I’m a PS5 player, so I can’t make an impact, but if you did write a negative review (thank you, you made this happen ❤️) please consider taking the time to change it! This was clearly not AH decision and the game deserves an accurate review, it’s easily one of the best games I’ve ever played and definitely the best game as a service!
Edit: woke up to new comments, this post reminded… Lemmy is just the same as Reddit.
Edit2: Christ I need to turn off Lemmy notifications, I’ve left this community and this was a stark reminder for me… don’t engage with a specific game community, just enjoy the fucking game!
Changed my review to positive. I also added a note that a thumbs down from a second bait-and-switch won’t be coming back up.
HD2 is a very rare example of a AAA live service game done right, Sony really had to come this close to fucking up what will be one of their top sellers.
In related news, HD2 is already Sony’s 7th best selling game. Of all time.
Note: this wasn’t my original source, but still
Yeah fuck no. AH can sue Sony for this (and should). But my review stays there for life as a reminder to Sony (and anyone else who tries to pull this shit).
Just because they backed down =/= they did the right thing. They caved to public (and I’m sure legal) pressure. Nothing more. Fuck Sony and fuck changing a review because WE made a company back down.
No no no no no. No.
Shouldn’t the review reflect what the game actually is though?
That’s why steam has a review system based on dates, bad reviews will go away as time goes on if the game goes the right direction, the negative reviews simply serve as a point you can see that they fucked up, like a review time capsule. That’s how I see it.
Yes. If you want to play “by the rules.” They don’t. Not sure why we should then.
Do what you want, i dont care if the reviews are bad or good.
But i just have to react to your “legal” argument.
Legal pressure over an EULA you accepted when you bought the game and got reminded on when you first started the game? The game you didn’t refund for over 3 months and probably have 10s if not 100s of hours in? That EULA?
Because contrary to what you seem to think it was in there from the get go. That it didn’t work is nice, but doesn’t mean anything.
That they created a workaround because it didn’t work is nice of them but again, besides the point.
You accepted the EULA. you clearly didn’t read it. Who’s fault is that?
The only pressure they felt where you guys making a lot of noise. And that was and is great.
But what did Sony learned? What did they really learn?
I’ll tell you:
Next time, when they fuck up… Don’t back down. Because if you do back down the negativity stays anyway and you gain nothing.
That’s the lessons the corpos have learned. They’ve learned they can’t win. Just accepting the damage is the better strategy. That way you earn something (the ones who did link) at least.
I signed nothing. There’s no fingerprint anywhere. It might be strange to you, but in some places of the world an EULA is not a binding contract signed in blood that you or your children must fulfil.
When we played for months without the link, when there were no advertisement that the link would be enforced at some point, when Sony faq informed that it was optional, this EULA is mere bullshit.
There is no legal argument. You (or whoever up in this thread) brought that up, not me. I reacted to that. It was never stated anywhere that it was optional. You pulled that out of, I dunno. I strongly suggest you yourself read that faq and dont regurgitate BS you red on discord but didnt bother to confirm yourself.
You accepted the license and the end user agreement the moment you started the game and didn’t reimburse the game in the first few hours. No blood, no fingerprint or the life of your firstborn son needed.
Read shit before you click accept. Don’t accept what you dont like. That is all.
Sony changed its faq during the debacle. May the 3rd it was stated that psn was optional to play on pc. May the 4th it was stated that some games may require it. The game also allowed you to play without psn account, and there was a button programmed in the game to skip the link. There was no information that it was a temporary bypass anywhere.
I don’t know why you support Sony on this kind of bullshit. You don’t seem very informed about all the problems there were.
You brought the EULA thing. This is the legal argument. And it’s plain worthless.
People make mistakes, even intentional ones. I’m a big believer in recognising when people admit to their mistakes because otherwise why even bother to right any wrongs you have made?
100%. I hate how everyone wants to completely burn all bridges with people who make mistakes, even when they own up and demonstrate that they understand what was incorrect about their actions. It’s a very pervasive attitude on the internet and it’s leaking into real life too.
Absolutely cut out toxic people and companies that continue to abuse, but recognize legitimate attempts to change and give people credit.
To be fair, this was less of a “legitimate attempt to change” and more “the devs and community forced Sony’s hand.”
If no one changes their review then they did it for nothing and won’t listen next time because it makes no difference for them either.
No, for the next time they should have learned not to so obviously fuck up people games after sales so they don’t get such negative review accumulation.
