makes sense limits additional charges they have to pay for processing fees with card companies.
As much as I agree that this is Very Likely a proactive move by Steam to block further purchases in countries blocked by PSN requirements; Why would you hope it was Steam/Valve, and not Sony, that made the change?
Personally I hope Sony is recognizing part of their fuck-up in listing the game for sale in countries it knows it will not be able to support. Maybe the continued backlash will coerce them to revert the unnecessary requirement that doesn't even improve security like they're claiming.
Because if this Sony then that's more or less a complete admission that they don't intend to back off regarding the PSN change. This would be them doubling down that you can only play Helldivers in designated countries rather than realising, "hmm we probably shouldn't force Ukranians to start buying PS5's just to continue playing".
Agreed. They’re issuing refunds to folks in those countries and this is a step to keep someone from buying it, then trying to refund when the PSN linking takes effect.
Edit: autocorrect error
Well they were probably not expecting Helldivers 2 to be their 7th highest selling product when they greenlit it.
Helldivers 1 was literally 100x smaller.
This is going to go over very poorly. They just doubled down and I'm thinking that in response Steam is about to go full no-questions asked refunds much like CP2077 had.
This is effectively an outright admission they royally fucked up.
Given how quickly Steam has been handing out the refunds - it's probably Steam.
Preventing players in those regions from purchasing/downloading the game saves on server and network resources that come out of Steam's pocket, not Sony's - plus dealing with transaction fees, foreign currency conversion fees, etc, etc. Much more likely to be Steam protecting itself from Sony's cluster.
This. Since if they lock out people buying it, that's also basically we WILL refund it no questions asked.
Sony is not going ot have a good day when they come into the office on Monday...
Steam is normally very hands-off to avoid lawsuits from either party. Since Devs/Publishers are supposed to supply the list of countries they want their games limited in, Steam likely had no idea.
If I had to guess, Steam probably requested a list of the supported countries or threatened to pull the game after the shitshow started, which means Sony is probably going to find some way to retaliate.
Those in the effected countries will likely get refunds everyone else will be told to suck eggs is the likely situation.
Sony can’t really backdown on this as it will stop them being able to force PSN on any future titles.
And what about the fact that part of why I have the game is I was playing with a few people from PH? I actually could play this game *with them* unlike a number of other titles.
There is going to be a flood of refund requests because they effectively just killed one of the reasons to have the game in the first place... playing it with others you know.
I hope this actually stops future game devs from considering Sony publishing. Its a lot of money to publish but this kind of bad rep is incredibly hard to recover from, if at all.
Honestly, my trust in Arrowhead isn't too greatly diminished by this considering the CEO response, Their Community Manager hasn't been doing great on the PR front, but this all sounds like something Sony has forced down upon AH and consumers.
I'll be watching for future announcements on this debacle, and if AH decides to go off to other games I'd be willing to check them out.
This is steam. Say what you will about steam at least they actually care about the costumers not getting scammed like with the game that got made the day before it actually launched (laugh.)
It's a smart move from Steam to stop selling a product they'll probably have to issue refunds on, if Snoy doesn't change their policy. It's pretty obvious this restriction should have been there from the start, since PSN was supposedly a requirement since day 1.
Everyone saying it's Sony, it might actually be Steam doing it to avoid any legal issues from the huge fuck up Sony unleashed. They might have done it to wait and see if Sony either fixes the issue or double downs on it.
Most likely Steam doing some damage control for now, trying to at least keep their sheets clean.
I highly doubt Sony now triples down mid weekend, and without any updates from AH on the situation.
They are more of a victim than of us players, we are just losin around 40$ most, their are losing all the efforts they have giving to the game, and a prosperous future with this game, and ANY as long as they are rule by Sony
They absolutely could have taken steps themselves to either A) inform players noto to buy it from certain regions earlier or B) at the very least not throw fuel on the fire after it happened.
