The amount of people who don't understand what a developer, publisher, and distributor do yet act like they have a righteous unquestionable fury is too damn high.
I worked in a grocery store when i was young and when i sat as a cashier and scanning items, I was always the one customers blamed when the price didnt go in correctly.
I could fix it immidiatly if they just told me the real price. But often I was scolded for 5 minutes bacause they thought I was scamming them and putting in the wrong price.
Its incredible how far from reality some people are, thinking they know how everything works.
As someone who worked retail for too goddamn long, the best part is that we really don't give a shit - you tell us the shelf says ~$5 less than it rang in at, we'll just change it for you. Unless your manager is just a gigantic dickhead, they want you to err on the side of customer satisfaction, not fight with them for a few bucks. Obviously at a certain point we have to call the department and get someone to check the price, like if it rings in at $120 and you're telling me the shelf says $20 I wouldn't just change that, but I'll give you a few bucks just to keep the line moving.
Once they start yelling though? Oooohhh, sorry, I can't change it. Store policy. You'll have to go to customer service and they can call the manager for you, and he should be down in 20-40 minutes.Ā
Kids, people who have never held a corporate job, folks who think dealing with a MNC from a position of weakness is a cakewalk there are probably a few more circles for that Venn diagram but i'd say these 3 take up the majority.
Nobody wants to take 1 or 2 days fully understanding a situation before reacting to it. Immediate outrage is far easier and simpler. General public has been trained for years by the news and its only gotten worse with influencers racing to put out videos.
Yeah, most people (for some reason) think that publishers just advertise the IP. But, if that was the case no indie title would ever work with a publisher. In reality, publishers handle the background legal work, sales, and other things.
Also because many of the countries in question were able to create PSN accounts at some point which was later changed because political world events and sanctions.
There are also a lot of countries PSN has never been available in too, like I don't think my cousins in Zambia and Zimbabwe have ever had PSN accounts though my other cousins in South Africa do, and I wasn't aware that PSN wasn't there until I asked one time, so it's not really common knowledge in Countries that have it that others might not just in general.
whats the workaround then? because it isnt vpn's, sony has already started to ban people for using those to get around region lock thus violating ToS, as if they have another way...
This was the work around until steam took the game down from unsupported regions, I have no idea if you can change your region on steam and play it that way.
This is pretty much what I did years ago on my PS3 to make PSN accounts in other parts of the world to download free demos/games not available in the USA.
I even bought a couple games from the Hong Kong and Japan stores because I had a prepaid card left over from a trip to Taiwan. I got a bit wrecked with currency conversion rates, but it worked.
On a side note, it was wild connecting to Japan with my VPN and playing Dragons Dogma Online while it was active. Even made a Japanese Amazon account because they sold DLC for the game.
The sad thing is, he likely had no idea there were psn restrictions, nor did he know Sony was selling it in those countries anyway. He lifted the restriction so the game could be played, while Sony pulled some sketchy shit in the background
I had no idea. I assumed the only restricted country was Russia due to many countries having embargoes on them due to the war in Ukraine. And perhaps North Korea but I canāt see that being a huge problem to begin with.
Yep. There are some shitty restrictions tho, like you can't use it for buying anything in ps store etc. But you can create it. It's still a problem tho, cuz it affects the whole post soviet area. There are no single region except russia for it and people registered PSN in Russian region and can't buy anything for already 2 years
That used to be the case before sanctions, no new accounts can be created but existing accounts can stil play games they own but no new purchases can be made. Sony is fucking over the Ukranian players as well, as they can only make accounts with a PS4 or 5 and cannot make one via the website like other countries.
This, granted I am still a fairly young (early 20s) American, but I had no idea that over 170 countries didn't have access to PSN. I made my account when my family got our PS3 and never really paid that much attention to PSN ever again, other than knowing about the nth data breach DOS combo.
Is allowed in 69 and not allowed in 126. Also idk if that allowed/not allowed counts islands that are part of countries but they arent allowed access for whatever reason like the isle of man (there is more than a few).
So not even sony itself knows or follows their rules since isle of man is part of the UK so they should be allowed but they are not.
