Helldivers 2 Players Express Frustration On Steam As It Will Soon Require A PSN Account
gameinformer.com
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/14764738
Helldivers 2 Players Express Frustration On Steam As It Will Soon Require A PSN Account
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/14764738
Helldivers 2 Players Express Frustration On Steam As It Will Soon Require A PSN Account
The current top Steam Review;
Ah, that explains why all of my accounts disappearedā¦
Didn't think this was real at first read. But holy fudge it it is.. Game is now being review bombed on steam. Here's an additional article from Gaming on Linux:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/05/helldivers-2-will-soon-actually-require-a-playstation-network-account/
The review chart is hilarious.
Doubt Sony or the developer expected this would happen.
Edit [May/04, 14h UTC]: Updated chart. More than 70k negative reviews already.
thanks for sharing the chart! I doubt they Sony takes a hint from this too, but it certainly shows other developers and publishers something about signing contracts with Sony...
Sony should take the hint. Many of these reviews are from people who canāt even get a PSN account in their country. So Steam is about to be flooded with requests for refunds due to the game not being available to some users. I already asked for a refund because of this.
Itās unlikely steam will be able to tell people to just pound sand, so Valve will likely step in at some point and then Sony will be in trouble with the platform itself.
Yup. I have a feeling Valve will like usual be on the side of their customers.
as long as still they make money from it, and people already paid for the game, no they will not.
So if it were clearly written on the Steam page, I don't really get the complains.
It was optional for several months and the info on the PSN page contradicted that, so there was a lot of room for confusion.
Not surprisingly that PSN page was edited earlier today, but there's a million screenshots floating around already, plus you can check the previous version in the Wayback Machine.
And even if it was clearly written on all places, it's still a "too bad you didn't read the fine print, now you're past the limit time for a refund, so either let Sony track you or lose access to the game" situation which is very shitty. There's also the fact that they sold the game to people in countries where is PSN is not available, which should not have happened if that requirement was going to be enforced in the future.
Not hard to see why people would get pissed and lose trust in the developer. I also think that players have been annoyed for a while with this type of requirement (not specifically in this game), and they are now getting a good outlet with a lot of publicity around to vent about it.
That makes much more sense now. I was also wondering why people didnāt pick up on it earlier given the incredible popularity of this game. So of course people noticed it, but it just didnāt make much sense. I can see why someone would shrug it off a messy bit of text that probably wasnāt supposed to be there and will be removed or edited or something. Well edited it wasā¦ just not as expected I guess.
There's also the problem that they're clearly rushing this without much thought, they don't even have an answer to the obvious question of "what happens to people in regions not supported by PSN".
Who the fuck reads the entire steam page? My friend says buy the game, the reviews say it's great with friends, you go and buy the game not scan the steam page for predatory data hoarding policies.
On top of the fact it was (more or less) turnkey. It worked. For months. Why would you look at the page when it works? If it was like that from the start, it would be different.
By clearly stated, they mean, in small letters further down on the steam page that nobody reads. Just like a cheeky terms of services..
check both EULA links on the steam page. Nothing about this is in either (even now). So it's literally just the banner.
I can personally see it on the steam page, underneath controller support section.
Yes. That would be the banner I'm talking about.
oh right, i misread what you wrote mb
So, at first install, I actually linked my account to a PSN account that I knew was banned due to a charge back on an unwanted purchase. At the time, I figured if I discovered that I can't play because my account is banned from PSN, I'd just refund on Steam. I feel I'll be very justifiably pissed if my account is now banned from playing retroactively, long after the refund window.
This is the point of contention I am curious about. If Sony can be the one to kick you off the game that you bought on Steam and you don't get refunded for it, I will review it negatively. Let me know what happens after the update forcing PSN.
As of today, I am still able to log in. The next point I'm concerned about is the 30th, so we'll be waiting a while, but I'll do my best to update.
I presume you will have heard, Sony/Playstation has announced it will reverse on the PSN linking mandate.
This feature doesnāt affect me personally, but it is still very scummy to add it after launch. Long after refund window is out of the question.
Well, it affects me in that now I know not to buy this game and support such a scummy practice.
Is the game developer involved or is it just Sony doing Sony there are some things that there are some things that don't things?
āthis step will help us continue to build a community that you are all proud to be a part ofā
Someone is selling ad data from this, not entirely sure if itās Sony or dev or both
The developer is involved. Though it's pretty obvious that the push for this is from Sony, they are the publisher for the game.
The developer is involved to the extent that they have to do what Sony says. The CEO of Arrowhead even tweeted that people should email Sony, referring to a Playstations own website where it stated that PSN is optional. Sony then quickly changed their web page to say it's sometimes required.