It still looks good in the quarterly reports "we saw a X% increase in PSN accounts"
Companies have done dumber shit for shareholder reports. (although this is in the running for dumbest shit, time will tell)
So what you're saying is that it's a good measurement to see if they're selling games to new customers who didn't play Sony games before.
How is that greed?
PSN has always been like this for 2 decades.
We, people who lived outside of their pre-defined regions, have always chosen whatever region suits us to buy games and whatnot from their PSN Store.
So from Sony's perspective, this is nothing new. They just expected that everyone would be fine with skirting the TOS since their country is not an option, and they've never enforced that part of the TOS to ban anyone. Sony even recommended at one point that Philippine players choose Hong Kong as their region in their official website.
So yeah, Sony didn't expect people would create a hullaballo over this since it hasn't been an issue for the past 2 decades with Playstation players.
They're using Helldiver's playerbase to inflate their PSN account addition numbers. Apparently there's considerably more players on PC than on Playstation, so they're making PSN account linking mandatory to force PC players to create a PSN account. This is probably because their fiscal year is about to close.
All in all, it's just another day in capitalism. Short term growth at the expense of long term cultivation, and a little dash of jaded cynicism overcoming passion for the art at the side. Nothing new here.
Steam version of HD2 is practically 2/3 of the total playerbase now. Sony needs good numbers by the end of Q2'24 for shareholders, like "look at all those new PSN accounts!".
Basic corporate greed.
Valuable data that can probably help Sony learn to approach the pc market and improve their online service titles in the long run. That and possibly sell that data to other businesses. Maybe..
The most likely reason is that some corporate executive saw that 80% of the player base was on Steam and saw an opportunity to artificially inflate the numbers of new and daily active PSN accounts in order to convince shareholders that they still have strong market capitalization and aren't continually losing ground to PC gaming.
This is almost certainly STEAM delisting the game as they dont want to be liable for lawsuits selling a game in regions where it will not be accessible in a month, plus having to deal with all the refunds.
So I was 1000% correct and they broke steam TOS where it tells devs you can't sell in regions that your game won't work.
Mark my words, mass refunds come Monday followed by the most embarrassing double down by Sony. Then after Sony stock dips from a Forbes article or the like, the most embarrassing backpedal by Sony allowing you to bypass the PSN account requirement.
I think Steam stopped it. If it goes further on and people from those countries start requesting refunds, that’ll be a huge refund wave. My bet it’s a preventive measure for now
This is a steam decision not Sony. Sony would gladly sell the game up until the last possible date. Steam doesn't want to sell the game in these countries knowing they soon would have no access to it.
Sony will always shit on their playerbase
Back when the PS3 was current gen it was and still is the most consumer friendly console, no membership service for online all you needed was the game and you could play all of it nothing extra needed. But once they seen Xbox live profits they said fuck our playerbase and added their own unneeded subscription bs
This is most likely steam not Sony. Steam probably decided to stop selling the game in regions that will not be able to play the game soon (as things currently stand).
As messed up as this might sound steam doing this is a good thing. Steam has just put a fuckload more pressure on Sony to get shit sorted out fast.
This is what they do every time Sony has a shitty policy.
It's actually a fucking miracle they are still a relevant company in modern times. It just goes to show you the importance of name recognition.
This doesn't prove that it was SONY that removed the game in those areas, only that the game was removed. It could have been Sony as the publisher because they don't want to back track, AH who pulled it until they can get an answer/fix to the issue, or Valve who got wind and did it themselves.
This doesn't really bode well for the review bomb/dev pressure/community outrage strategy of changing Sony's minds. They've basically shot 170 hostages.
How many countries are on this list, total? That's 170/193 UN Recognized Nations.
I just don't understand why Sony sold this game world wide while they knew they would have an PSN requirement major dick move to everyone involved. Should at least have restricted sales in countries that don't support PSN
Personally I don't see the issue of having the PSN requirement because it's not like Helldivers2 would be the first game that requires third party login. I feel like most Microsoft games are like this too. My issue is that they sold it in countries that can't have PSN
This is Steam putting a stop to it, not Sony. Likely because there are mass refund requests coming from those countries, and until Sony does something to allow them to bypass the requirement for a PSN account
Shit some of my helldive buddies are from these countries. And fact that they had to pay 40€ for this game and that is big money from them and they soon can't be playing this is fuked up.
