Helldivers 2 [PS5, PC]

[Shifty Geezer]

Sony is also to blame for having multiple different explanations and for selling the game in locations that don't have access to PSN.

Yes. Blame should be apportioned fairly to everyone getting things wrong. Not just pushed on one agent.

The other issue is how long this has been disabled for. Sony and the devs choose to disable this and make it optional. People bought the game while this was optional and are now past return periods. I don't buy MS games on steam so I don't know what was going on with Halo but did MS disable the need for a microsoft account for months and have contradictory information on it being optional and then choose to reimplement it ?

This is a unique scenario where the requirement was intended but it was disabled for 'technical reasons'.

Because only then would it be the same situation.

It's not the same situation. However, the information up front that some people claimed Sony didn't provide is the same across all games that require an additional registration somewhere. They were told, even if it wasn't implemented when they bought the game. It's akin to drivers ignoring Road Closed signs in the UK because often the road isn't closed at all. But if you then ignore such a sign and drive down a sink-hole, you were warned...

As for refund periods being past, I'm sure Valve will do right one way or another. There is definitely a share of responsibility on the shoulders of buyers who bought the game despite being told it needs a PSN account then finding they can't make a PSN account, not that any will admit to it, but I expect Sony and Valve to sort out something for those who can't create PSN accounts. It'd be very bad PR to take their money and not provide any means to actually register an account. This is a first time Sony has linked to a PSN account and clearly they messed it up and failed to realise their audience is very different on Steam and they don't have the same localised markets. As I say, ideally Valve will update Steam to require linked accounts before games needing other accounts are sold, certainly for some major players. Games like Last Epoch simply need one created on start. Oh, or Sony limits sale of the game to territories that PSN is available in. Although wasn't there an issue with regional pricing across Europe and Steam having to allow access to the same content to all EU states?

 

[iroboto]

This is a unique scenario where the requirement was intended but it was disabled for 'technical reasons'.

From a consumer perspective this feels like a crappy reason. If Sony are taking money for multiplayer, then the network should be sufficient and this shouldn’t be an issue.

It’s also another thing to be way over a month late in this and not communicate that this is still going to happen at a later time when they disabled it. They just dropped it. The only time we’ve ever seen a news story on it is now.

media is either slacking hard, or Sony didn’t have any intention to do this until they realized the number of MAUs metrics they are missing out on as a result of not forcing them into PSN.

Media is pretty good and finding out things, I am surprised they didn’t have this one locked away. Seems trivial if it’s written right there like you say it is. Considering the number of glowing reports this game has seems like a big omission. I assure you if Xbox tried to sneak one in like this, media would be all over it.

 

[eastmen]

Yes. Blame should be apportioned fairly to everyone getting things wrong. Not just pushed on one agent.

Sure, but at the end of the day both companies are choosing to force this requirement back on even though the game works just fine with it off.

This is a unique scenario where the requirement was intended but it was disabled for 'technical reasons'.

So it seems that they shouldn't have launched the game in such a state. Seems to be a dev and sony problem. They should have delayed the game until the problems were fixed

It's not the same situation. However, the information up front that some people claimed Sony didn't provide is the same across all games that require an additional registration somewhere. They were told, even if it wasn't implemented when they bought the game. It's akin to drivers ignoring Road Closed signs in the UK because often the road isn't closed at all. But if you then ignore such a sign and drive down a sink-hole, you were warned...

Except they weren't only told one thing. They had FAQs where they said it was optional.

As for refund periods being past, I'm sure Valve will do right one way or another. There is definitely a share of responsibility on the shoulders of buyers who bought the game despite being told it needs a PSN account then finding they can't make a PSN account, not that any will admit to it, but I expect Sony and Valve to sort out something for those who can't create PSN accounts. It'd be very bad PR to take their money and not provide any means to actually register an account. This is a first time Sony has linked to a PSN account and clearly they messed it up and failed to realise their audience is very different on Steam and they don't have the same localised markets. As I say, ideally Valve will update Steam to require linked accounts before games needing other accounts are sold, certainly for some major players. Games like Last Epoch simply need one created on start. Oh, or Sony limits sale of the game to territories that PSN is available in. Although wasn't there an issue with regional pricing across Europe and Steam having to allow access to the same content to all EU states?

Valve is already denying refunds.

Personally I think Sony should just cut their losses and not require it now and just start with ghost of tusima since that as a single player game would hopefully not need to have the log in disabled from the start.