From my point of view this is all Sony.
A change like this may warrant special exceptions to the refund rules. Steam has made exceptions for similar changes to games made after launch in the past.
It wasn't added after launch. You could bypass it. Now they are changing that.
That's true. Personally though, it not being optional for any amount of time just shows that there's no good argument to have it be mandatory in the first place.
By feature I just mean it being mandatory now
Well thatās certainly one way to kill a game. Heck, I HAVE a PS5, and I still would be annoyed as fuck by that.
Sure, you can offer to link an account for things like progress tracking. But it certainly shouldnāt be forced on anyone.
Why would people not trust putting any info and linking their Steam account to a company with a history of at least 8 hacks + 5 massive data breaches? I wonder. š¤
Also this one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal
Please, anyone who reads this, stop posting links to the mobile version of Wikipedia. It doesnāt switch automatically on PC, and I see it happen all the time. Just take the half a second to remove the ā.mā from the beginning of the link, save everyone else from the pain of having to be surprised by it and taking the time to do it themselves.
Is deleting 2 characters from the URL really causing you pain?
You even have a keyboard and mouse! It's like less than 2 seconds to correct
> pain
Kys
Well my PSN account is banned so am I just fucked? Lol what a joke
Well if you link it, you will "gain the right to appeal a ban".
(This is not a joke it's in the actual announcement from sony)
If that's the only problem, can't you make a new one?
Yeah I'm not making a 49th account to play a game I bought with my steam account. That's just another attack vector for me to deal with. Especially when I've been playing on my steam account just fine. Not to mention, my PSN credentials have already been hacked from PlayStation once before after the account was banned. Someone was trying to login to it. So why the fuck would I trust them a second time? Its just more data to leak that's mine.
FWIW, no need for it to be an attack vector if you just use one of those throwaway email services to sign up for a PSN account you'll never use anywhere else.
And sony could mandate that the email be a real email, and if you get caught the account gets banned. Congrats, now you invented a game of whack a mole!
Could just make a throwaway account with Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, what have you, then. No real/personally identifiable information attached.
Not saying I agree at all with what Sony is doing, but anyone who is concerned about their email/personal information getting leaked by something they didn't want to sign up for, there are options to protect yourself.
@Stovetop @bitfucker why should people accept it though? They could play just fine without, why should they accept having to create an additional account and having to log into it every time they play the game? Of theres no shitstorm, this wont stop and might be done by other studios/publishers too
They shouldn't.
I am just saying, if the concern is about putting your email on another service, then don't put your email. You can use a throwaway one if you just want to get through it and play, or if it's a matter of principle and you don't want to, that's cool too.
Just offering my 2 cents on keeping personal information safe on the web. It's often unsafe to put all your eggs in one basket and email is no exception, so having some "burner accounts" on hand can help.
Even worse! You can't even have a PSN account everywhere you can have a Steam account with this game
I live in one of the grey countries. You can create an account, but Sony offers different stores in different countries, so you have to pick another country. They even sells consoles in many of the grey countries. The biggest issue is that you probably won't be able to buy anything without extra hustle because your card is not issued in the country of your PSN account. Also, this is technically against their ToS. But you can create an account to play Helldivers 2.
With that said, I can't speak for all countries. Maybe somewhere it's really impossible to create an account without VPN.
I live in a gray country as well. It's like this for a lot of products. And a lot of websites block you too. Everything here is more complicated
The baltics and the balkans never get a break.
As if having been oppressed by orcs is not enough.
Shit, they were both oppressed forever. The byzantines for the Balkans and the northern crusade and the teutonic order against the Balts come to mind.
Now the Japanese want to being their reign of terror with restrictive game accounts!
thanks for sharing!
I would love to see Valve allow refunds. This was not an agreed upon stipulation at the time of purchase. If they pull the game from you now so soon after purchase, is it not grounds for a refund? Give Sony the choice to backtrack or lose money.
It's been on the steam page since day one, so I doubt they'd refund. It was agreed upon but not enforced until now.
By reading this comment you agree to pay me $1,000.
Uhh have an upvote instead.
No problem, I have too many shrute bucks anyway. It will arrive in a fortnight.
It also prompted for a login at the start
Man it's such a shame. I was looking forward to trying it, but I'm not going to create a psn acc for it
The game is very repetitive, anyway. I was bored after about 20 hours. By then you've already seen everything there is to see.
Every game is repetitive, it comes down to whether the repetition is entertaining. It wasn't for you but for a lot of people it is. It is trending downward according to Steam stats but it still has around 60-70k concurrent players during the low points and in terms of hours played it's be in the top 10 games.