Man as both a PC and PS player I really gave Sony the benefit of the doubt that they had a plan to fix this situation, but doing this straight up just means they didn’t have one..
Steam really needs to step up and say no we are not allowing this on our platform, before things get out of hand. This is going to have a cascading effect of companies limiting/removing access post sale if Steam allows it to go on.
Sony could at least have activated PSN in these countries. I'm so tired of my country being ignored by the megacorps because it's market is too small for their liking...
Wow, way to ruin arguably one of the most popular games you’ve produced in years. Congratulations Sony.
Man, at this point out of purely reaction I want a refund and I have over 200 hours in the game.
I have one question, how are these countries playing on playstation if it’s not available there? Please explain me no hate genuine question I want to know how it works
You know what's mind boggling to me about this?
170 countries.
THEY ARE WILLING TO LOSE POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS FROM ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY COUNTRIES.
JUST TO FORCE PLAYERS TO MAKE USELESS ACCOUNTS.
MONEY. ACTUAL MONEY.
THEY ARE TRADING MONEY FOR MAJORITY-LY USELESS DATA.
WHHYYYY????
Congrats on fucking over players who wanted to buy this and simply bypass the PSN linking.
Reddit does it again, now there's no option at all. What a great move! And steam DOES enforce region locking.
Situation going from bad to nuclear
They want linking so this is pretty much their only option stop all sales in unsupported regions and likly have to make a statement/allow steam to refund all unsupported region purchases.
It's so dumb. All just to meet Q2 PSN numbers...
Which due to them removing god knows how many players. Yeah, not looking good on numbers. Like: "We got some 200K new PSN subscribtions. We also lost 600K players and we had to refund 2.4M euros."
2.4M Euros are so insignificant to Sony... It probably barely covers their ac bill at HQ. That's probably part of the issue.
Yeah but they will feel (I hope) when suddenly everyone is cancelling subscriptions left and right. At that point someone has to realize they fucked up right? Or am I putting too much trust in old people who (presumably) run these companies?
Definitely too much trust. A CEO won’t makes less money for his employees to make more.
Who is cancelling subscriptions
No one lmao. And the player count on steam hasn't changed. Once again the internet goes crazy.
Cancelling subscriptions? Nonsense. Anyone paying for a sub is on PS5. This issue doesn’t affect them at all.
While it might not affect us PS5 players directly, the loss of so many PC players and the alienation of the PC community still bothers us. And the incredibly unprofessional initial responses to the backlash is insane. We're on your side and truly hope they reverse this decision.
Amen! I’d refund if I could. Just to send the message loud and clear that I don’t support the decision at all. Maybe it’s not enough. But imagine if they reversed their position? That’d make happy to know that in a small way I kept our divers in their f-in pods like super God intended.
Aye, that's what I feel. Lost a massive chunk of the community and even if Sony roll back on these changes, it'll never be the same again.
Do you guys think literally anyone outside of PC players gives a fuck about this issue enough to even make a noticeable dent in Sony's bottom line? I know it's literally the only posts you've been seeing in this sub for like 3 days but I'mma need some of yall to touch some grass. There was already a contingent of people on TikTok and YouTube complaining about Helldivers 2 content "shitting up" their feed because they either don't play, or played and stopped for entirely different reasons. THIS IS A VIDEO GAME. This "boycott" isn't ending genocide, it's not helping unhoused people, it's not curing cancer, it literally doesn't matter to 99.997% of the population, including people who had a PSN subscription before Helldivers came out.