Next time they will do what they want reviews be damned because they already have your money
Most people will never buy a Sony game ever again.
Therefore, stop giving them money.
Correction, the object of our ire isn’t “people”, but the Sony corporation which has repeatedly demonstrated that it cannot be trusted. This is not a “legitimate attempt to change”, this is a reluctant policy rollback.
I am 100% behind this sentiment outside of continued abuse (like that of nearly every publishing company in the video game industry) as long as they apologize.
But the problem is that corporations are not people. One of the biggest downfalls of America getting into the shit situation that it is in was legally treating corporations as people. It screwed them over
The same is true socially. Corporations are not people. They are composed of people, but the problem is that many or most people will compromise their personal values to keep their job or get a promotion. That has been shown time and time again. A corporation’s goal is 100% exclusively, both legally and internally, to make profit for the shareholders. It will do whatever possible, screw over whoever possible, and even harm whoever necessary to create extra profit for shareholders. (Ex. Boeing, Nestle, Coke, Blackrock, palantir, exxon, the lidt goes on) The only thing that makes them back down in regulation or people threatening their profits.
This time, gamers were vocal enough, outraged enough, and ready to actually affect their profits (and future prospects of microtransactions or profitable sequels) enough for them to back down.
THEY DID NOT EVEN APOLOGIZE, read their statement, they did not make a mistake, they just chose a wrong time to try to squeeze some extra profit and were surprised that the pushback was enough to affect their profits and not just fade away like it usually does.
I completely agree. And of course they didn’t apologize, it was a classic, corporate „we hear you“. What do you suggest we do?
Stop giving Sony any money.
I’m not changing mine until (1) after the 30th, (2) game is back on for purchase in restricted countries, and (3) Sony doesn’t backpedal yet again before then.
Look, I honestly get the sentiment and AH deserves the praise for sure, but at this point I honestly can’t confidently say I trust Sony to not just be doing all this for positive PR.
Well, if they do, that’ll be the death of the game
Whether or not they’re going to walk back the changes, steam still has the game delisted in the countries where you can’t make a psn account. Until that block is lifted, not changing my review at all.
Right on! NO ONE CHANGE THEIR REVIEW! This needs to be there for ever. So when Sony a year down the road thinks “maybe?” they can see what happened last time.
No no no no. Review states indefinitely!
Or when they see it they’ll think the reviews will be bad no matter what they do so why not just do what they want
Because at that point they can just write off the game for a tax rebate.
Then you won’t be able to react once more.
Tell me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t that a move from steam to mitigate the damage that would occur if Sony went through with the account link requirement?
I’m honestly unsure. But that’s the point where I personally would consider the issue entirely cured. I.e. steam is ok again with selling the game in places where you can’t make a psn account.
Abusive relationship much?
Fuck that shit, leave your thumb down, they didn’t deserve any kindness from you from the moment they thought it was a good idea to require a PSN account.
“It was not AH decision” they signed the contract with Sony didn’t they? Hell, just take the time to actually read the announcement and it’s clear that Sony is just trying to find ways to do the same thing but in a way we won’t care, they don’t deserve any sympathy.
Maybe you have a problem with the publisher-developer relationship in general or even problems with the profit motive but somehow I think you’re not coming at it from those perspectives.
I wonder if you think the game would have been made if AH didn’t “sign a contract with Sony.” Like it or not, publishers financially support developers and influence their creations to maximize their return on investment.
I’m with you if you wanna take down capitalism, but selectively being mad at one set of creatives for working within the system seems like a pretty immature take.
Plenty of games available on the PS aren’t published by Sony and don’t require a PSN account.
Trees actually get most of their biomass through carbon capture from the air. Your turn for another unrelated fact
I’m saying they didn’t have to deal with Sony in the first place, it’s 100% related to the discussion.
I worked on a feature once at my boss’ behest that users didn’t like very much, but I had a time machine so I could go back to before I accepted my job so that I could undo the permanent stain on my reputation that my boss’ decision left upon my career. You never even heard about it since I used time travel, but I think I can say you would have been satisfied by my actions.
It was just as annoying as it sounds to lose like 10 years at this job but I know it was the only way to make some people happy so it was worth it for me.
If my oversharing is making you uncomfortable I can go back to before the internet was invented
No. At this point, it’s more about the message.
The only message you’re sending is “They gave me what I want but I’m still holding onto this anger”.