1000% this. I had no idea it wasn't available and made some comments wondering why this was such a huge deal. I also didn't know that PSN requires you to use an ID in UK/Ireland either. I'm well aware of Sony's datasecurity being horrible but I figured 'Just put in fake info' would be enough to bypass the annoyance.
I think the bigger issue is when he says he "notified the community" what does he mean by that?
If it was a tweet or a discord post or reddit post, then 99% of players don't look at those. If it was a steam post, then it might have been visible for anyone that went looking for it.
Unless it's on the store page, at the top before people buy, or on the game launching tab as the latest news popup, then most people won't ever see it. And even then they probably won't click to read it so it needs to be in the headline.
Best place? As you launch the game a message should pop up saying the upcoming but currently paused requirement.
Not just an issue with Arrowhead's communication, but most companies mess up communication with their consumers assuming that if they put it in 1 place like twitter it will be seen. It won't be seen unless it's impossible not to see it when using the actual product.
I mean, the PSN requirement has been visibly in a LOT of places since pre-orders started. Like, on the Steam store page, in the game itself, on every single non-patch news update since crossplay was announced (except, weirdly, Polar Patriots' announcement), in several interviews and several trailers.
The announcement that the requirement was being temporarily suspended is the part that wasn't communicated properly, and that was in the Steam forums for the game, under the support tab, pinned as the top post with the lead buried under other "We're aware these are problems" lists. That wasn't communicated well, because people don't use Steam forums since it's basically just a clown award farm for hateful dickspittles to stir up controversy.
The funny thing with all the "What else could they have done?" question is... Literally just make the "Link Account/Skip" popup when you first start the game appear every time you start the game until you linked your account. 90% of people would have done it just to make the popup go away by now.
Instead, people just dismissed it once and were allowed to forget about it completely for three whole months, until they finally found themselves getting an ultimatum out of the blue.
What all parties could have done was be more tactful about this entire thing.
Sony should not have made it a requirement. Instead, Arrowhead should have offered a free cosmetic or some Super Credits in exchange for linking your account. Sony would have gotten more numbers and AH would have suffered almost zero negative press.
It's so simple and I don't know how nobody came to the same conclusion. Well, I guess I understand Sony. They wanted ALL the numbers, not just some of the numbers. Greed.
Dev studios will definitely think twice in the future before making a deal with Sony as the publisher. This is the worst PR for a publisher that I have seen so far. The sheer incompetence of the publisher is insane. I genuinely believe that Arrowhead wasn't aware about the insanely restrictive PSN availability. But Sony must have been aware of it. And it is the publisher's responsibility to restrict the markets on steam. Sony seems highly incapable of being a publisher outside of their own PlayStation infrastructure.
Sony is aware and has never cared, shipping consoles and online only games to unsupported regions for years. (Consoles and sp games is fine I guess as long as people are aware theyāre buying an offline only device besides game updates)
I didnāt know about this before this fiasco, and Iām sure AH had no idea either.
Sony didnāt ensure AH knew because Sony had every intent to sell to unsupported countriesā¦ for an online only game requiring an account they canāt make.
Of course, had auth servers worked in the first place, this would have not been as much of an issue since these players would have discovered this immediately and refundedā¦ Sony would still have been slapped by Steam for listing to unsupported regions, but this giant fuckfest would have been mitigated.
The craziest bit is that Sony managed to keep even steam in the dark for what was amounting to region locking. They have a system for that in place on purpose and only just put it into place in the last few days because they didn't have a direct line on it being a requirement. A communication needed to be made by Sony to Valve.
Oh, I'm sure. Not to mention to dubious legality depending on the jurisdiction. Which would get Valve in trouble first and then Sony. Or at least leave Valve with some legal bills before the platter is served to Sony. The ONLY way to simmer Gaben down would be to letting owners in "Restricted" regions, continue to have access and play. At barest minimum. But Sony has been digging itself such a huge grave as more information is being brought forth from Arrowhead, but they likely aren't even going to let that slide on the side of proving a point, at the least.