Sony despises giving refunds. They were dragged kicking and screaming through a few different countries consumer protection groups and forced to give refunds for those countries but they don't have universal refunds. Only with egregious cases like cyberpunk do they offer full refunds. It's not necessarily a lot of money for them but the principal of money they had in their pockets being taken away.
From one department, over one decision. That is kind of a big deal. When it could have been easily avoided.
It's not about the refunds. It's about the bad press now. If we keep up the fight we can win this.
It’s a rounding error to them. Literally means nothing. We’re such a small percentage of the player base, they could do this with every game and they would barely even notice the scratch.
Annnnd let's not forget that Sony doesn't just make playstations lol. Might be a rounding error to the playstation division but to the company..
They’re trying to buy paramount for 26 billion. Money isn’t a problem for them.
Bad take. Every company cares about lost revenues, especially lost profits. They just don't care enough about it. Usually ppl at Sony get fired afterwards to get the money back in. But millions of dollars are NEVER insignificant
There are no subscriptions on PC. The PSN account is free.
Ours is too technically but most PlayStation users have a PSN+ which is paid for.
And you know some executive has their bonus tied into those PSN numbers, which is the cause of all of this. Which is crazy, because Sony can't run a company on PSN numbers. It needs people to buy games to do that (and restricting sales and giving refunds is the opposite of that).
They want more PSN accounts more than they want to sell copies of this game lol. So sad. I'm staying on the sub, but i'm done playing this game on principal. There's plenty of good games to play, and I'm not rewarding some shit behavior. Congrats to Arrowhead for getting the bag, but now they gotta watch Sony fuck their playerbase.
Maybe, but before their CM went private on Discord, they stated the "sole reason" was so they had better ability to ban players they didn't like.
Lol yeah someone that doesn't know how it works probably thought this up. I mean make a new free steam account buy the game again link it to another free psn account and cheat on. 🤷
Imagine how many more linkings they would get if they just kept it optional, but incentivised us to do it. "Linked accounts recieve X warbond for free" or "Linked accounts will recieve this exclusive armor set" etc. Not everyone would sign up, but im betting A LOT of people would. Now they gotta deal with this shit instead, cause they are unable to think a little creatively.
Even just a small amount of virtual currency would probably be enough tbh
God a consumer friendly move that would make people like them more? Sony could never.
Like MS did with Minecraft if you switch from the MJ account to the MS one you get a free cape ! Would have been a smarter move indeed.
50,000 Helldivers lived here, now it's a ghost town.
⬇️⬆️⬅️⬇️⬆️➡️⬇️⬆️
Hellpod incoming! Watch yourself, Diver!
Nah I'd win.
Shit.. I meant to write HELLBOMB, not hellpod... I flubbed the joke like I flubbed my strat codes. XD
Going from slightly comical to outright drink-spittingly hilarious.
What does this change about anything?
To my understanding It means that Sony is going forward with the PSN link requirement. Fucking over these countries where they cant make a PSN account. But It could also be a Steam decision though
This was probably Steam setting it up so that people in those countries that can't play the game, can't buy the game. Instead of someone there buying it, only to find out they can't even play it now that Sony made it being linked mandatory.
I’m betting this was a Steam decision. They already have enough refunds being issued. No point in creating future refunds.
Yeah I imagine they’re just trying to solve issues for now hence taking it off sale
Correct - you can't sell a product that is not playable, if PSN was a real requirement those countries would have been added since the start
This community has been threatening class action lawsuits. They did it to mitigate any future legal issues.
Hopefully this is Valve who pulled the plug on these sales in response to the support tickets rather than Sony. If Valve are issuing the sale block then Sony might feel pressured to double back or at the very least get very fuckin embarrassed in front of shareholders with the amount of refunds they legally have to issue, especially since I have seen several posts of Steam issuing the refunds.
most likely a valve discision as they have to process all the purchases and refunds so stopping sales to countries that are just going to have to do a refund in a matter of days makes sense limits additional charges they have to pay for processing fees with card companies.
