Sony bailed them out when their servers went down in February by sending engineers to assist. It makes sense that Sony wants a favor in return.
Comment on "PSN isn't supported in my country. What do I do?" Arrowhead CEO: "I don't know"
Maddier1993@programming.dev 1 month agoThe devs that made Helldivers MUST have been aware of Sony’s mandatory PSN policy. This is just a sob story and throwing Sony under the bus at this point.
CluckN@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Jajcus@kbin.social 1 month ago
Sounds like a mobster kind of favor. They took advantage of studio weakness.
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
In what world is that a mobster deal? The game initially released saying that PSN accounts were required, this is in every store front description. The devs clarified that was not enforced due to technical issues at release time.
Sony funded the game in the first place too. They didn’t take advantage of a moment of weakness. This is all contract stuff agreed upon long before release.
It absolutely sucks ass, but this is an incredibly basic business deal. Sony stepped in to provide server support because it’s Sony’s game, and Sony makes money off it. Now that the game is more stable, they likely went back to Arrowhead and said “Hey, it’s time you sorted out the contracted requirement for PSN accounts. You agreed to this.” and here we are.
Maybe Sony told Arrowhead that PSN accounts could be made by everyone. Maybe Arrowhead thought they could push back on the requirement after the game came out without them required. We likely will never know what went on behind closed doors.
But this isn’t shady, just absolutely monumentally fucking shitty.
Unfortunately, as long as refunds are handled reasonably well like they were with Cyberpunk 2077’s PS4 release, gamers won’t really have a leg to stand on. It’ll just be complaining that they can’t play something they wanted to play, after getting a number of hours in it for effectively free.
brbposting@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Sony announcing the PSN requirement without detailing what unsupported country purchasers should do is at least nearly shady. Dumbasses
eskimofry@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Or… think like an adult… they have support contracts in place.
Kedly@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Why do you care that a company as scummy as Sony is getting thrown under the bus. Outside of this fiasco Helldivers was a pretty great game. If throwing Sony under the bus gets this decision reversed literally EVERYONE wins, and honestly, as the Publisher, thats probably one of the things that comes with the title, taking the heat for shitty ass decisions that could otherwise tank a game
eskimofry@lemm.ee 1 month ago
My argument here is that Arrowhead is not some great dev that is helpless.
David_Eight@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I didn’t think that’s necessarily true. They were contracted to make the game by Sony and when they started probably had no idea it would even be sold on PC.
fluckx@lemmy.world 1 month ago
This would have been less of an issue if it remained enforced from the start. Re-enforcing it after demonstrating it clearly works without makes it look scummy and greedy. People could also easily refund if they didn’t agree. Now its too late.
For a lot of people it now looks as: now that the game is a success we want to collect everybody their data as well so we can make even more money.
Tbh, other games just require a 3rd party account without linking them explicitly. This requires an actual link which ( likely ) gives them access to a lot of your steam information which you’d rather NOT give to a corp that doesn’t seem capable at guarding people their data.
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
People can still get a refund. It just has to be manually reviewed and deemed justified instead of just being okayed by the automated system.
fluckx@lemmy.world 1 month ago
That is true, but it I’d an additional hurdle. Sony is playing it smart.
They made an announcement and had a bunch of Outrage now. If they had just enforced it people would have refunded on mass probably. Now people can still actually play.
I’m guessing steam might be less eager to refund when the actual deadline hits. I also feel like a lot of people will just cave and link/create the account.
That’s definitely what Sony is expecting. And it’s also what I’m hearing from friends. That they dont want to, but that it’s a fun game ans they’d rather keep playing with friends.
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
The thing is that it was enforced right at the beginning. There was a period where you couldn’t play without a PSN account, before they made it optional while Sony rolled out more infrastructure to handle the player numbers.
It’s an issue now because it wasn’t stated clearly enough and loudly enough that not having a PSN account was only temporary, and I think Arrowhead screwed up because they didn’t know that PSN accounts aren’t available everywhere and so were selling the game in places that couldn’t play it unknowingly.
Steam is usually pretty good about refunds and has apparently already pulled the game from the store in places where you can’t make a PSN account, so I imagine they’re planning to refund the game. This looks like the kind of thing that could be class-action lawsuit worthy.
FooBarrington@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’ve had three refund requests rejected so far (~10h playtime).
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
You have to put in an actual support ticket
eskimofry@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Day 1 policy was that PSN linking was mandatory. Arrowhead execs knew this. Players who bought the game in non-PSN countries shouldn’t have gotten a pop-up banner saying as much instead of the payment screen.
fluckx@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Im not even sure if the game would have taken off at all. Psn servers couldn’t handle the load which is Why it was disabled ( temporarily ) in the first place.
A lot of people, including myself, never even linked the psn because I could skip it.