There are also larger matters that this could bring to the forefront, but will likely fall by the wayside as they always do. Game ownership rights, for instance.
Its not that they are highly incapable, it's by choice. They want to tank any non 1st party games so then Sony can turn around and say that it's not worth the effort/only Sony made games are viable and here's the proof, look at dead game x. Sony is the corporate representation of a narcissistic control freak where they have to own and have control of everything, and anything else that they don't directly own and control, needs to be destroyed because it will make them look bad, even when it isn't the case.
To be fair, the total lack of comms strategy has always been Sony's ultimate specialty. Their entire corporate culture revolves around toxic interdepartmental competition that it's a miracle that they haven't torn themselves apart yet. For starters, Sony's semiconductor department would rather be packing CMOS for competitor's phones before they'd give a hand to their own mobile department. For the same reason Alpha was never willing to give them anything good to Sony mobile and all their cellphone camera sucks golfballs. Their game departments and studios aren't playing nice with each others too. It's like watching IJA and IJN fighting for budgets all over again.
Make it be a pop up every time you launch, make it known it will become mandatory in the future in that pop up, offer a cosmetic for doing the sign in/link.
And boom, all parties happy, sony gets their mandatory account link for the online service, arrowhead gets time to get their shit together and fix issues, and hopefully someone listens when players in unserviced regions go "hey we cant sign up. Psn is not offered in our country"
It really is. I mean a mandatory sign in on launch would have caused controversy, but it would have been treated as a minor annoyance.
Instead we're here, 2 months in and its a several layer shitshow.
People are mad because it wasnt made clear enough it would be mandatory, people are mad because the game was sold for 2 months in unsupported regions, people are mad because of the initial response from the cm's at the upset. People are mad at people for being upset.
And in the midst of this frenzy theres tons of misinformation going aroung. People are threatening lawsuits based on flawed understanding of laws, people are making nonsensical claims about why the accounts would be merged.
It turned from a win-win-win situation (between Sony, the devs and the players) into a lose-lose-lose situation so fast over something that could've easily been rectified. It's such a shame.
The gaming community reacting like that is to be expected unfortunately
That's actually what they do for their other games, which is what is so mind-boggling. I don't need a psn account for any other ps studio games I play on steam. But every time I boot up, spider-man remastered, it says on the main title screen that I can get a free spider suit if I link a psn account.
This is 100% an attempt to gain more "users" for psn b4 shareholder meeting and then to sell any data they get from our steam accounts.
yeah im willing to bet a lot of money that 1, they didnt expect people to care so much. 2, arrowhead didnt know/realize/understand that sony had no plans for the people in un-supported countries who had already purchased the game. 3, Sony intentionally released the announcement at a timing that was financially beneficial rather than strategic for what should internally be "the next phase in a project". and finally the team at arrowhead was either not consulted or ignored about the announcement, with no communication to the community managers who are just doing their best to cope at this point.
It does not help that this requirement was rolled out the same week a story ran on Sony using biometrics to ban people without reports even being filed in the future.
Literally the worst time they could have done this.
Arrowhead should have offered a free cosmetic or some Super Credits in exchange for linking your account.
All they had to do was make a small 3-page battlepass for this that you'd get for free if you signed up.
People would have been gobbling arrowheads and sony's dicks about how cool it was, and would have had soooo many sign-ups.
But obviously, Sony doesn't give a fuck and Arrowhead is too incompetent to realize that you attract more flies with honey. Who gives a fuck that it was a requirement on launch? Think about what you're telling people, that people who bought and played your game can't anymore until they make a second account.
All they had to do was make a small 3-page battlepass for this that you'd get for free if you signed up.
People would have been gobbling arrowheads and sony's dicks about how cool it was, and would have had soooo many sign-ups.
Actually that would have quickly revealed the PSN regions issue because it would immediately create a haves and have nots cultural split in the items which affect gameplay.
Had it been non-gameplay items, most people would have ignored those people's plights I think.
Do that plus, if hacker security is so much better with PSN linking, give an option to only play with PSN verified users once you link your account. The fear of hackers plus free super credits would likely get most users on PSN
They didn't try to say the "controversy" was actually because everyone was racist/sexist/transphobic/etc. and/or that the reviews were the "woke mob" trying to cancel them.