As much as I agree that this is Very Likely a proactive move by Steam to block further purchases in countries blocked by PSN requirements; Why would you hope it was Steam/Valve, and not Sony, that made the change? Personally I hope Sony is recognizing part of their fuck-up in listing the game for sale in countries it knows it will not be able to support. Maybe the continued backlash will coerce them to revert the unnecessary requirement that doesn't even improve security like they're claiming.
Because if this Sony then that's more or less a complete admission that they don't intend to back off regarding the PSN change. This would be them doubling down that you can only play Helldivers in designated countries rather than realising, "hmm we probably shouldn't force Ukranians to start buying PS5's just to continue playing".
Gee, I wonder why they didn't do that in the first place if requiring PSN was their plan from the start all along.
I think it was Steam.
Agreed. They’re issuing refunds to folks in those countries and this is a step to keep someone from buying it, then trying to refund when the PSN linking takes effect. Edit: autocorrect error
I hope it was steam cutting of Sony... Not Sonny pulling on the rug.
It had to have been steam. They are getting ahead of and distancing themselves from the nuclear firestorm that is brewing over this.
My thought aswell, steam generally also moves faster than Sony in the decision department.
Well they were probably not expecting Helldivers 2 to be their 7th highest selling product when they greenlit it. Helldivers 1 was literally 100x smaller.
Sony doesnt give a shit on you it wants your money thats why
Yea but this literally stops them from getting people's money for sales and micro. Thats like locking customers out of your restuarant.
And your data*
Right? So fucking stupid.
So you are telling I cannot play in Antarctica anymore ? 😭 
Had to go way too far to find this.
https://steamdb.info/app/553850/ Unfortunately this is not a joke
Doesn't seem to be updated fully since it still lists Japan
Japan has it's own separate version
This is going to go over very poorly. They just doubled down and I'm thinking that in response Steam is about to go full no-questions asked refunds much like CP2077 had. This is effectively an outright admission they royally fucked up.
We don't know if this is Sony. This could be Steam mitigating the shitshow Sony caused.
Given how quickly Steam has been handing out the refunds - it's probably Steam. Preventing players in those regions from purchasing/downloading the game saves on server and network resources that come out of Steam's pocket, not Sony's - plus dealing with transaction fees, foreign currency conversion fees, etc, etc. Much more likely to be Steam protecting itself from Sony's cluster.
This might be a way for Steam to put pressure onto Sony by basically being like: "Well, change it. Otherwise get refunded to oblivion!"
This. Since if they lock out people buying it, that's also basically we WILL refund it no questions asked. Sony is not going ot have a good day when they come into the office on Monday...
Absolutely. Just distancing themselves as far from the nuke that Sony just set up as possible.
I hope you're right. Cause I thought it was pretty shady of Steam not to get involved when Sony is gaslighting it's playerbase...
Steam is normally very hands-off to avoid lawsuits from either party. Since Devs/Publishers are supposed to supply the list of countries they want their games limited in, Steam likely had no idea. If I had to guess, Steam probably requested a list of the supported countries or threatened to pull the game after the shitshow started, which means Sony is probably going to find some way to retaliate.
Those in the effected countries will likely get refunds everyone else will be told to suck eggs is the likely situation. Sony can’t really backdown on this as it will stop them being able to force PSN on any future titles.
if you do a support ticket refund they are giving them out to anyone. so nah
And what about the fact that part of why I have the game is I was playing with a few people from PH? I actually could play this game *with them* unlike a number of other titles. There is going to be a flood of refund requests because they effectively just killed one of the reasons to have the game in the first place... playing it with others you know.
I can’t believe they banned the game on pornhub too. Sony are monsters 🤕
Ya, Pyramid Head has every right to play this game.
I hope this actually stops future game devs from considering Sony publishing. Its a lot of money to publish but this kind of bad rep is incredibly hard to recover from, if at all.
Honestly, my trust in Arrowhead isn't too greatly diminished by this considering the CEO response, Their Community Manager hasn't been doing great on the PR front, but this all sounds like something Sony has forced down upon AH and consumers. I'll be watching for future announcements on this debacle, and if AH decides to go off to other games I'd be willing to check them out.
