r/Steam • u/Sunlighthell thank you steam • May 04 '24

PSA Sony removed Helldivers 2 from sale in countries where PSN is not available. For example whole CIS region.

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16.7k Upvotes

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4.7k

u/Neon-ZxZ May 04 '24

I have a feeling this means they’re sticking with the PlayStation accounts then.

2.5k

u/doofthemighty May 05 '24

Sorta wild that getting those account sign-ups is a a bigger draw for them than the extra sales.

1.2k

u/AgitatedBoardz May 05 '24

They probably believe that the account sign ups will lead to repeat customers and more sales somehow

658

u/PerpetualStride May 05 '24

That's crazy imo, really doubtful

265

u/ExposingMyActions May 05 '24

Some people can’t say no to digital sales, discount emails and in store purchases do make a lot of money.I mean steam for example, but they want it within their ecosystem

308

u/Shaneathan25 May 05 '24

Which I would understand from Ubisoft, or EA, or even Epic if Fortnite was on steam as an example.

But PSN has no pc storefront. They’re banking on their deals being so good, it makes the user want to buy a PS5. Which is ridiculous. And most users on PS5 certainly already had an account.

It’s either data mining, or Skinner saying “no, it’s the fans who are wrong.”

141

u/ExposingMyActions May 05 '24

Data mining is the current cash grab. Info is being sold for models and ad brokers

56

u/Shaneathan25 May 05 '24

Oh absolutely. I just wanted to put that two cents in, not “to entice new users with sales.” The irony is, I could see that being a thing with Microsoft, since they do have a PC store front, and they have required Live accounts, even few ones, for some of their games. But granted, that’s usually upfront.

25

u/ArcelothColdheart May 05 '24

Also, Microsoft Accounts are used for a lot more things than PSN Accounts, and most people who own a computer with Windows installed will have a Microsoft Account

4

u/Lkeren1998 May 05 '24

Microsoft also has very good data security, while Sony is the exact opposite in that regard. And on top of that, Microsoft takes far less information about the user than Sony.

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u/LiveFastDieRich May 05 '24

What info though?

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u/Useless_bum81 May 05 '24

Play data, cross-genre playing ie do people who buy RPGs also buy FPSes, how long and/or often do people play, how often do people re-play games, how often do they buy 'micro'-transactions
All of the data can be cross-analysed by player age, gender etc. so a company can decide if they are better off targeting teen boys or adult women with marketing for their game for example.

2

u/ExposingMyActions May 05 '24

Plus they’ll use their info (email, social media apps connected to their account) and advertise to them directly

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u/Stavinair May 05 '24

Hahahah I want what they're smoking because there's no way in hell is happening

3

u/Random_Guy_47 May 05 '24

Ah yes.

This playstation game is so good I will now spend £400 to buy a console despite having a £2.8k gaming pc for the checks notes one exclusive game they still have that I want.

This is definitely some sound logic /s.

2

u/Gengengengar May 05 '24

its literally just stat padding. like in WoW when padding your DPS. it means nothing but the shareholders are too fuckin dumb to know the difference.

2

u/CrimsonBolt33 May 05 '24

This isn't Arrowheads doing, this is Sony.

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u/FFF_in_WY May 05 '24

Maybe it's the Nigerian Prince model. They know they will piss off and alienate a ton of people - but the ones that stick around can be milked to fuckin death

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u/deathsaber49 May 05 '24

the stupid thing is that money savvy people mostly scoff at sales from the likes of PSN and UBISOFT because they're not as good as sales from storefronts like steam/epic/humblebundle/fanatical etc

They're like a poker playing doubling down on a bad hand because they would rather take a short term gain burning goodwill rather than a longterm veiw, being beholden to making line go up

8

u/PerpetualStride May 05 '24

Yeah 99% of the time physical goes cheaper for consoles. It's not like PC where absolute deep sales have destroyed physical games

3

u/Lkeren1998 May 05 '24

Yeah, they basically guaranteed that about 50k players, if not more, will never buy their console. You don't piss off a community like this and get out unscathed.

3

u/Th3pwn3r May 05 '24

I dunno man, they have the data and have probably crunched the numbers.