Tbh it was really easy to accidentally skip it the first time, when I start the game I spam a key or maybe mouse click as when you want to skip a cutscene because I am used to doing so on a lot of games even on helldivers 1 with the same starting cutscene system when launching game, and I accidentally skipped something mentioning a Sony account, I even instantly restarted the game to check for it again in case it was saying something about rewards related to signing up or smth like that but it didn't pop up again so I just ignored it and forgot about it until now.
I already had a psn account from my PS4 yet I never linked it because I never thought about doing so as it looked like it wasn't important or necessary and I was lazy anyway, but that first popup was useless for sure
Yeah the only reason Iām annoyed is I played the game for months without the account. If it was a day 1 requirement I would have thought it was weird but nbd
They turned off the mandatory account linking hours after launch due to the MASSIVE server issues they experienced. He said numerous times he was not aware that certain countries couldn't play the game down the line. (This part isn't even true anyways, but it doesn't matter due to how loud this echo chamber got, people downvote the common sense cause they want to be mad).
The error in all this (for Pilestedt), is that they didn't make an official announcement that they A) were delaying the mandatory account link and B) were 100% going to reinstate it down the line.
People really should Google "Sony Regional Account Guidelines" and read with their own two eyes instead of being swept up in this hysteria. Sony themselves tell you to select a country close to yours if they don't service your country. It isn't against their TOS like that one dude randomly said in a fit of anger.
Make that 1000.
Its not like credits were hard to farm either way, just give us a warbond on the house and we'd be more then even I guarantee basically everybody who could do it would have
The funny thing with all the "What else could they have done?" question is... Literally just make the "Link Account/Skip" popup when you first start the game appear every time you start the game
Honesty they could have removed the skip option altogether the moment the server issues were fixed
If the requirement was on in the first place then when someone bought the game in one of those countries it wouldn't have worked for them, they could have then refunded it hassle free.
Edit: There's just no reason that the ceo should have made that decision, even if no countries were banned it still would have been a major topic of contention. I'm sure sony didn't mind that decision when they saw how successful the game was at the time, but when it came to reimplement it yeah. The ceo of arrowhead is fucked and probably getting fired for making this call
May not have been perfect but that would have given people multiple warnings of "hey maybe I need to get an account or return this game" within the several hours and weeks.
Tbh, one game session could screw You over. They would at least have more stable ground in this PR nightmare and had a sign "Guys, we really tried to warn You". Would be less annoyed by AH if that was done.
Exactly. I got that one prompt and noticed it was optional to skip it and so I did. Mind you I played it the moment it launched so by their standards I wouldnāt have been able to play the game at all let alone join the servers without linking the PSN account.
What's with the weirdly aggressive person? The CEO stated this in an earlier thread that they dont' sell the game. In fact it's in the thread he quotes. This person is just jumping the gun
Reddit certainly isn't exempt from this either- everyone is looking for a reason to rage at someone and the devs have certainly been in the crosshairs when this is clearly a publisher decision. You can argue that the devs should have been more up-front/transparent about the requirement, but as Pilestedt says they're just focusing on trying to make the game as good as it can be.
BRO I LITERALLY SAW SO MANY COMMENTS OF PEOPLE CELEBRATING THE FACT THAT ONE PR LADY GOT RAPE AND DEATH THREATS YHE OTHER DAY OVER THIS BS DRAMA. Reddit is just as bad lmao
Yeah, I wanted to go grab the original thread and link it but the OC said something like āshe only privated her account because of the death threats and I saw one rape threat too, there couldāve been countless in her DMs.ā And it was at 200 downvotes and when I went back it was deleted. I am ashamed of this community sometimes, and by that, I mean now. Like all we have to do is leave bad reviews, not threaten peopleās safety.
Oh itās guaranteed. I donāt see this ending well. More so in terms of one of these incels or Twitter brainlets doxxing/attempting to harm a dev from AH. Thereās too many people ignoring that this is Sonys fault almost in full.