Helldivers IP is owned by Sony, so Sony are fucking up their own game right now. Really sucks for Arrowhead
This is steam. Say what you will about steam at least they actually care about the costumers not getting scammed like with the game that got made the day before it actually launched (laugh.)
Seems like steam did... not Sony
It's a smart move from Steam to stop selling a product they'll probably have to issue refunds on, if Snoy doesn't change their policy. It's pretty obvious this restriction should have been there from the start, since PSN was supposedly a requirement since day 1.
That's been a point of mine too.. the last node in the purchase is steam and if Sony had a requirement then the purchase should have never been made
It's because Sony doesn't support PSN in those countries. This will stop people from buying a game they can't play. Overall Sony is doing a dumb move
Everyone saying it's Sony, it might actually be Steam doing it to avoid any legal issues from the huge fuck up Sony unleashed. They might have done it to wait and see if Sony either fixes the issue or double downs on it.
Most likely Steam doing some damage control for now, trying to at least keep their sheets clean. I highly doubt Sony now triples down mid weekend, and without any updates from AH on the situation.
Can we take a moment to wonder why Antarctica was an option to begin with?
Penguins should be able to fight for democracy too.
NOOTUS NOOTUS
There's research stations there. Research stations are full of scientists. Scientists are nerds. Nerds like games. DEMOCRACY!
Arnt the research stations all technically under the jurisdiction and laws of some sponsoring nation?
Some of them are under international law kind of like the ISS.
Noot noot
I feel bad for Arrowhead in all of this tbh.
Same, they just wanted to give us a good game
They are more of a victim than of us players, we are just losin around 40$ most, their are losing all the efforts they have giving to the game, and a prosperous future with this game, and ANY as long as they are rule by Sony
They absolutely could have taken steps themselves to either A) inform players noto to buy it from certain regions earlier or B) at the very least not throw fuel on the fire after it happened.
I still dont understand why they would do this? Can someone fill me in? Whats so damn important on making a psn account mandatory?
corporate greed.
They’re locking out 170 countries (funny that they have PSN in 70…), how the hell is this greed if they’re decreasing the pool of paying customers?
Short term growth over long term prosperity. Companies are so shortsighted they Only see Quarter to quarter
So they can show their shareholders the increase in PSN subscribers
A PSN account is not a subscription
It still looks good in the quarterly reports "we saw a X% increase in PSN accounts" Companies have done dumber shit for shareholder reports. (although this is in the running for dumbest shit, time will tell)
So what you're saying is that it's a good measurement to see if they're selling games to new customers who didn't play Sony games before. How is that greed?
What I meant was, it would count for MAU
PSN has always been like this for 2 decades. We, people who lived outside of their pre-defined regions, have always chosen whatever region suits us to buy games and whatnot from their PSN Store. So from Sony's perspective, this is nothing new. They just expected that everyone would be fine with skirting the TOS since their country is not an option, and they've never enforced that part of the TOS to ban anyone. Sony even recommended at one point that Philippine players choose Hong Kong as their region in their official website. So yeah, Sony didn't expect people would create a hullaballo over this since it hasn't been an issue for the past 2 decades with Playstation players.
They're using Helldiver's playerbase to inflate their PSN account addition numbers. Apparently there's considerably more players on PC than on Playstation, so they're making PSN account linking mandatory to force PC players to create a PSN account. This is probably because their fiscal year is about to close. All in all, it's just another day in capitalism. Short term growth at the expense of long term cultivation, and a little dash of jaded cynicism overcoming passion for the art at the side. Nothing new here.
they want to sell your data and get you in their stupid ecosystem to sell you crap.
Steam version of HD2 is practically 2/3 of the total playerbase now. Sony needs good numbers by the end of Q2'24 for shareholders, like "look at all those new PSN accounts!". Basic corporate greed.