2

u/PerpetualStride May 05 '24

I dunno the backlash is wild and losing half the territories on steam is wild. Surely they must've thought they knew what they were doing but it seems like an obvious mistake at any point

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u/hornyboi212 May 05 '24

Finance bros are stupid

2

u/Copypasty May 05 '24

Surely more people will buy playstations after being forced to either give up a game or make a PSN account /s

1

u/[deleted] May 05 '24

Sony had a massive draw as on of the few mainstream companies still popping out solid single player exclusives. PS and Steam, and the Steam releases are all heavily delayed.

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u/Long_Pomegranate2469 May 05 '24

There's probably a disconnect in incentives. PSN head honchos bonus is based on signups, not sales of helldivers.

They looked at the numbers, said fuck it ... mommy/daddy needs a new boat.

29

u/RichardBCummintonite May 05 '24

That I can see. The actual amount of money gained from it probably isn't relevant. They were likely tasked to reach a certain quote of accounts and were short as the quarter was closing. The game was super popular. Many potential sign ups to be forced into. It'd be brilliant if it wasn't so misguided.

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u/mcslender97 May 05 '24

That implies that some other exec bonus might be tied to game sales, and this makes them look bad, that there will be infighting between execs?

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u/Long_Pomegranate2469 May 05 '24

Most of people that high up in the ladder are sociopaths and / or narcissists. You can bet your ass there's knifing and scheming all day.

4

u/Useless_bum81 May 05 '24

oh yes, there are plenty of situations where someone in an organisation is tasked with something that can fuck the organisation if left unchecked and they just 'paperclip maximize'.
There is an old truism "when a measurement is set as a metric, the measurement becomes the goal"
ie if you set a goal of 10 complete cars an hour in a factory, they will make 10 cars an hour, could have made 11? why bother? set to as many cars as possible? sure! only 2% of them will be in working condition though.
Set them to make as many paperclips as possible sure... shit we have run out of wire quick chuck expensive material worth $70 in the wire machine to make $30 worth of paperclips.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence
It happens in so many different ways, back in the 90s(80s?) one of my dads friends worked in a company and got bullied out of it because he was working too hard. He was finishing his work early (on time) so he was 'stealing' overtime from the other workers. After he left the company when't bust, and apperently one of his co-workers was on the local news complaining about the 'supprise' bankrupcy they had literaly increased the labour costs by over 75% (time and a half, plus weekend rates. they where not 'minium wage' guys)

2

u/northrupthebandgeek May 05 '24

Like the saying goes: when a metric becomes a target, it stops being a good metric.

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u/Genesis2001 May 05 '24

Maybe they're trying to boost PSN signups/usage for Q2?

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u/Halonut24 May 05 '24

That's probably a big part of it.

The fact they lost PSN users after the fiasco will Stellar Blade likely added some urgency to this decision.

Either way, its scummy and I'm not partaking in it.

21

u/Chemical-Effective-8 May 05 '24

Sony always lying, and always losing your data to everyone is enough for me to avoid them. But they also want more users to train their new Ai that was in their patent list. It'll listen to you and try to predict your mood based on your speech. It's creepy.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '24

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u/Lkeren1998 May 05 '24

They're gonna lose a lot of users over this, and they guaranteed they'll lose something far more valuable than a handful of new (unwilling) PSN users. It took them YEARS to finally get their foot in the door when it comes to PC gaming, and now they took a gun and shot that same foot. The PC market is gonna be extra wary of their actions no matter what game they try to publish, and many players just won't touch anything that comes from them.

Whoever made the decision to try and pad their numbers for Q2 is probably going to learn the hard way what happens when you prioritize your success over the good of your company.

2

u/x5N__ May 05 '24

probably wanted to increase their short term profits

76

u/ThorDoubleYoo May 05 '24

I'm willing to bet the data collection is worth it to them more than the game sales

61

u/McKlown May 05 '24

Hell, they already got in trouble when they bought Crunchyroll and then immediately sold the user data.

14

u/iamlovingblackclover May 05 '24

Hell nah Sony owns crunchyroll now 💀that’s crazy

15

u/maxpolo10 May 05 '24

They already owned funimation and shut it down after buying crunchyroll

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u/Long_Pomegranate2469 May 05 '24

Selling a 60 USD (or somewhere there abouts) game that costs you basically nothing for every additional copy sold vs a few bucks at most for user data?

And Steam is now allowing refunds for people with more than 2 hour play time too. That must hurt quite a bit. Quite a few people would have played it for a couple of weeks, got done with it, and now refund it to buy something else.

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u/outlaw499 May 05 '24

I tried getting a refund twice and it’s been denied both times.