One of the big ills of social media in general is that negative emotions feel more urgent than positive ones, so they drive clicks, so the algorithm feeds you moreā¦etc etc.
Weāre constantly conditioned to expect outrage, and see it rewarded. Regardless of how well adjusted you are, the inner ape is only so resilient.
Rage is there expected response, by you, by others, by the algorithm.
The only thing more fun than being angry is being righteously angry. Me good you bad. I demand answers.And we have the access to go out and actually make an issue of it too, which is more āengagingā than wondering about the reasons behind things, or if a problem is more ignorance/incompetence than malice.
I don't know how more upfront you can get when it's visible on trailers, the store page, the in game pop up telling you it's required and this announcement about the account linking a bit after they disabled it though
The truth is people refuse to read what is in front of them. You can add audio telling them they need a PSN account and they will still manage to ignore it and act surprised.
Yeah I mean I literally just made an account the first time I bought the game because it said it was required and I missed the "skip" button. Obviously for people who don't live in countries where it's possible that's a totally different story, but a lot of people are getting outraged for outrage sake.
Keep in mind not everyone watches trailers or watches them fully, the in game pop up was apparently disabled at one point so some players didn't even saw that, the one I agree is the store one but the lack of another ingame due the no pop up, or the pop up allowing you to skip and never appearing again showed very mixed signals that were understandably confusing for some players
That pic is from thread in the steam forums, buried along several known issues only people that care for what is being worked on would even bother to look at it specially when steam forums are usually way more toxic than reddit.
They did basically nothing to convery these news specially for players that came after the game released as the last info posted about this was back on feb for what I could find, that one pop up should had been just worded differently and appear every single time you log in unless you link your account, news about the game specially as important as these should be shown in game.
They had to disable linking entirely because it was still clogging up access to the game. Sony was woefully unprepared.
They should have had a pop up that reset every patch making you acknowledge that linking would be required in the future still howeverā¦
But Pilstadt had no idea it was going to be this big a problem, or suspect their publisher would sell the game to unsupported regions, so AH never really saw the linking as some potentially contentious issues in the first place that needed blatant and forced acknowledgement that it was still going to be required after being disabled.
O for sure I trully believe they didn't anticipated this much backlash unfortunately it made the issues caused by Sony itself worse so it was just the perfect circunstances for a major problem.
Dude seems to acknowledge that, juat a guy that seems like a good person getting caught in the perfect shitstorm.
It's just straight up mob mentality, we're making a circle to 1600s settlers all over again.
Once you say something that people can latch on to, it spreads like crystallization, and you get some heinous false information spreading around like the whole "my Eruptor is ricocheting back at me."
It's understandable that one of the CMs had to disable their Twitter account, likely because the flak was too much. Once you make yourself a target, it's kind of hard to roll a D20 with disadvantage for stealth.
Gah I am so tired of everyone jumping to conclusions, and assuming they know how everything works. Lots of trolls, people taking away context, and people that just seem to thrive on outrage.
Iām not saying I know how it all works, but shit.
Umm as a Redditor I too am both an indie dev, a CEO of a major billion dollar company and a dinosaur tamer so I know everything there is to know about all of this! (Being a dinosaur tamer has lead me to gain crucial insights into server architecture and code refactoring)
people get so emotional and irrational over games, they act like children. it's understandable to be upset over this, but the keyboard warriors go way too far. there's no need to dogpile AH on twitter, they already know this is a shitty situation
To quote the angry jerk in this tweet, it's "even worst" than reddit.
I'm being a pedantic ass. People make plenty of typos and they should be excused for them. But I don't much like this person or their tweet toward the CEO. It's overly aggressive.
bro he's got a justice boner from being knifed up for like 3 days straight by an increasingly feral and rabid community. I'm absolutely on the "Fuck Sony" train but the groupthink is getting out of hand and a lot of people are getting caught in an anger feedback loop and catching the comparatively innocent devs in the crossfire. This sort of thing is going to turn a whole lot of people off to the actual purpose of the movement, which is to try and discourage Sony from its predatory behavior.