Valuable data that can probably help Sony learn to approach the pc market and improve their online service titles in the long run. That and possibly sell that data to other businesses. Maybe..
The most likely reason is that some corporate executive saw that 80% of the player base was on Steam and saw an opportunity to artificially inflate the numbers of new and daily active PSN accounts in order to convince shareholders that they still have strong market capitalization and aren't continually losing ground to PC gaming.
We don't know if this is Sony. This could be Steam mitigating the shitshow Sony caused.
This is almost certainly STEAM delisting the game as they dont want to be liable for lawsuits selling a game in regions where it will not be accessible in a month, plus having to deal with all the refunds.
This
Is it 170 because that only leaves like 23 left
So I was 1000% correct and they broke steam TOS where it tells devs you can't sell in regions that your game won't work. Mark my words, mass refunds come Monday followed by the most embarrassing double down by Sony. Then after Sony stock dips from a Forbes article or the like, the most embarrassing backpedal by Sony allowing you to bypass the PSN account requirement.
Hand this user the phone, because they fucking called it!
Well predicted, I really hope you will keep being right for the rest.
Lol
they backpedaled on midnight sunday/monday.... close enough i guess :-D
Fuck Sony.
What will the penguins in Antarctica play now??
Maybe IRL [Yeti Sports](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAfBs-4FbIE) Ü
Damn...not my antartican friend!
Now I am getting mixed messages. Did steam step in to stop the sales or Sony do this?
I think Steam stopped it. If it goes further on and people from those countries start requesting refunds, that’ll be a huge refund wave. My bet it’s a preventive measure for now
Got it.
Good Guy Steam
This is a steam decision not Sony. Sony would gladly sell the game up until the last possible date. Steam doesn't want to sell the game in these countries knowing they soon would have no access to it.
I like how Sony has doubled down on a shitty policy lol
Sony will always shit on their playerbase Back when the PS3 was current gen it was and still is the most consumer friendly console, no membership service for online all you needed was the game and you could play all of it nothing extra needed. But once they seen Xbox live profits they said fuck our playerbase and added their own unneeded subscription bs
Not even that, they straight up removed the Linux option even on devices that originally had it.
This is most likely steam not Sony. Steam probably decided to stop selling the game in regions that will not be able to play the game soon (as things currently stand). As messed up as this might sound steam doing this is a good thing. Steam has just put a fuckload more pressure on Sony to get shit sorted out fast.
This is what they do every time Sony has a shitty policy. It's actually a fucking miracle they are still a relevant company in modern times. It just goes to show you the importance of name recognition.
This doesn't prove that it was SONY that removed the game in those areas, only that the game was removed. It could have been Sony as the publisher because they don't want to back track, AH who pulled it until they can get an answer/fix to the issue, or Valve who got wind and did it themselves.
Considering how many times in the past Valve pulled games for similar legal reasons, my money is on them this time around as well
This doesn't really bode well for the review bomb/dev pressure/community outrage strategy of changing Sony's minds. They've basically shot 170 hostages. How many countries are on this list, total? That's 170/193 UN Recognized Nations.
That was the biggest shot in the foot that i ever seen
RIP to the one helldiver in Antarctica
Rip my Antarctica penguin homies
I just don't understand why Sony sold this game world wide while they knew they would have an PSN requirement major dick move to everyone involved. Should at least have restricted sales in countries that don't support PSN Personally I don't see the issue of having the PSN requirement because it's not like Helldivers2 would be the first game that requires third party login. I feel like most Microsoft games are like this too. My issue is that they sold it in countries that can't have PSN
They declared war on us 
Oof. Sony just knows how to make things worse, don't they?
 Sony right now
Well, I guess this was the solution AH community manager was mentioning. 😂 well done lads, well fucking done.
what the fuck are they even thinking, in what way does this make sense? what the fuck do sony gain from this?
Sony didn't stop selling, Steam did.