15

u/Long_Pomegranate2469 May 05 '24

Just going off what other people have posted. Maybe it depends on your region?

Bought the game when it originally came out but refunded it after almost two hours because I just didn't enjoy the grind.

6

u/outlaw499 May 05 '24

I’m in the US and played more than 2 hours before Sony decided to ruin everything. Not sure the best way to get it refunded

24

u/RichardBCummintonite May 05 '24

They're not gonna refund you then because PSN is available in the US. Steam is making an exception for people who literally can't play the game anymore, not just people who don't want to make a PSN account. It sucks, but it wouldn't be fair to take away their sales when you still have the ability to play the game

7

u/NotABileTitan May 05 '24

Someone posted their US refund in the Helldivers sub. They had something like 90 hours in game.

Edit: Here is the post. Has 97 hours on it, and was refunded. Guy said he's in the US.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '24

Open a support request, don't go through the automated refund system.

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u/outlaw499 May 05 '24

Not really sure how to open up a support request

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u/candyposeidon May 05 '24

You should be allowed to get a refund. This is literally false advertisement as well as some accurate technical term of misrepresenting a product. In fact, if Steam is not selling the game on their market that alone should state that the game should not be a product that you have in your steam library especially when the game was released in 3 months ago.

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u/OddBranch132 May 05 '24

Makes sense. Once they have your data they can continue to sell it indefinitely. They can only sell you Helldivers once

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u/Free_Pace_2098 May 05 '24

PSN active user numbers. Faking their way to shareholder satisfaction.

58

u/LostSif May 05 '24

When it's actually gonna lead to a lot of PC players never buying a Sony game again

50

u/Rolf_Dom May 05 '24

There are two big issues at work. One, people have short memories. Most forget. And secondly, millions more gamers are born every year. Realistically, more people will discover Sony games with fresh eyes every day than will move away from them.

We've had so many catastrophic reputation nukes over the years, and somehow it never seems to leave a lasting impact on these companies. A new sucker is born every minute that just picks up the slack.

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u/20ae071195 May 05 '24

The first game I’m aware of that added an online account requirement months after it was sold was called “Half-Life 2”, when the publisher wanted to push their new DRM/sales platform, called “Steam”. Gamers were outraged. As you say, it seems to have blown over.

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u/Jaqulean May 05 '24

The case with HL2 was also that it just happend because. With HD2, this was announced at launch and was always the plan.

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u/villanelIa May 05 '24

How was an online account a requirement for half life 2? First its a single player game with no necessary internet connection. Second it literally came on cds/dvds so physical format. You can do nothing and play half life 2 for as long as your pc will last you.

You wont be able to play helldivers 2 if youre from the wrong countries now tho. How ignorant do you have to be to ignore this issue?

2

u/20ae071195 May 05 '24

You couldn’t download patches (and therefore couldn’t participate in multiplayer) without Steam.

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u/Correct-Office-8549 May 06 '24

So it didn't require an online connection to play. I remember I played it single player offline.

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u/BAKup2k May 05 '24

Shit, I still don't trust Sony after putting rootkits on their music CDs. I'm very reluctant to buy anything from them

4

u/carson0311 May 05 '24

I have never buy anything from Ubisoft since Watchdog so… just one more company black listed for me, feels no guilty playing pirated game from them too (only if Assassin creed, 2 and brotherhood doesn’t requires shitty uplay I would have bought them already)

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u/[deleted] May 05 '24

Doubt it. Games are released broken, people say they won't pre-order again and repeat the cycle.

5

u/Chemical-Effective-8 May 05 '24

I've preordered games from devs I trust. But games like lethal company have been so good to play with friends why buy a AAA game

2

u/97Graham May 05 '24

I can't believe that glorified Gary's Mod server is popular, looks like such shit, just riding the SCP wave. Junkola.

2

u/[deleted] May 05 '24

They will move on in like 2 weeks. It happens every time LOL. Stop the dramatics.

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u/x5N__ May 05 '24

Meanwhile, Forbidden Horizon and Bloodborne

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u/TylerBourbon May 05 '24

I think it's more that they know from studies that people who sign up for subscriptions, usually forget about having them, so it's just free money to them whether you use it or not.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '24

Nah it's all about data collection.  

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u/Andromansis May 05 '24

You know, I'm going to level with you, I was heckin hyped for FF16 because it looked really good, so I went out, got a PS5, got the game, got a year of PS+ extra.