Sony should limit the sales of the game to territories that PSN is available in. I don't think Steam has to allow access to the same content to all EU states only that pricing has to be the same. But regardless this isn't a steam issue its a PSN availability issue

 

[iroboto]

https://x.com/Pirat_Nation/status/1786830461244719253

Steam is now allowing refunds

 

[arandomguy]

This is probably the most out of proportion response to a mild inconvenience that I have ever seen. People acting like PSN gets hacked every 3 days, lamenting that Sony will sell they're data, that people can't make PSN accounts in unsupported countries... I have a feeling why this has never happened to this degree for any other game, but maybe I'm wrong.

It's likely just reverse justification. They don't like the PSN requirement and then will search for reasons to justify that dislike. Well it's not exactly the PSN requirement per say.

The thing is Steam has a very high mind share among a core demographic on the PC. For a lot of that audience it's more than just the game distribution platform and store, on the extreme end it's almost a effectively a way of life for them.

Anything the antithesis of supporting that is just not acceptable.

 

[Malo]

Is there a particular reason Sony wants PSN accounts for Helldivers? Obviously it's not required for the game to function. Is this just harvesting personal details? Or with it linked are they getting a share of in-game micro transactions?

 

[eastmen]

Is there a particular reason Sony wants PSN accounts for Helldiver's? Obviously it's not required for the game to function. Is this just harvesting personal details? Or with it linked are they getting a share of in-game micro transactions?

the devs claim its for banning people. They claim that they don't get unique player data from steam.

So I really don't get how if true other games are able to ban players on steam ?

 

[eastmen]

Ghosts of tusima wont require it accept for the psn over lay or multiplayer.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GMwPLeHWsAEIkdG?format=jpg&name=medium

 

[iroboto]

Is there a particular reason Sony wants PSN accounts for Helldiver's? Obviously it's not required for the game to function. Is this just harvesting personal details? Or with it linked are they getting a share of in-game micro transactions?

MAUs.

It’s like having leads in sales, each purchaser is a lead. But if they aren’t on PSN you can’t mine them for player data for future games or advertise to them. It was a big misstep.

Basically they made this fantastic game that would open a large population to their ecosystem to purchase more, and then decided to circumvent themselves so that they don’t have to see what is in the PS ecosystem.

MTX would happen through steam and they would collect the revenue through Helldivers. Maybe. ? I guess it depends on the contract that Arrowhead wrote with Sony

 

[arandomguy]

Just being realistic here from the business side if the PC is going to be bigger business for Sony and the PS brand (and also MS and the Xbox brand) they are not (nor should they) just going to accept Steam taking the platform position they are used to. There's too much money on the table and future platform/brand mind share.

 

[iroboto]

Just being realistic here from the business side if the PC is going to be bigger business for Sony and the PS brand (and also MS and the Xbox brand) they are not (nor should they) just going to accept Steam taking the platform position they are used to. There's too much money on the table and future platform/brand mind share.

Yea my thoughts exactly. What sony is doing is important, but they are caught rectifying the mistake post launch which looks bad.

 

[Charlietus]

It's pretty funny to me that there are two possibilities: Sony though people would just use the workaround to create a PSN account or... Sony forgor

 

[techuse]

If you don’t buy any MTX, does linking Steam and PSN actually give PSN access to any stored payment cards you may have on Steam?

 

[Davros]

This is a unique scenario where the requirement was intended but it was disabled for 'technical reasons'.

If it was intended why did they sell the game in territories where the psn network is not supported ?
This means players in these regions will lose access to the game they purchased once this requirement kicks in at the end of this month.
So another case of selling a game without telling people it will only work for 4 months.

 

[see colon]

I'm not really opposed to linking my PSN account to Steam, but I do have a couple of issues with the way this was handled. Regardless of that, the thing that bothers me most about this is that I was enjoying Helldivers 2. I had a solid group of 5 or 6 friends who played the game frequently, so every night I had full or near full groups of 4. But the last update changed so many weapons for the worse, so a few of the guys fell off then. And that patch also increased spawns for every person playing in your party under 4, so 4 player teams have lower enemy counts, so beyond the weapon nerfs, the game got harder because my core group was slightly smaller, with regular 3 player teams. But no problem, I turned down the difficulty a little and kept playing. And then this happens. One of my friends could be best described as an "old guy PC gamer". Never owned a console except the Atari I think, so he's never owned a Playstation. He told me he just wasn't going to make an account, because he doesn't feel like he should have to. Another guy I play with works in IT, and is careful enough because of his profession that he only runs HD2 on an old laptop that is not his main PC. He said he didn't trust nProtect enough to run on his main PC, and he's been playing the game on the lowest settings and having a good time with us, but no, he isn't linking his Steam account to PSN, because he's already weary of both Sony's track record. Honestly I think for him it's more of a straw that broke the camel's back type thing. So my group of 3 is down to me, and I can either play alone, and face the largest amount of enemy patrols, or join randoms and deal with the pitfalls of that.