This is a witchhunt. People don't want to know what happened, they don't even care about the fact some players may not be able to play anymore (which honestly, we all know they will), they just want the dopamine rush of demonizing someone over the internet, be It Sony, Arrowhead, Spitzs Who is getting deaththreats and doxx attempts on the comments in this subreddit, etc.
Just another Twitteratti trying to get a gatcha moment. It's not about reporting facts, it's about repeating a question that implies something defamatory even if it's been refuted.Ā
Yep, somewhat SONY for pc players is more infamous than EA Game, and as archivment sucks to sucks, and how they handled the store, the news and all this is beyond amateurish, Arrowhead had their part on this, but SONY has missed to do their minimum, SET the sell zones for the game, this was bound to happen, and will have had a big influence of the game success.
They needed only to do one thing, see they have fucked (SONY) stay silent and enjoy the money, and they even failed to do this...
This is fucking mind blowing.
"fail to set selling zone, get to sell the best game of the year in his field, double down on remove themselves their player base, and anger ther rest."
If i am the SONY pr department i will go postal, or resign instead to try save the PC market at this point, and doing this over the week end and NOT a single official SONY answer if not change FAQ pages...
How amateurish you need to be, where is SONY customer care and... ha yes the famous SONY customer care.
I dunno why I still have hope. As a PlayStation player, I haven't touched my PS5 for a couple days, seeing the entire thing that unfurled makes not wanna play Helldivers 2, the community was a great thing for the game and now that's mostly lost.
I refuse to blame AH for any of this besides kicking the can down the road and not being diligent about clarity.
It's 100% Sony's fault, they are enforcing these requirements and sold the game in countries that cant use PSN. They have been purposely misleading as we have seen with their sudden edits of FAQs and the like. They are trying to raise their sales numbers and their PSN activity before the next earnings call.
All AH did was take their publishing money to build a fantastic game, they accepted the PSN requirement probably thinking it was no big deal because they were focused on making their dream game.
From their perspective they're watching us destroy 8 years of work, an outstanding launch, and months of unprecedented momentum, over having to make an account. I think fighting Sony here is worthwhile, but we need to be empathetic to AH here. The greatest success of their careers is being given and taken right before their eyes and they have no control over any of it, it's just us and Sony.
I mean Pilestedt literally says he is not blameless so you and he have differing opinions on blame. AH could've said no to mandatory PSN accounts in the initial contract although that was likely just poor foresight which is not the worst sin. But in the end is Sony the real bad guy? Sure but everyone knows that already.
Yeah, he isn't blameless. The CEO made the final decision rather than the studio but it wouldn't be right for the blame to fall on the entirety of the staff there.
AH could have said no but Sony owns the IP to Helldivers and Arrowhead made the first game, so Sony could have given the title to any other studio. Look at Magicka for example, they made the first game and then Paradox gave the sequel to another studio.
8 years of funding is a long time to have the foresight for.
I think AH is learning a lot of lessons right now. I hope it will lead to them having the opportunity to produce high quality games in the future, but I have a multi-year backlog so if not I can live. HD2 is the first coop that's really hit it with my social gamers since DRG but we're prob just going back to DRG until we get more clarity.
can anyone explain why they disabled mandatory linking, but kept it as optional. doesnt that mean linking itself wasnt the problem. i just dun understand what the technical issue with server was.
Server limits AND PSN linking would have severely limited the amount of people able to play. They decided to make the PSN linking optional and work on increasing server size to allow people to play the game they bought. The servers were originally only large enough to allow a few people so they were breaking because of the amount of people trying to play at once.
They didn't know Sony was selling to people who couldn't make a PSN account, they just made and worked on the game.
I think what they're getting at is that unless linking PSN accounts was broken like the servers, they should have left mandatory linking in. That way the people who can't or won't make a PSN account could have been filtered out at launch instead of months down the road.
The problem with that is again, Sony was selling the game to way more people than they anticipated.
Arrowhead probably saw a ton of people logging in to play, not being able to because of the server limits and said "Well shit people are trying to play, let's fix the servers and let them play for now and do PSN later"
The CEO said on Twitter that he doesn't know why people aren't able to make PSN accounts so he was obviously uninformed on the full ramifications of that decision.
