If there's one thing that Sony's transition from a quality electronics company to a copyright-heavy media-driven pro-DMCA-lobbying company back in then 00s has taught me it's to "Never, ever trust Sony".
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2025
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Having dealt with Sony for years as a engineer their non consumer hardware is a true pain. Trying to interface with some of their ccd image sensors was some of the most PITA integration i've ever dealt with.
To be fair Sony may have produced quality electronics but their tactics have always been anti consumer.
They always insist on proprietary everything and try to get first mover advantage for each new iteration of tech and then lock the market down. The problem is they hold out for so long with their proprietary formats that it makes their products unattractive. Case in point their memory cards.
Requiring a psn account is just another anti consumer control tactic by the company.
Patient gamers be like: look, this is what they need to do to emulate a fraction of our power.
Smart tbh, just "give" them decent skin and most people will not hesitate
I honestly don't know how a company that's supposed to know the industry took this long to figure it out. They've been giving people fortnite skins for a long time, they know the bar is super low for people to get super excited about changes instead of antagonizing them.
The thing is, the trust is gone. I still might not buy their games again unless/until they resume releasing them on GOG.
Hey, what's this skull and crossbones flag doing here? Oh right. That's my pirate flag that I fly high as I sail the seas........for no reason......no reason at all. Yep. Mods, it's just a flag that's being flown for no reason at all. Certainly not one that needs mod intervention......
flying flag
Personally, I don't even like piracy as a form of protest. It means you're spending time on their game when you could be spending time and money on a game that respects your values. Plus, if you like the game, you're still spreading positive word of mouth. I don't need to play Horizon when there's so much else out there.
🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️ me with the new spider man
I already add most of their games to Ignored list on Steam, and I'm not undoing that.
Great, now when will they restore the games for the rest of the world? They've been removed on Steam since forcing PS accounts.
I've lost track, is Helldiver's 2 still PSN optional but still unavailable in non-PSN regions?
As I understand it, there's not currently a PSN restriction on Helldivers 2. Valve themselves blocked it because Sony was making no promises that it would continue to be a legal and playable purchase in outside countries.
I would guess Sony may still have to convince Valve to increase the game's availability. To sell a product that will remain usable, Valve needs a better commitment/promise than "We'we so sowwy consumews, we pwomise we won't do it again." Probably some kind of contract.
Valve does not limit you in where your game is sold, the publisher of the game has to set this and the publisher for Helldivers 2 is PlayStation Publishing LLC.
Valve absolutely limits the sale of people’s games.
Usually, this would come in the case of “Hey, this game doesn’t work, we’re taking it out of sale everywhere.” But with Helldivers 2 being so popular and high profile, that wouldn’t have been a good look for Valve. Instead, they limited the zone of sale to prevent customer support complaints.
Sony was limiting where you could legally sign up for PSN and thus play the game, not where you could buy it off Steam. That was a conflict of their own mismanagement and inexperience selling on PCs. Had they been smarter, they would have restricted regions to begin with and there might have been less outcry, but poor planning caused Valve’s parental slap.
To my understanding that's not valves responsibility (i dont have a source). It wouldnt make sense for valve to be required to make those changes themselves, the publisher would be responsible for making those edits.
I could only imagine all the problems if Valve accidentally restricted/allowed certain regions and got constant sued over it.
that's not valves responsibility (i dont have a source)
Hehehe
To try to explain this better, imagine this:
You're browsing Steam. You find "ULTIMATE Inchworm Arena", a strange but fun-looking online multiplayer arena. You buy it, and download it. The game then says "Welcome to Inchworm Arena! To certify yourself for online play, you must provide One MoistCoin, a cryptocurrency obtainable only in the Republic of Kongo!" None of this was clear from the Steam store page. The developer support response is less than helpful.
Would you continue protesting the developers, or would you blame Valve for presenting this obvious worthless scam game as an offering on Steam? By putting it on their store, Steam asserts some level of responsibility that the game in question is actually playable, and doesn't contain critical bugs; like failing to start up, or having a user license agreement that its lawyers did not think through.
When this happened for Helldivers, it was Valve that restricted their access because Sony didn't even know what they were doing on the PC store, and hadn't thought through that players had no legal avenue to play in some countries. Valve does not want to be put through more cases of user customer support complaining to them, and wants to ensure certain behavior from their game vendors to ensure that doesn't happen.
It shouldn’t be, but here’s the thing. Valve isn’t distributing games out of the goodness of their own heart. They don’t want to have to process refunds for every person who buys it and realizes they aren’t allowed to play it. That’s just a waste of time and money for them. And Sony hasn’t invested in a launcher and store of their own on PC, so they’ve got no choice but to obey whatever conditions Valve puts on the sale of their games, unless they want to pause until they get a storefront up.
This happened with Helldivers, everybody forgave them and immediately rewarded them by continuing to play/buy, and then they turned around and stuck PSN account requirements on a tonne of other games. Looking forward to the same cycle happening again very soon 🫡
An account for PlayStation Network will become optional for these titles on PC.
This is very explicitly not making any promises beyond these 4 titles. :\
I was gonna try HD2 when I upgraded my machine, but swore it off when that shit happened.
Good choice. I haven't really kept up with new releases for a few years as the mainstream of the industry started to feel more and more like a scam, but I wonder if anybody's ever done studies comparing the percentage of people with short term memory issues, and the percentage of people who play video games -- because video game consumers seem to forget getting screwed over and constantly get surprised when they reward bad behaviour lol
I'm surprised they did this. Would have assumed most people don't care and we were getting a PC PSN launcher very soon.
I assume we still will and it will just lean more carrot than stick in terms of offering discounts and bonus items.
And for how long will they be optional this time?
Until they need to inflate numbers before showing to shareholders
Gamers should be wise enough to time their game playing of Sony games so that it doesn't overlap with Sony's quarterly shareholder reports!
/s
That's not exactly surrendering. It's still scummy. But it's less objectionable, at least.
And then they wait for everyone to buy their games before they bring it back. Not saying it will happen. Just that it might.
I'm not saying I will eat this double cheeseburger......but I might.
Pay no attention to my hungry stomach, or my staring gaze at this delicious double cheeseburger with just the perfect balance of meat to cheese ratio. Melting in almost a gooey waterfall down the sides of these patties. With just a hint of ketchup at the top, and topped with lettuce to give it a crunch.
I'm not saying if I will eat this double cheeseburger.......but I might.
Fucking finally.
It's easy, do not buy games from the billionaire companies who do not care about you. They are gonna do whatever is necessary to make money off of you, that's how they became billion dollar companies in the first place.
Cool, I've been wanting to play the new god of war but passed on it because of this bullshit. Time to put it back on my wishlist and ... wait some more for a sale, which is never much of a discount with Sony
Awesome! I will actually consider purchasing them now.
Great job for those of you that took a stance against this! Voting with your wallet works.
#fuckanticonsumerpractices
No such thing as free stuff.
Nice. Just in time for me to consider buying it even more.
Consider
I'm OK with buying now based on the fact they reversed this. They did what I wanted and the reason I waited to buy so I'll hold up my end. They should be happy people are even buying the games. If they ever change this policy they are other options. I'd love to see what the sales numbers are from before and after the requirement. I'm guessing it wasn't just the articles but actual decline in sales.