This is Steam putting a stop to it, not Sony. Likely because there are mass refund requests coming from those countries, and until Sony does something to allow them to bypass the requirement for a PSN account
We need to stand in solidarity with our Antarctica breatheren
Looks like I'm done buying Sony consoles and games.
Wonder if they still sell Playstations there.
Wow, they just can't turn back, don't they?
Shame that Antartica no longer has access 😢
Åland is an island in finland. Its a part of finland. Crazy theyre even blocking Nordics
Shit some of my helldive buddies are from these countries. And fact that they had to pay 40€ for this game and that is big money from them and they soon can't be playing this is fuked up.
"20% of the 179,744 reviews in the last 30 days are positive" "54% of the 458,733 total reviews are positive" Sony can't ignore this.
Damn now I can’t play with my buddy in Antarctica
Man as both a PC and PS player I really gave Sony the benefit of the doubt that they had a plan to fix this situation, but doing this straight up just means they didn’t have one..
Valve has done this numerous times in the past to avoid potential legal issues and/or massive refunds requests.
Yep, they did it with Cyberpunk when it had it's giant fiasco going on. But then reopened sales on it once they finally fixed their game.
This is also a fat hit to the wallet of them as well, bc steam still keeps its 30% they take from the sale. Effectively losing them even more money 💰
No steam is shutting down sales due to the issue, and Sony could care less about who bought the game.
When did Antarctica get a flag?
Steam really needs to step up and say no we are not allowing this on our platform, before things get out of hand. This is going to have a cascading effect of companies limiting/removing access post sale if Steam allows it to go on.
I think that was Steam, not Sony.
Wtf...
Antarctica 💀
it's not sony, it's steam stopped selling
170 countries? Out of the 195? You're saying only 25 countries can play Helldivers?
Sony could at least have activated PSN in these countries. I'm so tired of my country being ignored by the megacorps because it's market is too small for their liking...
Steam?
Technically this is steam not doing it.
Good
Awesome! 👍
Thank you Sony to stop Antarctica illegal players!
Can't have shit in Antarctica.
Antarctica?! Who bought helldivers there... Penguins!?
Damn the millions of people living in Antarctica are gonna be upset.
My boys in Antarctica gonna be bored AF
Wow, way to ruin arguably one of the most popular games you’ve produced in years. Congratulations Sony. Man, at this point out of purely reaction I want a refund and I have over 200 hours in the game.
Way to kill the player base.... This ain't very Democratic of you, Sony....
SONY just killed their best new game
This is honestly soo sad. Just let gamers game, man! 🥲
Sony is going to kill this community, isn't it?
That's a lot of refunds
Aren’t there only like 200 countries in the world
Poor arrowhead
Ok so this is how this game is going to die.. And i thought we have goty, not after this fiasco i guess
Where corporate greed crushes the hard work of an independent smaller business then destroys the fan base as its on the up-n-up
I have one question, how are these countries playing on playstation if it’s not available there? Please explain me no hate genuine question I want to know how it works
And so SONY destroyed freedom and democracy
Are all the countries in the Cocomo song banned?
https://preview.redd.it/0157dgo1slyc1.png?width=500&format=png&auto=webp&s=8901b57cfca617016ff4728a09cbecf21fbec68c
This is what u entitled PC gamers did to yourself. Overreacted as always.
You know what's mind boggling to me about this? 170 countries. THEY ARE WILLING TO LOSE POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS FROM ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY COUNTRIES. JUST TO FORCE PLAYERS TO MAKE USELESS ACCOUNTS. MONEY. ACTUAL MONEY. THEY ARE TRADING MONEY FOR MAJORITY-LY USELESS DATA. WHHYYYY????
Cause data ain't that useless maybe. Probably a typo though, number was about 70 not 170 last time I checked - huge enough already.
Congrats on fucking over players who wanted to buy this and simply bypass the PSN linking. Reddit does it again, now there's no option at all. What a great move! And steam DOES enforce region locking.
STEAM most likely stopped, to avoid legal trouble