Helldivers 2

[Maf]

For my part I was just playing. Just that was the old thing from decades ago, the Halo killer, and it’s taken this long and for Halo to fall off this hard for it to happen 

[Sly Reflex]

If you want to see flops look at the current steam players for Payday 2 vs Payday 3.

[Nag]

https://www.eurogamer.net/helldivers-2-steam-players-will-soon-need-to-link-a-psn-account-and-they-arent-happy

 

Steam players will have to log in to a PSN account from May 6th... which is going down about as well as you'd expect.

[one-armed dwarf]

It's annoying to do tbh, but there's a lot of tech illiteracy in one of the images linked there with people thinking that linking steam to PSN will automatically introduce a point of failure WRT account security cause of previous PSN hacks.

 

afaik it's more like PSN gives a 'token', like oauth, which then just sort of handshakes with your steam account and off you go. It's not like you're sending your steam login to Sony or anything like that. It's a way of authenticating with another service without sharing important credentials. 

 

I suppose the other thing is that apparently PSN isn't available in every region, that's a more legitimate reason to be annoyed by this

[Maryokutai]

I'd like to have a PSN login on my Xbox to play FFXVI.

[Maf]

give it time

[one-armed dwarf]

Doing that sort of thing with an offline game is really annoying when it's not needed, like it might be with an online game like Helldivers. I remember not being able to log into epic to play Alan Wake II cause Fortnite crashed everything. That's just shit. I don't even have an issue with Epic being the only place to get AWII, as they put the money up to make that game exist in the first place. But like, let me play it offline as well

 

No need to give companies reasons to put these online gateways if they don't add anything. Again tho very different situation to Helldivers

[Maryokutai]

I was half-jokingly being stealth sarcastic, I personally despise these logins actually, so I wouldn't buy a FFXVI if I had to be online to play it. But on the other hand I think PC players have a tendency to be unreasonably adversary about one or two additional clicks just to launch a game on their one single platform that gets almost everything.

 

It is a bit insidious to put this in post-release though, I'll give 'em that. Even if it's not a big deal per se in the end. But that's online games for you and their endlessly bendy user agreements you accept but never read.

[Nag]

Apparently it was due to be there at launch but "technical issues"

[one-armed dwarf]

Speaking of technical issues, they've now started delisting this game on steam in countries which don't have PSN. Nice one, Sony

 

https://www.resetera.com/threads/helldivers-2-has-been-delisted-on-steam-in-countries-where-psn-isnt-available.862554/

[Nag]

Wow... this is a fucking terrible look from Sony.

[DANGERMAN]

2 hours ago, one-armed dwarf said:

Speaking of technical issues, they've now started delisting this game on steam in countries which don't have PSN. Nice one, Sony

 

https://www.resetera.com/threads/helldivers-2-has-been-delisted-on-steam-in-countries-where-psn-isnt-available.862554/

Thats horrendous. I can see how they get to doing it, but if you're taking things away from your customers then you've fucked up 

[Maf]

PlayStation u-turn

 

 

This is good. The game’s one of the big successes of the year and their greed to grab people almost ruined it. 

[Nag]

Probably the only way they could go in reality...

[one-armed dwarf]

They should just offer incentives to sign up on PSN instead. Like if you have ps plus, here's a discount to the battle pass or whatever

 

Baffling own goal, well they fixed it now I guess

[Maf]

 

 

I’m lost. Why is forcing users to create a PSN account more important than selling the game to them? 

[Nag]

For our own ickle wickle safety...

[one-armed dwarf]

With the GOT stuff I think the account isn't forced actually, there is a multiplayer mode in it called 'Legends' which requires PSN but I think you can play the SP game just fine

 

But I think it's about seeing an uptick in monthly active users, iirc there was a thing a good while back about how even tho PS is selling well, software attachment rates were in decline (based on Sony's own data they released). Dunno if that's still the case but with all these companies closing it makes you wonder. Whether it is or not though, it's a KPI they can point to, look at all this engagement we are getting (on steam).

 

But the actual delisting might be Valve that's doing it, cause Sony aren't enforcing their own TOS (it seems) and Valve don't want to be caught in the middle if they do decide to enforce it. So they just say 'fuck it', and delist the game

 

My theory anyway

 

Read a good post on it here tho which seemed more informed. The reasons for delisting could be tax related

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ghost-of-tsushima-directors-cut-has-been-delisted-on-steam-in-countries-where-psn-isnt-available.867702/post-122822553

[Maf]

Yeah, that would make more sense

 

On the face of it, losing a sale because Sony can’t increase their user numbers didn’t make sense to me. Even if users were down compared to sales, surely you take that revenue

 

So even though the tax issue doesn’t make sense to me, it makes sense it would be something legally tricky to make them do this and not as simple as ‘engagement’ 

[one-armed dwarf]

It just seems like it would be way neater of them to have a 'soft' requirement, like unlockable extras if you link, but don't mandate it. I can see things like this being very annoying points of friction if you want to play on steam deck, in case for one particular game they make the PSN link an always online check. 

 

Like you want to play a game like GOT* on your shiny new Steam Deck OLED on your transatlantic flight, turn it on and it's like 'gotta sign in'

 

(tho planes have internet as well now I guess, though it's often dogshit useless)

 

*albeit it doesn't seem mandatory right now with this game