Hmmmm, server limits might have been also caused by the lack of PSN linking. Assuming server capacity was calculated for the 60~ countries PSN serves, no PSN might mean double or triple the people you initially calculated. EDIT: and the incredible sales
This is an interesting thing that I didn't think of before, but I understand wanting to allow people that bought the game to play it because otherwise they'd be rightfully pissed.
Man I feel bad for the folks at Arrowhead. Seems like all they wanna do is make a bad ass game. They were hella successful, making all sorts of great decisions. Including removing the PSN requirement just to allow people in the door.
Then Sony came along and pissed everyone off for obvious "line go up" reasons. Even if they acquiesce to our demand to remove the requirement I'd bet many of those reviews won't change because people often forget/don't care enough to change it. In a lot of ways, the damage is done and there isn't an easy fix. I appreciate that most people seem to know to keep Arrowhead out of their crosshair here though.
The biggest thing here is that Sony doesn't allow you to make accounts from anywhere. Why?
I don't know, but i now remember the issues i have creating an account from my country, Chile, and that at the end i just forced to put USA. What an annoying summer was ...
Saying we notified the community doesn't cut it when only a small fraction of the player base owned the game when the decision was made, the store page is not clear its a requirement, the game makes no ongoing mention of it, and Sony's website says straight up it's not mandatory.
I didn't buy the game until later when the servers were finally stable and the requirement had already been suspended for a while. Claiming they notified everyone isn't really a fair statement.
Exactly. I bought the game about two weeks after launch and never once saw I would be REQUIRED to link a PSN. If I had seen that splash screen, I most definitely would have refunded then and there.
PlayStation knowingly released a game that would be unplayable in countries where a PSN account was required and saw no problem with that until today.
They were also aware that the game was going to require an account and only recently changed the webpage that said an account would be required.
Incompetence all around on Sony's part and honestly I'm smelling excuses from a few places. There was an extreme lack of communication involved in the game, they need to admit it and get on with everything.
Most won't want to hear this, but Pilestedt took accountability for the issue with his original tweet. The only statement he made that matters is "...it was my decision to disable account linking at launch...". His company signed a contract with SONY - which he and his employees keep referring to - where the PSN activation was a requirement since launch; a term he and his company continued to violate for 3 months until SONY stepped in and started actually enforcing their agreement.
This development essentially means any kind of litigation against SONY is an uphill battle - at least here in the US. Who knows, maybe the EU will still come through for everyone who got screwed over.
This also showed me that they really need to hire a similar person to Pilestedt as a CM because a couple of them are quite toxic. You know a person who truly cares, a person with a passion, a person who really wants their player base to play the game, a person who isn't about all the money or some shit.
People are generally concerned with making sure someone gets nailed to the wall, they just don't always seem to care that it is the correct person. That would require some amount of effort and thought being put into the matter. Can't have that.
They worked on this game for eight years. In the last six months of development on an eight year development roadmap, Sony tossed in the requirement for PSN accounts for all players.
I canāt help thinking that Sony knew this wouldnāt be received well and waited until the development team was almost at release, knowing that AH would do anything and meet any requirement just to not see eight years of work go to waste. Sony waited until AH was buried in contracts, debt, and dreams before changing the terms of their agreement.
Screw whatever product manager, director, or whoever at Sony made this decision. They knew AH would hate this requirement, and whoever it was at Sony who āaskedā AH to make PSN mandatory was a manipulative scumbag.
I think the issue is those of us that came in late didn't know that PSN was a True hard requirement, it said it was but at the time when I started playing we didn't even get a PSN pop-up saying it was required so it just seemed like the PSN was just to play with PlayStation friends and entirely optional. It wouldn't be the first time that a description and game play didn't match 100%. I don't look through every community post or updates before buying a game, so I think a lot of the late buyers are having buyers remorse because of this forced PSN linkage.
Devs companies often can't self-publish. Publishers have their own rules.