We won, son. The war’s over. You can let go now.
And what of the people who can’t play because they pulled the game?
I assume they’re all getting refunds, unless Sony and Valve can work something out to allow the sale in those regions again.
Don’t even see why they would need to work anything out, just inform them they’ve lifted the requirements and can return to selling in those regions
Simp harder for the corporation, they need more simping.
You think I’m defending Sony?
The message is that if they even try to fuck up they get to pay it.
Good reminder. Was happy I got to update mine. And for folks saying “future buyers should know about this bullshit”, leave the original content, just update the rating and add some commentary.
I don’t think they should, TBH. Sony needs the reminder that this was a giant mistake. HD2 is already a successful game with extremely positive reviews from before the PSN issue. Now that we know the HD2 dev was not included in the decision to require PSN, not many still hold a grudge against Arrowhead.
If they hold to their promise going forward, the reviews will start coming down/changing. Let’s just see how they deal with Ghosts of Tsushima release.
From what I’ve read elsewhere AH was aware of the PSN account linking long before the game’s release. Also just because Sony is backpedaling because of the negative reviews, I don’t see that as a reason to change my review. Even if the gameplay is widely praised, I think the negative reviews explaining what shitty practices were at hand should stay for future potential customers. I doubt Sony is done doing stupid stuff like this
Also just because Sony is backpedaling because of the negative reviews
Duh… That’s what we wanted.
I agree. But the attempt was made, why change all the reviews to pretend like it didn’t happen?
Because we got what we want? I don’t get what’s so confusing about that.
I guess for now. Can’t imagine Sony is done trying to push account integration for all future titles but I guess we’ll see
So change the rating and leave the review?
They worded it like the weasels they are
That’s kind of how negotiations work.
Negotiations?
Did they ask customers before making the change? Did they prevent sales in countries that don’t support PSN?
That wasn’t a negotiation, that was them taking a decision and going back on it when they realized people were angry and started refunding the game. You’re not negotiating with a hundred billion dollar company, you’re hoping they’ll feel generous enough to give you a candy before they strike back again. The wording of their announcement makes that extremely clear.
So to provide a little context. Arrowhead was negotiating with Sony at the time when the announcement was made and everything was uncertain. The developers basically asked us to voice our opinion through leaving ratings/reviews which we were happy to do. Arrowhead was then able to use this as fuel for their negotiations with Sony to prove that players were dissatisfied with this decision. Sony backed off and now we can continue to support the game by flipping our reviews back.
Besides, if you don’t put your review back to the way it was before, you wont have ammo for the next bad decision that Sony tries to force onto Arrowhead.
If you really don’t want to put your thumb back up, at the very least you could just delete your negative review.
I urge you to reconsider. That review hurts Arrowhead way more than Sony… which is unfair to the team that put their heart and soul into the game.
It is very clear that the CEO cares a lot about this game, and I’m sure many, if not all of the devs that worked on it care a lot about it… And that to me means a lot more that trying to “stick it to Sony”. Yes, the CEO knew about the account linking but he wasn’t aware of all the limitations that come with it (i.e. the country limitations). SONY is also responsible for the countries the game is being sold in.
I’m not convinced AH was unaware of what account linking would lead to. In the 6+ months they knew about it, not one person realized PSN access wasn’t available in all the countries they were selling to? I think AH did a good job appearing shocked and betrayed by Sony, and sure there are plenty of devs that likely didn’t stand by that decision, but erasing all of the reviews that warn potential buyers of the bad practices doesn’t seem like a smart idea. I think they are capable of regaining genuine positive reviews and community trust, but it shouldn’t be overnight
In the 6+ months they knew about it, not one person realized PSN access wasn’t available in all the countries they were selling to?
Localization and regional sales are typically some of the very last tasks in a game’s development cycle, and six months is a lot of time for a memo to get misplaced. Configuring the Steam page’s region settings for the game very likely happened in the last couple weeks before release, and somebody very likely applied the wrong default settings (likely using settings Sony would normally use for games that don’t require PSN).
Not that that makes it okay, but it’s not like there was some secret conspiracy at AH/Sony to hide PSN linking and intentionally sell to users they’re guaranteed to issue refunds to. This was a combination of bad business decisions, poor communication, and most likely a dash of human error.
You’re probably right, thanks for the reply
Shoutout to you, thanks for being a reasonable Lemmy user and not losing your cool despite receiving a few downvotes!