Personally while the overall mission structure is "repetitive" I think the randomization of mission parameters, how the mission play out and the spectacle make it very fun. I would still be playing if not for the Sony shit. It's a great game to peace out with friends.
Agreed. Fun with other people. Boring as fuck solo.
More stuff is coming / is already out. It's actually a really well done implementation of a live service game which I never thought I'd say about anything. That does mean it has a shelf life though and the live service won't last forever, which is a bummer. I'm curious what they'll do with it once they're finished actively managing the war story. Maybe hand it over to an AI in 2-3 years.
Hmm well I played on and off for about a month and didn't notice anything new.
Do you know if they plan on adding some new game modes? I'm already sick and tired of the whole "shoot bugs, rescue hostages/blow up objective, shoot more bugs then extract" thing. I get that a lot of shooters have a tendency to only have 2-3 game modes max, but those games at least have PvP to keep things interesting.
Not sure. I do know new creatures are planned and coming, and player vehicles are planned. I haven't played in a couple weeks though so I'm not sure what all is out and what's still cooking.
Iām guessing you have an Origin, EA and Microsoft account though? Along with Steam, Epic, Gog and what else?
EDIT: lol at all the downvotes with zero explanations š¤£
At least you use those for other games, what are you using your PSN acc with no PlayStation for?
I don't have any of those, except steam
So what?
Trying to refund it, although pretty low chance since it's well past the window. But that's part of what makes it so bullshit to bring this in long after that window closed. I'd have refunded the game on the spot if it actually required the account creation from the get go. I refunded Red Dead 2 after it turned out to require a Rock Star account. Fortunately that was apparent on start up so I just quit and refunded.
Looks like Nintendo and Sony are competing who can get away with being a bigger asshole. Boundary testing sociopaths. Game becomes popular, dev and publisher foist unpopular requirement to continue playing in order to see what the response is and if it doesnt tank numbers too much, they now have a green light to weasel this into other games. Hell even if it does tank numbers, they already have their money and you probably wont be able to get a refund at this point.
Yeah, but I can get a refund for Days Gone which I haven't played yet AND I can not buy as many of snoy games as they can publish from now on.
People have been remarking that numerous countries are unable to join PSN and this will lock them out of the game. But can someone explain to me how that could be true? Are they literally not on the drop-down menu for selecting your country?
Yes. PSN is only available in about 70 countries (out of 190). E.g. in the entire continent of Africa only one country has access.
Even some members of European Union don't get PSN.
One of the Arrowhead community managers said they're trying to get more information regarding regions, so it kinda seems like they weren't fully prepared for this/got blindsided by Sony a bit. There should be an FAQ/QA with additional info coming soon.
Evidently that is the case.
Welp it was fun playing while it lasted. Sorry arrowhead but fuck that not happening. Time to move on to another game
And there I was yesterday contemplating buying the game. Well, I guess not then.
I was gonna finally get around to buying this last night, and this stopped me.
Patient gaming wins again
Back to Earth defence force ig
I already made an uplay account, a social club account, an origin account, an epic account, I'm tired, I'm not making a CONSOLE account, I don't have a playstation and I won't have one since I'm against everything sony is doing to asian games.
I feel weird using my PSN account because the birth date on it is wrong.... I tried to tell Sony this, but they said they couldn't change it
If you're in the EU, they have to correct your personal information. Threaten to report them to your local privacy authority if they don't.
If they're as incompetent as they sound they'd have to change it manually and assuming you could make them do that it would probably break something in the account. š There's no good way to do this if it was badly put together.
I'm in the Land of Eagles and Hamburgers I'm afraid
So every company you give info to is responsible to catch every one of your lies? That sounds hard.
No, but they have to update your info if you want to change it.
That's probably a good thing. I generally put different information into every service. If you keep track of who you told what, you can use that information later. If you receive spam from somewhere random, but they use the name you gave Sony, you can say "oh so Sony sold my data to you..."
Sony has been part of at least one major data leak. They don't have to tell anyone since all of their data already is on the internet.
Just curious, did anybody with over two hours got a refund?
Itās been like 24 hours. Everyone at Sony is asleep while Arrowhead is being š© on for Sonys decision
Playstation is the most anti-consumer company ever, even worse than Epic, which is insane.
You are forgetting about Nintendo. And that is only mentioning gaming companies... look outside gaming and there is a whole shit-show going on at the moment for that position.
"The good news is we have a console for people without internet access, it's called Xbox 360"
What about Comcast?