They've ruined this game for me, both through the direct action of the reinstatement of the requirement, and the secondary action of how they handled the community, and the recent balance patch. And after that, they've now backtracked the requirement for countries that PSN isn't available in. I don't want to be that guy, but if this is really to protect us from hackers and whatnot because they can't ban people who just play on Steam, wouldn't those who are trying to hack just VPN themselves to one of those countries and be protected from banning? I wasn't really upset until that last bit. It's either all of us, or none of us.

 

[Davros]

they've now backtracked the requirement for countries that PSN isn't available in.

Here's the quote from the devs

“If a better solution isn’t provided for players who are in regions without PSN coverage, I’m assured that we won’t be making the requirement mandatory for those players.

Small problem it's not the devs that are making the requirement mandatory, it's the publisher...

 

[see colon]

Small problem it's not the devs that are making the requirement mandatory, it's the publisher...

But it's the devs saying they are making it not mandatory for those regions. And that's the problem. They either have the power to make it mandatory or not.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

From a consumer perspective this feels like a crappy reason. If Sony are taking money for multiplayer, then the network should be sufficient and this shouldn’t be an issue.

I agree.

It’s also another thing to be way over a month late in this and not communicate that this is still going to happen at a later time when they disabled it. They just dropped it. The only time we’ve ever seen a news story on it is now.

No, this is the warning. It's not being enforced universally until later. No-one fired up Helldivers 2 to be told they can't play it now without an account. This is the warning to get ready for when that happens (although fairly short notice).

media is either slacking hard, or Sony didn’t have any intention to do this until they realized the number of MAUs metrics they are missing out on as a result of not forcing them into PSN.

They literally stated it on the game page. If they had no intention of doing this, why did they say a PSN was needed on the game page??

Media is pretty good and finding out things

Not these days. You need to check the comment sections. Have you seen my screenshots? Now the only issue here is if Sony added that warning after the fact, but user reports are that it was there from day one. So either they're lying or a lot of people missed it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Shifty Geezer]

the devs claim its for banning people. They claim that they don't get unique player data from steam.

So I really don't get how if true other games are able to ban players on steam ?

They have their own accounts!





How many of these do I need to post?! Sony aren't doing anything new to Steam that other publishers haven't been doing for years. The only difference here is the requirement wasn't in place from day one, and people started Helldivers 2 without being asked to log in to their PSN account. We're told that was for technical reasons, and the game blew up in popularity so that's not completely unrealistic considering how hokey we know PSN can be.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

If it was intended why did they sell the game in territories where the psn network is not supported ?

If it wasn't intended, why did they label the game on the Steam page "requires a PSN account"??
"Okay, we don't need PSN, but let's put this on there just in case the game does really well and we decide to skim player data."

But let's ignore that, as everyone is doing. Why did they sell the game in territories where the PSN network is not supported? It's because Sony are dumb. We all know this. They didn't think about Steam users being different to PSN users and having different territories. Just didn't occur to them that the people buying their game weren't just in NA and EU but also other places that Steam reaches where PSN doesn't. Wouldn't be the first company to just forget the rest of the world exists. doesn't need a complex data-harvesting conspiracy theory to explain it very comfortably within the bounds of reason.

This means players in these regions will lose access to the game they purchased once this requirement kicks in at the end of this month.

Yes, and something needs to be done about that. I said I thought Valve would step up and it seems they have done. Whether they've twisted Sony's arm or are footing the bill themselves, I don't know, but that's one really good thing about Steam and a reason to switch from consoles to PC. They're near monopoly of the PC games market actually works in consumers favour when the monopoly is operates in an benevolent fashion.

So another case of selling a game without telling people it will only work for 4 months.

No, this is a completely different situation. This is the first time of telling people they need a PSN requirement at launch and then not requiring that until much later. This is a brand new cock-up rather than a repeat of bad consumer practices.