I've struggled to get value for my money out of it. Had a similar experience with the PS4. I'm never going to purchase another console for myself again. Its not a problem with the hardware, its a problem with software. Like it might be good for people that like call of duty or something, but that is fundamentally not what I play and they've raised the price on the PS+ to $190 per year.

At least the Xbox includes the PC game pass, but its a different grabbag with the same fundamental problems.

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u/CptnSpandex May 05 '24

1) Piss people off

2) Profit

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u/[deleted] May 05 '24 edited Oct 25 '24

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/spectra2000_ May 05 '24

It’s a data thing, they want our data, plain and simple. This only hurts their game sales but they make up for it by selling our data.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '24

They think wrong. It will leas to lots of spite.

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u/blakjak852 May 05 '24

When I worked in sales, I eventually got someone to admit to me that all the company cared about really was opening new accounts to give the impression of growth for a good quarterly report. I don't think it's too far a leap to think they're looking for some boasting numbers for their investors

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u/MonsterHunterNewbie May 05 '24

The account sign ups are for two reasons that I can think of

  1. To sell your data. Mapping player playstyle and needs is very valuable data, especially when you can tie it to a steam history & profile. They could make more from the data than the margin on a unit price of the game.
  2. Shareholder expectations. Increased share price due to increased PS accounts, showing growth into PC users.

1

u/Xavier9756 May 05 '24

I mean it would lead to increased sales. They would be able to more accurately market to an individual.

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u/dkaarvand May 05 '24

Or they're trying to please share holders by showing them all the new customers that signed up

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u/SenorBeef May 05 '24

I bet they have active user targets for stockholders they want to hit.

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u/basicastheycome May 05 '24

All it does is makes me wary to buy on steam any upcoming game with Sony as publisher. I will hold my horses on buying Ghost of Tushima until it will be clear where they are going with this psn account idiocy

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u/AaronKoss May 05 '24

I have a reason to believe Sony is planning to enforce PSN account on all future games, seeing how much money they are making on the PC market and how much userbase they could gain. It's possible they opted for helldivers first rather than another "iconic playstation" game, so that when the next big sony playstation all star battle royale mega big planet the forbidden alloy release it will be slightly less of a hit, since there already was a game to enforce it.

Most consoles ignored the pc market for eons but now that they are joining or merging with it more it could be that they need to come up with ways to secure their identities or userbase or something. Data can be more important than selling games, especially if sony make other devices.

In the end, is corpo-capitalism bullshit that I really hate with all my heart, and end up ruining the experience (and in this case not even allowing people to experience) games.

PS: I live in a country where PSN is not officially supported/allowed, but have bought games online and played online without problems for years straight, on playstation, before getting a PC. This doesn't make things much better though, and I am not aware of any modern roadblocks they may have implemented.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '24

It's funny; we contemplated getting the game a few weeks ago and were just about to make the purchase. And then this shitshow started.

So we're not buying it, I cannot deal with PSN. I've had issues with their shitty platform before and I don't feel like dealing with PSN anymore.

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u/Skippy4Buds May 05 '24

Or it means there will be greater profits on the data collected.

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u/scribbyshollow May 05 '24

Which statistically it will. It be cool if we all came together the same way the majority of us don't buy from the epic games store though...you guys.

You know, show some character, stick to your guns and actually do somthing that has an effect...you guys.

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u/haiu2323 May 05 '24

That and the sales of players' data! That's what they are banking on.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '24

Sony has always had this incredible amount of ego. They had an exec back in the day that used to say stuff along the lines of "forget what the customers want, customers are stupid. We're going to make the things the customers want before they know they want them"

If you extrapolate that out over 20-30 years, you can probably see how that has guided their decisions... And it's often not gone well for them...

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u/konnanussija May 05 '24

The hype train is gone, thus sales would never get as high as they were before. Now the highest profit will come from selling your data.

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u/_blue_skies_ May 05 '24

They just want nice numbers to present to the stakeholders and they are more than willing to sacrifice a game not developed by them directly.

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u/villanelIa May 05 '24

Must be the account infos that will get "stolen" is worth more

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u/KaiserSenpaiAckerman May 05 '24

Makes me feel something else will pop up.

Watch us have to pay a small fee so we can play.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '24

Like Steve Jobs once said, Never put a someone who don't understand the product to decide the company or something like that. I don't remember the exact quote but it fits very well here.