Okay...the video game industry is going to crash any day now.
They keep raising prices, lowering quality, abusing their devs and now they're also making everything more restrictive. And There's also several games out there that require you to disable your core isolation to install them.
If it won't run with core isolation enabled, it's malware. That's the rule every windows user needs to start following.
Americans are not going to stop playing video games anytime soon. I think they can easily get away with more
Whatās going on? Is this game published by fucking Sony?
Yes?
āWow sony, such qualityā - Mike stoklasa, c. 2017 or so
What does a PSN account involve? Just an email and password, maybe a handle/nickname?
I assume it needs no credit card or payment.
If all that is true a PSN account is annoying but doesn't seem so bad.
Remember when telemetry/data collection across the internet was often optional and pretty minor?
The more shit we absentmindedly agree to because it's not really a big deal in the short term, the worse it gets in the long term.
If I play a game on Steam, then Playstation, EA, Ubisoft, etc should all fuck off. I already gave those companies my money, it's insulting that that isn't enough anymore.
Edit: great point I just saw someone else mention, the fact that Sony has allowed over 100 million users' data to be exposed due to various breaches by bad actors over the past 15 years. At least one of those times, the data was revealed to be nowhere near as secure as it should have been.
If all that is required is an email address and password I could live with giving Sony a special email address and unique password, I don't see where I have a privacy or security risk there. Annoying, but it's a lot better than another launcher or something. ETA: It asks for birthdate, definitely don't give them your real birthdate but give them something close. I have a standard fake that I use.
Jan 1 1984 of course
They don't care if it's a valid email or not. All they want is a unique identifier.
They might verify the email. But if you're that worried about Sony having your email you can just make a unique one for them. You don't have to give them your primary email.
I want to buy and eat soup without someone dipping their dick in it and telling me it's a part of the experience.
But thatās what makes it artisanal and an extra 3.50
"Well if it is just the Tipp I'm fine with it. It is a bit annoying but better then two sweaty balls"
Pretty silly comparison.
Oh my!
I read that in some regions ( I think UK/Ireland? ) it requires a picture OD your face/ID to verify your age.
Can't verify that though
People nowadays hate having more than one account. They can't even bare having more than one exe that launches other exes installed on the same computer anymore
Needing to run a programm just to launch a different program is stupid. I don't need a middleman, just let me launch the second program directly.
Right, so you hate steam too then?
If you do, I'm more talking about the cognitive dissonance of others that love steam just because it's the lesser evil of the launchers, but vehemently hate the idea of buying a game on another store front.
What other value does the so called other launcher provide? Modding sdk? Community forum? Family sharing? Controller remap?
You can still do all of that stuff without owning the game via steam
Other than modding via workshop
Sure, but I specifically ask other launcher. If we are talking no launcher at all then it is a different discussion entirely. If we are talking about not having a launcher, yeah, that is understandable too. But then again, many games have their own launcher and they do not add any value other than for the sake of having one/promoting the publisher
Yeah specific single game launchers are pretty awful
I would definitely be annoyed but have had to create an account for other games too. Give them an email that isn't your primary email and a unique password, I don't see where there is any risk after that.
Eh, I knew it when I bought it. I didn't know better and signed up. I wasn't tricked and we all started the game that first time and were told about it
I had to sign up for PSN over a month ago, why is there outrage now?
Account creation fatigue. I'm personally not fond of creating a one-off account for every fucking game I play on steam. It's enough already. EA account, ubisoft account, rockstar account, PSN account, xyz account, ugh. Every new account I create is just an additional attack vector for when all of these companies eventually get hacked. I get occasional emails about security breaches or unauthorized attempts for random ass accounts I created years ago, and it's so frustrating. I don't even have a playstation. It's just so annoying. I'm sick of it. I don't believe for a fucking second that Sony is requiring this for "security and safety." Those fucks just want to inflate their user numbers for the shareholders and collect our data to sell to 3rd parties. I am so fucking sick of this shit already. I bought the game on steam. Just let me use my steam account only god dammit.
Wwwwwaaaaaaaa
I don't have Xbox or PlayStation and I still signed up. Just use a stupid throw away password. Ya know how many times people have tried to log into my twitch account and I ignored it because even if they did get the password it means absolute jack shit. If ya do use the acct to buy stuff, use a virtual credit card to make payments so its as easy as shutting down that CCD and opening a new one.
Be more pissed about the rootkit of a anti cheat that they use
Maybe be pissed about both?
They are removing the āSkipā button from the linking page on game launch and forcing anyone who used it to link a PSN account now
There was a skip button?