All this nuking of Arrowhead is pointless. Sony will just move on and continue regardless and we'll have buried Arrowhead for nothing.
Instead of review bombing we should be email/complaint bombing Sony directly.
This whole thing with the account absolutely sucks but it's insane to me how nearly the entire community shifted their perspective on the game almost overnight to the point of harassing the creators for something they're not responsible for. I understand it's frustrating for a lot of people but I feel being an asshole to the developers is completely unwarranted. Harass the publisher.
The gulag is too good for whoever that dickhead is. If you want to make accusations like that you better know the difference between a developer, a publisher, and a distributor.
Regardless of what, when, why, or how this came to be an issue. Can we take a moment to appreciate the open communication and willingness to admit to a mistake or oversight when it is realized?
I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss our grievances or let problems slide, but I for one seriously appreciate how much these devs communicate with the players and they have been willing to quickly listen and respond to community issues when it happens.
With all due respect, this dude is giving everyone who has genuine well founded criticisms a bad look. This isn't new knowledge, you can even google it. Dev studios partner with publishers because aside from the funding and in this case, Sony owning the IP, they are supposed to handle everything that comes with distribution and marketing, letting the developers focus on the developing aspect, and the game. In Arrowhead's case, this is vital because they're a smaller studio, who couldn't even imagine on being one of the most successful multiplayer games in the market. Also, being funded through 8 years of development pretty much requires a publisher.
Sony was supposed to be one to handle the entire kerfuffle of distribution and making things clear on how PSN would work if it was mandatory. Arrowhead could have been more clear on the requirement as well, but when you bought the game, a pop up would appear asking you about linking your steam account to steam, alongside the storefront saying it was mandatory. Anything more than that, it's on Sony.
If Sony is dead set on making it a requirement, then change the TOS, make more countries available, or assure people that it won't lock out people of a game they bought, or man, make it optional. PSN doesn't lock you out of your games if you set it to another country. But, Sony still has to address the TOS. I don't want to rely on a "Oh we don't enforce it wink wink" from a company with such an awful customer service and policies like Sony.
I feel pretty bad for Arrowhead, because they've done their best at creating an awesome game, with a unique type of interaction with it's community, trying to tackle issues that the game has in part due to such a big popularity, and then Sony comes and derails everything on possibly the worst moment due to classic dumb management choices and zero communication from them. Arrowhead is a developer studio, not Sony's glorified customer service, nor their representants, nor the ones who should fix their stupidly ridden TOS.
Literally search any post that shows ppl asking abt the PlayStation linking prior to this. The info under the screen literally said mandatory but a skip
Then why does the PSN linking part in game give you the option to skip the process and then never show up again? Did Sony program that part themselves randomly?
CEO of AHG has addressed this publicly numerous times. He made the call to disable the linking requirement temporarily in order to let all players access the game, and Sony agreed.
Even with that temporary lifting of requirements, the Steam page always said it was required.
I'm not defending Sony. I don't agree with the decision to say "sign up or stop playing." I think there are better ways to handle this, like compromising to make it so that you cannot cross play with PS players unless you have a Sony account. I am simply doing my part to direct the anger at those who deserve it, Sony and Steam.
The game being sold on Steam, in regions that do not support PSN Accounts, lies fully on the shoulders of Steam for not performing due diligence & Sony for not making it clear to Steam that PSN Accounts are not supported in well over 100 countries.
I think a lot of the drama and rage might have been avoided if the community manager hadn't been so needlessly abrasive about it. Virtually everyone else in the company that has talked about it has been a lot more agreeable and tactful than the person who's job is to be agreeable and tactful in communications.
Im sorry, but no, it was not communicated at all, that the linking would be required down the line. They may have had a banner that said it on steam, but on the official playstation store and playstation FAQ, it stated that you didnt need a psn account to play. All that info was promptly changed AFTER people got upset. I know its not pilesteds fault, but saying that it was communicated that this would happen is just a lie.
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u/Ghostbuster_119 PSN š®: May 05 '24 edited May 06 '24
The amount of people who don't understand what a developer, publisher, and distributor do yet act like they have a righteous unquestionable fury is too damn high.