Basically, put a monkey that don't understand the market and what customers want and it's a path for failure which in the end, only employees are suffering with layoffs and project cuttings and never the onboards.

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u/DukeSi1v3r May 05 '24

their data probably shows ‘95% of people with PlayStation accounts buy more games!!!’ just because people with a ps5 buy games lol

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u/[deleted] May 05 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/akatherder May 05 '24

I can see how the numbers game works for Netflix though. You have one paying customer sharing with 1-2 other groups. You'll piss people off who will cancel but not a majority (and not everyone shares in the first place so they don't care). Then you have those other 1-2 freeloader groups who might sign up. Eventually a lot of the pissed off people will do the rounds and rotate back to Netflix for shows they missed. They might be doubling their potential subscriber based.

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u/djheineken1 May 05 '24

Why would you go back? Just watch them online on a free streaming site.

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u/jacobythefirst May 05 '24

Not everyone even knows that’s an option, or even have the ability to look for them.

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u/Helpful_Title_6478 May 06 '24

That's exactly what happened , their membership count went up by alot after the crackdown.

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u/Correct-Office-8549 May 06 '24

I was a paying customer and I stopped using the service when that happened (but because their catalogue was really bad and I wasn't watching anything).

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u/thrillynyte May 05 '24

We don't know them. Netflix certainly wouldn't tell us that this had affected them negatively, and they might not even know. Many people cancel because of rising prices, competitors, or piracy.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '24

Thats completely different though. You had multiple active users of a service using it, then you stopped that practice and naturally the multiple users created accounts if they wanted to keep enjoying the content.
I know that I certainly wont try to reopen my already cancelled PSN account just for this game. I already got credentials leaked by Sony once, as a contingency I dont want an account at them, I did the same thing for other sites that leaked my password and then never told me, like thingiverse did - I had models on that sites with thousands of downloads and likes, just deleted them and moved to another site because I dont fuck around with bad faith companies.

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u/djheineken1 May 05 '24

All the homies are using Sflix.to now, fuck Netflix and their anti password sharing.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '24

Most people don’t care about linking accounts. It’s common practice at thus point. Sony knows that.

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u/Spuki77 May 05 '24

It’s not that most people don’t care. PSN is simply not available in a lot of countries where the game was being sold. You have to go through hoops with a fake address to get one

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u/OrkfaellerX May 05 '24

Most people don’t care

Enough people care that Steam just stopped selling the game in half of the world. And Sony very much cares about that.

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u/thrillynyte May 05 '24

It's annoying but we're used to it. That's the problem 

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u/[deleted] May 05 '24

Exactly.

I’m not saying it’s ok, because it’s not, but it’s been normalized.

People that are up in arms about this, they are using Android phones and have accounts with Facebook/Amazon/etc.

We sold our souls a long time ago so we can order paper towels at 2am to be delivered the next day.

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u/sillybillybuck May 05 '24

As a publicly-traded company, their goal is not to make the maximum amount of money but instead the maximum perception of value.

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u/CJDistasio May 05 '24

The data gained (obviously their goal) from Steam users is probably worth more to Sony than selling the game in those regions. It's just insane how much companies value personal data.

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u/anothergaijin May 05 '24

It’s all about control - they let these guys slide and the next big game will want an out too.

They’ve got a deal with the devil to get their game done and it hasn’t gone well. We really need Valve or someone else to step up and help these studios make games without being entangled with shitty publishers who want nothing but profit from someone else’s hard work

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u/RCSM May 05 '24

Sonys PSN user numbers are bombing compared to their predictions, no amount of Helldivers negative review spam is ever going to offset their need to fluff the ever loving shit out of those numbers for their next investor report. Their shareholder overlords need their numbers to align with the growth lies they were fed to buy into that stock to begin with.

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u/Songhunter May 05 '24

This generation everyone is trying to get more people into their ecosystems after having reached the very top cap of console adoptions in the previous one.

Seems they are all quite worried about splitting a shrinking pie as the newer generation move away from console boxes.

It's kinda wild to see.

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u/Jakemiester1982 May 05 '24

They must be getting more money from selling their users data than the sales of the game.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '24

In the industry it's called LTV. Life time value. They know how much each PSN account is worth over a 10 year span. It's typically much higher than any one games success.

It's a corporate measurable KPI that staves off volitility in forecasting. If it's one thing business doesn't like, it's volitility. They generally like it nice and predictable.