I mean its not like EA games where ya need to install a 3rd party launcher
Still anyone review bombing over such a stupid thing needs a slap upside the head. Took me all of 2 min to sign up and now I have 90 house played
No one complains about having to sign up for Xbox shit.
Steam is available in 237 countries, while PSN is only available in 69 countries. Some people are going to be locked out from the game they bought. E.g African players are going to be fucked.
Because Xbox and Windows are fully integrated. Most people gaming don't have to have a separate account, just an Xbox username that you create once and it is attached to your Microsoft account. You're right about EA making you download the worst launcher in existence, but this statement about security is bs. Its more about them controlling the psn accounts and not the steam ones.
Sameā my understanding is that thereās now no option to play without making one, which for some countries and territories is not even an option, making the game unplayable for them.
This makes sense, that's kind of a shitty deal for them.
It was apparently skippable before.
It was so skippable I never even knew there was an option to link to a PS Account, which I dont have because my last PlayStation was the PS2
Yeah... I have someone in another lemmy thread telling me that it was on the steam page, it was in the EULA/TOS, and it told you in the game.
Meanwhile, I checked the EULA/TOS today and it says nothing... And for the in game banner I saw "Sony Account" and closed the popup. It did nothing and didn't say anything about that being a temporary choice to skip a login. So that leaves JUST the banner... On steam's page. So no agreement with Sony at all to participate. Nor evidence of Sony themselves notifying anyone of this being a requirement.
Its in the side panel tucked away, you know, the area usually delegated to unimportant credits level info, and not in the sales pitch area. I had a younger friend respond to this news "Shows how many people cant read" Like what? You're gonna defend a corporation being scummy because TECHNICALLY if you hyper scan the info you got a HINT that something might be required?
It doesn't seem like a big change to me, so long as you can just have it linked to your Steam account and nothing else.
I'd mostly be upset if it breaks Linux compatibility or was a single player game (HD2 isn't).
E: Changed only to mostly
And the people that bought it but can't get PSN accounts? Do they get a refund (HAHAHAHAH) or are they just fucked?
It's a huge change even if you can't grasp it.
Enough demanding accounts for everything.
I think those people that will no longer be able to play it, because Sony doesn't let them do the thing that they now require, deserve refunds. I will leave a negative review when the update drops if they don't, despite really enjoying this game, because it's not fair to those who bought it and will be locked out. If they can make it such that you can have a placeholder Sony account that canāt access all PSN features, for the sole purpose to play this and other Sony games on Steam, that anyone in the world can access, that would be an acceptable compromise to me.
I understand EULA and account creation fatigue. It's just that it's not the accounts themselves that are the worrisome part of the change for me is what I'm saying. If it's for specific reasoning (console crossplay), is unobtrusive, and maintains access for existing Steam purchasers then I don't have a real problem. If they use it to limit people's access that's where I have a problem.
If they did that then what is the point in requiring a login at all.. just remove the damned feature that is not required and very few want. We know it is not required as the game has been working fine for months without it. There is zero need for you to need a login for this game. Except that sony wants more user information they can sell to others.
In the compromise model, Sony gets the interaction data they want and pad their account numbers for investors. Players get sustained access to the game. Win-win.
That should be the default for any game you have brought... not a compromise... Forcing everyone to have an account only serve to benefit Sony.
As always, people completely overreacting to the minor inconvenience of creating an account. Crazy
You're completely missing the point.
What am I missing?
I have just seen that certain countries can't make an account which is extremely scummy. But most people are just whining about having to make one
Read the comments here and you'll quickly see why it's a problem. There are multiple reasons.
EA, Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive, Square Enix, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Bethesda, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft Studios, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Sega, Konami, THQ Nordic, 2K Games, Paradox Interactive, Focus Home Interactive, Devolver Digital....... Etc....
And that's only a small portion of the number of publishers... It's a trend that benefits the publishers only as they get to track users on a new level. Honestly boils my blood the amount of corporate greed were seeing in the gaming industry.
Less than 1 day old account. Donāt feed the trolls
While true, I'm always afraid of it not being a troll and a genuine new user... would be a pretty bad experience for a new person to be called a troll, even though them having a controversial opinion.
It's really not whining tho? You've been able to play without one since the beginning even having an option to skip such a step, I don't own a PlayStation and don't intend to I shouldn't have to make an account for it, it's that simple, a game shouldn't be able to lock you out of something you paid for just because they now want to force you to make an account, even more stupid is allowing the game to be sold on countries where you can't make an PSN account knowing it would be mandatory in the future.
I wouldn't let them fondle my testicles.
Why? A good fondling is nice