Helldivers 2 received over 14,000 negative reviews today due to an update that will require PSN accounts next week.

nanoUFO@sh.itjust.worksmod to Games@sh.itjust.works – 579 points –
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I feel sorry for the Arrowhead devs.

After seeing a community manager on Discord mistreating on people who voice their concerns with this change, I certainly do not feel sorry for the Arrowhead devs.

my man genuinely doesn't understand how steam usernames work

also the implication that steam reviews don't matter? then why are you mad about them?

I believe he was saying. Don’t complain here on discord. Go complain in a review on steam we have no power here.

So how does Steam tell their own users’ usernames apart if they’re mostly duplicates? Something smells like bullshit.

I assume they're talking about player names, not usernames - steam usernames are unique, but steam player names can be whatever you want and are often duplicates.

Except for the fact that there are ways to differentiate accounts uniquely, like SteamID. Games have access to it, obviously. Hell, even external websites do, like trading bots. You log in through steam and they know who they need to trade with.

Why can't they make a unique username when you create a character the first time that is just your "account name"? That would give you the samw powers as a psn username when it comes to banning. Edit:spelling

They literally don't need to do that. Every platform has some sort of unique user ID, usually numeric.

What's stopping you from deleting the game, redownloading it, and setting a new account name? Etc

I don't even own the game. Im just saying, if their argument is unique identifiers, there are more ways than a third party solution. It's not like they don't have options. They chose this over any other solution. If they did a unique identifier ingame, no one would complain. So the reason they chose this is something else then being the only solution.

But a unique identifier in game doesn't actually enforce bans, because what's stopping someone from creating a new one? VS if you create a PSN account, you need some sort of verification (e.g. email address).

They could've done something similar with a non PSN login, though people would've probably still complained. And for them, it's not 3rd party because it's published by Sony IIRC, so it's actually an in house system.

I also don't own the game, but I just wanted to point out the reason in their argument isn't entirely invalid.

What's stopping someone from creating a new one. The devs? "Please select a username for your account" when creating your first character. After that you cannot change it, and is linked to all your characters. If you get reported, the report would include the account name = unique "John1836q83" getting banned.

This enforces band the same way as PSN linked email would do, but is all ingame and accessible to 100% of players that own the game.

If it is a simple popup that has 0 implications and is only visible when reporting, no one would care, and definitely not enough to boycott the entire game.

They obviously want to force psn account for other reasons.

I really like the community manager's reply in the first one, pretty funny

I love dude. He's made a fan. He didn't make the decision and he can't fix it for you. So he's really just saying to leave him tf alone about it lol. Nut up or shutup.

Bro, Bungie is owned by PlayStation and even they have made cross-platform, Bungie-specific accounts the norm. I don't see why Arrowhead couldn't go with Arrowhead accounts, unless it's a cost issue. Otherwise there really isn't an excuse

Tell me you don’t understand anything about software without telling me…

Bungie can do that because they have a shit ton of resources. Arrowhead is 100 people total.

Future prospect then, if Arrowhead get to that point.

My point: it is possible to do independent, dev-based account tracking. Sony could have invested in Arrowhead to do that, but instead are clamping down and introducing exclusivity which will eventually hurt Helldivers 2's bottom line - something we might see starting with these community choices.