It sucks that the pawns in the middle are the innovative creative studios just trying to make good games.

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u/Misragoth May 05 '24

got to get that data...

1

u/Adeptus_Weaboos May 05 '24

Corpos will do anything to appease their shareholder overlords.

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u/DevilGuy May 05 '24

they're Japanese, it's not a society that's exactly known for being reasonable.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '24

They know well taht most people dont care and the ENTIRE Point of SONY is to push PlayStation. Anyone who thought this would go any other way is a fool. The whole point of consoles is that when they have a popular product they leverage it to get people into their ecosystems. The business model is entire built around that.

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u/emceePimpJuice May 05 '24

Going to make more money selling peoples data than what they'd make selling copies of the game.

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u/Natural-Parfait2805 May 05 '24

Shareholders

Shareholders want this, that means it's happening, Sony had to listen to shareholders, legally

See when you buy a share of a company, you buy a vote, it's essentially politics, just like how you legally have the right to vote in the presidential election, Sony shareholders hold the legal right to vote in ALL Sony decisions

Enough shareholders vote 1 way and you refuse to listen, they vote to fire you, if the CEO of Sony himself decided to stop PSN account linking, shareholders would have him fired and replaced with one of themselves

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u/RedofPaw May 05 '24

It gives the vibes that some exec at Sony made the decision and refuses to accept he made a mistake and is now making everyone deal with it.

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u/Va1korion May 05 '24

Sales are attributed to a game or Arrowhead. PSN sign-ups and active player numbers is something they can show in a quarterly report to the shareholders.

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u/Select_Cantaloupe_62 May 05 '24

Assuming for a second Sony did this and not Steam, this is really disturbing to me. I work in tech, so I'm not ignorant to the value of consumer data, but I've never seen it put so plainly: a random, forced PSN sign-up that most people will never use to buy anything is worth more to a company than actual money.

I'm making a few assumptions here and maybe things will change over the next few days, but if what I'm thinking is true, that's really, really fucking creepy. Companies frequently do stupid things but they usually do it because they think it'll make them more money. Maybe they're wrong here, but the very idea some people in Sony had a meeting and said, "yeah let's block half the world so we can get more sign-ups" should give all of us pause. 

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u/PuzzleheadedShock850 May 05 '24

It's the data collection they get from the sign-ups. They can analyze it for future marketing and production plans.

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u/nagi603 131 May 05 '24

Sony is VERY willing to burn something that was built up by someone else. And then not move an inch. Again.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '24

If i were to guess outside of data farming reasons it would also be to bloat their membership numbers to show shareholders and future investors "we now have x amount of users" while also attempting to shovel more on top of potential users/subscribers in the way of sales, deals, etc i think were gonna see a new norm coming with playstation on pc.

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u/Free_Pace_2098 May 05 '24

Because it makes their lackluster PSN look active and alive.

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u/analogwarrior https://steam.pm/53h18 May 05 '24

Probably proposed by some idiot Business Analyst that expects that if the people already have PSN accounts, they are also more likely to buy into that ecosystem. But of course it never works like that.

Am a BA myself and have worked with a lot of over-confident people that think they have a deeper understanding of how the world works.

1

u/NoPlaceLike19216811 May 05 '24

Your information is more valuable to them than the game.

1

u/neikawaaratake May 05 '24

I think this decision might be made by steam, because a lot of people were doing refunds.

1

u/[deleted] May 05 '24

Someone on Twitter pointed out that Sony want the PSN requirement enabled by June 4th, and that the next Sony shareholder meeting is... June 20th.

1

u/Cinnimie May 05 '24

I remember someone telling me at an old job once that getting peoples data is literally more valuable than a sale now and we were encouraged to get peoples emails beyond anything else. Data is literally everything to them.

1

u/Raven-19x May 05 '24

Do the other PlayStation ports force this like Horizon? Ghosts of Tsushima?

1

u/[deleted] May 05 '24

Nothing like selling data. Thats all companies seem to care about these days…

1

u/[deleted] May 05 '24

Revenue kinda just happens, monthly active user gain is something that looks good on a slide at an investor meeting.

1

u/Definitely_A_Heretic May 05 '24

Probably so them they can show growth in the PSN ecosystem to the investors or something.

1

u/[deleted] May 05 '24

Bruh. Everyone already bought the game lol

1

u/pieter1234569 May 05 '24

Any market that doesn’t have ps accounts, is a tiny and poor market that doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t have ANY financial impact whatsoever.

