this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
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Helldivers 2

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Well that's depressing (catata.fish)
submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (2 children)

This is Arrowhead's fault entirely as I see it: they signed an agreement with the publisher, Sony, which they needed to get PSN's support apparatus to deal with tickets, but Arrowhead couldn't get linking setup on launch, didn't enforce the requirement from launch, and couldn't be bothered to edit their Steam listing so it was only for sale in countries with PSN. Steam doesn't pay out money to publishers and devs for 3 months, so the way this will work out is Arrowhead is going to eat the loss on Steam refunds, and any additional costs suffered by Sony will also be taken out of Arrowhead's payout.

Sony is incredibly shitty, but Arrowhead made this agreement when they signed with their publisher for their own benefit, but then decided to cut a major corner at launch. This could just as easily happened with any other publisher, and Arrowhead aren't going to reverse course even if Sony let them out if their contract, because Arrowhead doesn't want to hire a team of hundreds or thousands of support agents across the world: that's why a studio signs up with a publisher in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

From what I've read, Arrowhead doesn't control selling the game, Sony does. So it's on Sony's head for selling the game in regions that don't have PSN access, knowing that account linking would be a requirement even though it was temporarily disabled. The whole situation is a complete clusterfuck.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I think that the whole "temporarily disabled" thing is bullshit in itself. When I first launched, it asked me if I wanted to link a PSN account. No mention that it was temporary at all. I said no.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I've played since day one and I don't even remember it being a requirement. Fortunately, Sony has reversed course. Hopefully things return to normal over the next few days.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Do you have any links you can share so I can learn more about the agreement between Arrowhead and Sony? Everything on Google is either a news article or a reference to "the agreement", but I can't find a primary source for the agreement.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

No, that agreement is probably private, but Arrowhead's head of support has been all over Shitter discussing how they need PSN to handle the growing pile of support tickets. It's the same reason any studio signs with a larger publisher: the dev gets the benefit of the publisher's support apparatus, servers, advertising, etc., and the devs get to work on the game, rather than building their own support organization and infrastructure.

Borderlands is a good example of this: Gearbox makes the game, but if you click a support link, it takes you to 2K Games' help desk, since they publish the game