“Oh no, it hurts the guys who signed a contract with Sony where they agreed that PSN integration for PC was ok! :(”
Signed the contract 6-7 years ago. PSN requirement was added 6 months before release…
And they didn’t break the contract even though it had been altered
And they released the game to regions that don’t have access to PSN
I mean working on a game for 6-7 years and breaking contract over that is a bit much to ask. And Arrowhead (DEVELOPERS) are not in control of where the game is sold. Sony (PUBLISHER) is in control of that on Steam. The CEO stated that on Twitter/Xitter
And it was their choice to have Sony as a publisher.
Sony owns the IP, so no it really wasn’t.
Sony would have won that legal battle and AH would cease to exist.
The devs could move elsewhere, but backing for people who fought capitalism and lost is less favorable than you think. We probably would never get another Magicka. And definitely would never get another Helldivers, let alone Helldivers 2.
I’m all for overthrowing the system, but AH doesn’t have the sway to do anything but hope they can continue making fun games. And I hope they do. That gives them more sway, one game at a time.
AH wasn’t just aware… The game did require linking at launch, just like the Steam store page has said was required since day one. It was a requirement, enforced, and not hidden at all. The shitty PSN servers were part of the overall server issues at launch, so the linking was temporarily made optional while that was all sorted out.
AH just didn’t do a good job at making it clear that the linking was mandatory, and only made optional temporarily. That could have been because they were told the issue would be fixed quickly, and the reality was it took much longer than planned. Wouldn’t be the first time for Sony there. Sony and PSN server issues go hand on hand.
Sony, as the publisher, however also did not prevent sales in non-PSN regions as they should have from day one.
Yes Arrowhead was aware that it wasn’t fully set up because in Sony’s own terms it was always optional to link a PSN account while playing on PC. That is until they announced this forced change and rewrote the terms of service that same weekend.
Man some of you are some real indignant mother fuckers. Imagine punishing a dog for misbehaving, and the dog changes it’s behavior and does what you say. But then you still continue to punish it.
These companies are worse than dogs. Don’t even compare them.
Difference is I care about the dog
This is more of a case of the dog biting before. This time, the dog growled and snarled, but didn’t bite. We were able to set it’s food down, but we’re not clear of the door just yet, and given past tendencies, we’re naturally still worried about getting bit.
Once we’re in safety again, we can reward the dog for dialing it back before another bite happened, but we’re not clear yet.
Why? Nothing has changed yet.
They still thought it was a good idea and AH didn’t care enough to not sign a contract with Sony.
Wait, is it possible to publish a PlayStation game without going through Sony? They own that particular platform, and I have no info on if they allow third party publishers or not.
Yes it is possible, Rockstar publish their own games and if you need a non-major-studio example then Hollow Knight is published by Team Cherry.
They still need to go through Sony to get it onto the PS5. And Sony’s forced weird things before. It’s why there was an exclusive character for each console during Soul Calibur 2 days, Sony forced exclusive content in a game they didn’t publish in order to have that game on their console. There are plenty of other examples from that time, but I didn’t own a Sony system back then, so I can’t remember any off the top of my head.
Sony has final say on anything that goes into their console’s library, but they mostly mess with directly published games these days.
There was a timeline update from the devs, they signed with Sony 8 years ago, were made aware of this requirement 2 months prior to launch, then disabled during launch because servers were exploding. Apparently this wasn’t something put directly in the contract 8 years ago and if you think a tiny game studio has the resources to litigate their way out of that detail or decide to go it alone 2 months before launch you are wrong.
Sorry to link to this shitbox website. I don’t know where wlse it’s hosted. https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cl4b2w/all_roads_lead_to_sony/#lightbox
Wait, did they ever stop people logging on? Was this drama over a promise in the future?
I thought everyone was blocked from logging on over the weekend and they only recently promised to remove that feature.
did they ever stop people logging on?
No, this wouldn’t have happened until May 30th as the tweet mentions. Starting May 6th is when new players would have been required to sign up for a PSN account before playing the game for the first time.
Was this drama over a promise in the future?
Yes, nothing actually changed on the players’ side of things. The announcement was made and subsequently backtracked on before any updates to the game were even pushed out. No one was blocked from logging in at any point, but they were told that without a PSN account by the end of May, they would have been.
I absolutely will as soon as i get home from work!
Meh
Not trying to be a dick, but why even make this comment then?
No