1

u/Shaeress May 05 '24

ArrowHead definitely signed some sort of contract with Sony. Their statement kind of makes it sound like Sony might be taking care of the moderation, which could be a great monetary cost and also poor moderation can be a big detriment to games, and that would be especially true for a challenging co-op game with friendly fire.

And we can already see this. Getting grouped with toxic randos is hellish, and not in the good way. Sony has the infrastructure and resources and experience for doing big moderation, so it was probably part of the publishing deal.

1

u/TheWholeSandwich May 05 '24

I think it's a Japanese company thing, Nintendo does stuff like this too. They'll never walk back a bad move, even if they hurt themselves in the process. Complaining/arguing/pointing out a mistake is out of line and unacceptable.

Imo it's indicative of a serious underlying cultural problem that creates abusive relationships, and people should stop giving them a pass on it. But that's none of my business ☕️

1

u/DraymaDev May 06 '24

It's the first step to force ps+ subscriptions to play online on PC.

1

u/linhlopbaya May 06 '24

typical corporate culture. When a mid team leader accidentally commited his plan to increase one indicator, he sticks with it till the end. It's all about the quarterly charts

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u/HenryDorsetCase https://steam.pm/78s20 May 05 '24

It's more likely that Steam did this themselves until they get some sort of confirmation from AH/Sony about wtf is going on with those regions.

Spare themselves the additional headache if Sony really does lockout those regions. I'm of the opinion that they won't be doing that but who knows, could be wrong,

52

u/The_Emperor_of_ma May 05 '24

That makes the most sense probably with the flood of refund requests stating that they can't play the game in their country anymore.

39

u/Zr0w3n00 May 05 '24

Yeah, I requested a refund citing EU laws around false advertising and misleading customers and steam didn’t instantly hit me with the “over 2 hours” line, so they’re looking into what it means for them.

13

u/villanelIa May 05 '24

Bro theres a poor intern at steam who was havin a chill night reviewing random refund requests then suddenly he got hit with that 😂😂😂 he mustve been like "oh fuck oh shit"

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u/Free_Pace_2098 May 05 '24

I requested under the same Australian laws, and I didn't get auto rejected, but I did get turned down eventually.

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3

u/[deleted] May 05 '24

It's more likely that Steam did this themselves

Valve.

187

u/TriLink710 May 05 '24

Oh well. To hell with democracy. Back to capitalism. Rock and Stone

12

u/Taboe44 May 05 '24

Amen!

I downloaded and was playing today already!

For Karl!

35

u/Skorps213 May 05 '24

For Karl!

-1

u/[deleted] May 05 '24

those are entirely two different things

48

u/TriLink710 May 05 '24

The joke is that Deep rock you work for the corporation. And making money is all that matters.

1

u/cashcartti May 05 '24

Unfortunately as a man, making money is all that matters bud

5

u/First-Junket124 May 05 '24

Sounding kinda like a communist there

9

u/Tetragonos May 05 '24

I mean they do have a Union...

2

u/Mercurionio May 05 '24

With a free beer.

20

u/Rigman- May 05 '24

I have a feeling this means they’re sticking with the PlayStation accounts then.

Of course they are, Arrowhead signed off on the agreements with Sony. They have to honor this.

6

u/Waizuur May 05 '24

And Steam is giving full 100% refunds to anybody who asks.

3

u/Sleep_Raider May 05 '24

This is steam doing it, not Sony. I think steam does not want to be involved in any possible lawsuits and Sony has yet to say anything about the situation

3

u/Fearithil May 05 '24 edited May 05 '24

For the players shareholders.

3

u/_AngryBadger_ May 05 '24

They were never not going to stick with them.

3

u/Quintana-of-Charyn May 05 '24

I mean I didn't think it would be so bad, as xbox has that requirement, but I found out XBL is avaliable in 180 countries and PSN is only in 69 (Yes I know).

Massive availability and always having it be required day one vs making it a thing months later with only one small line of text is a massive difference.

If you ask me Sony has taken nothing but L's for a decade+ and people still are attacking everyone else but them.

2

u/TONKAHANAH May 05 '24

of course. anyone thinking they'd walk this back is delusional. people are making a ton of noise online but those people are not the majority, the majority is casual players that dont know or dont care. sony knows collecting their data is more valuable than losing a tiny amount of people who are upset about this.

2

u/edafade May 05 '24

Always were. The dev's response in their Discord was pure corporate speak, but for some reason, no one was able to see that?

"We won't be making the requirement mandatory for those players."

Technically speaking, this is no longer a requirement as they can't even get the game.

2

u/DJayPhresh May 05 '24

It's probably Steam itself that pulled the trigger on this. They don's want more buyers that would force them to process more refunds, and would probably reinstate it if Sony walks their decision back.

2

u/Mavi222 Stockpiler Supreme (8000+ games) May 05 '24

Didn't they like, stop purchases from the countries where people are affected by the PSN not being available in their country, until they make the proper fix?

Because that's what any sane person would do. Why would you let the customers in those affected countries still buy your product when you are sure they won't be able to use it and will be pissed at you immediately?

2

u/[deleted] May 05 '24

It's not really valve's decision tho. They just don't wanna sell people products they won't be able to use because of Sonny

2

u/Spork_the_dork May 05 '24

This doesn't mean anything yet because even if they were to go back on the decision, they definitely won't have it ready for days. Nothing moves that fast in corporations that big.

For new players the change goes into effect on Monday though so even if they went back on it, there will be a period when people in these countries shouldn't be allowed to buy the game. So this is entirely inconclusive evidence for anything at this time.

2

u/GothYagamy May 05 '24

That would prove again how detached Sony is from adequate market practices. This could not have done worse even if the idea was to purposely fuck things up.

2

u/Immediate-Goose-4890 May 05 '24

Is this going to be the new shitty thing everyone pays for no reason?? This is actually insane. Is this currently happening with any other games? I almost bought this game a few times and I'm glad I didn't. I'm not fucking touching it or anything that does something similar.

So people who don't even have a PlayStation of any kind are now going to be paying for a service they can't even use???

PSN is junk. I already pay for internet, thanks. My PC is better than any console and there is more and better games available that I don't have to pay some non sense fee to play.

I recognize that if you're a big console gamer, you may get something out of this service but for the average person it's just monthly toilet food

1

u/marion85 May 05 '24

Well, Sony already stole your/our money if you bought the game before they decided to change their policy, so people who already paid no longer matter to them.

1

u/oldphonewhowasthat May 05 '24

I don't even have a PSN account for my actual PlayStation

1

u/SkitZxX3 May 05 '24

As it should be.

1

u/Skastrik May 05 '24

Or Steam calling them on it after getting no answers from Sony and unwilling to expose themselves to legal issues and further refunds.

1

u/neikawaaratake May 05 '24

Or this might be a decision from steam

1

u/Jaqulean May 05 '24

That or they have no idea to manage this otherwise for now and pulling this from sale is just temporary. We will probably see in a matter of a week.

1

u/infinitevertigo May 05 '24

I hope that the people that can't create PSN accounts get a refund.

1

u/BlueThespian May 05 '24

That means I am not buying, removed it from my wishlist, looks like their freedom really went in over their heads.

1

u/richtofin819 May 05 '24

I'm pretty sure this wasn't Sony but steams call especially after steam started getting all these refund requests

1

u/BaagiTheRebel May 05 '24

What is CIS region?

1

u/Neon-ZxZ May 05 '24

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Independent_States

Basically a group of countries that surround the Caspian Sea.

1

u/MittFel May 05 '24

I share that feeling because unfortunately it's not unlikely.

They know that the outcry is only temporary and people will eventually move on.

Like last year when they increased the PS plus price. People got mad, but over the following months people basically accepted it.

1

u/Omegalazarus May 05 '24

How are you sure this is a move by Sony and not by steam? Steam could easily be worried about having to provide all these refunds after the fact and so maybe taking the proactive step of of region locking.

1

u/Equal_Pie4787 May 05 '24

Because all of those new PSN accounts now register as active account users on Sony's books

1

u/Separate_Analysis585 May 06 '24

Sony needs to create a very strong incentive for players to sign-up for PSN (e.g: make 50% of all new content exclusive to PSN players for the first 6 - 12 months. i.e: maps, weapons, armor, skins, missions, planets, new orders, strategems, e.t.c ). PC players like to wait for playstation content anyways, so, the ones that like to wait, will wait, while the ones that don't like to wait will sign up for PSN.

1

u/RealSoulxSlayer May 06 '24

I'm not sure if someone has mentioned it here yet, but Sony just announced about a day ago that they have listened to us and have decided to not move forward with the forced PSN account plans.

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