Helldivers 2 will require Steam players to sign in with PSN account, led to review bombing games & refunds. |UP| Gamers organizing to revert reviews.

Johnic

Veteran
24 Mar 2023
2,842
4,935
Outer Heaven
Yeah, I had no doubts this was a Sony issue. Arrowhead must not be happy with this.

I think they'll back out of this but this goes to show how out of touch Sony is. It could have easily been prevented. They just have no hand on the gaming community pulse and they blunder stuff like this.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Nomen_Nescio

Gods&Monsters

Veteran
Icon Extra
21 Jun 2022
4,559
9,318
Im convinced ever since 2019, the general public has accepted PlayStation as the defacto console, but then hardcore gamers on the internet went the opposite direction. It always seems like people trying to hate on them. Narrtives everywhere.

Remember when PS5 would run games way worse than Xbox hardware this gen?
Remember when PS5 would meet it's grave because Sony needed to copy gamepass day and date?
Remember how PS5 wasn't gonna have any exclusives in 2024?
None of these were ever true, with common sense it's obvious.

And now today Sony has apparently ruined it's shot at PC gamers because they want you to login to their network. It's all so pathetic to me.
Every week there is a new controversy about Sony, no matter what they do. This is why they never speak and they are always silent.

They are the Beyonce of the gaming industry. No press, nothing. It's not worth it. They are always attacked anyway.

The biggest issue here is that they sold the game before forcing this. Not only is it a PR disaster, they could also face legal issues.
It was everywhere on Steam before you bought the game. Even on the trailer it said PSN account required.

Don't get fooled by this fake controversy.

 
  • Like
Reactions: Bo_Hazem

Systemshock2023

Veteran
8 May 2023
1,743
1,413
Sony learning step by step the in and outs of online gaming. Life is tough outside of the walled garden. They should have thought about this before releasing. Even if it's a minor issue it's a PR mess,specially since the game is so popular.

Why is PS in so few countries vs steam though?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Nym and Entropi

Entropi

Veteran
Icon Extra
22 Jan 2023
2,301
3,433
I think Sony should just let this one go. Enjoy the massive success of HD 2 on PS5 and enforce PSN for Steam on all future releases.

Edit: On top of that, sony should not sour their relationship with Arrowhead. They are the only studio that brought them a successful live service game.
 
Last edited:
OP
OP
Fenton

Fenton

Veteran
22 Feb 2023
793
1,915
I think Sony should just let this one go. Enjoy the massive success of HD 2 on PS5 and enforce PSN for Steam on all future releases.
Next time many won't create if told in advance. Now is the time...because nobody can predict which game will succeed like this.
 
Last edited:

Yurinka

Veteran
VIP
21 Jun 2022
6,085
5,258
The Steamdb graph:
image.png

Earlier today the reviews were 85-86% positive:
image.png



So all you need to legitimately play Helldivers 2 on Steam in a country without PSN is to create an illegitimate PSN account, promptly breaking Sony's own terms of service on PSN which if detected by Sony they're supposed to terminate the account.

View attachment 4884
They reserve the right to suspend the account for this or for many other motives, which doesn't mean they will. People has been making PSN accounts for decades.

I mean my US, KP and UK ones created in the PS3 early years still work. They won't give a fuck.

And well, if they would want to make it 100% accurate they could add more countries to the related list of PSN creation account or add an "other" field.

The biggest issue here is that they sold the game before forcing this. Not only is it a PR disaster, they could also face legal issues.
This isn't any PR disaster and won't face legal issues. In all their trailers, including before launch, mentioned that a PSN account was required. It is also mentioned in the game's Steam store page since forever.

No court will take you seriously saying you're suing someone because they want you spend half a minute to fill a form, something indicated everywhere before you purchased the game. It's just some drama queen in forums and social media making noise.

The game said since the start that it required a PSN account, even if they didn't force it to play.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Would_you_kindly
27 Jun 2023
3,751
3,069
29
United kingdom
I'm not one that's just havin a pop at Sony, but if the usual happens where Sony takes more stick than other companies, and it leads to the end of this bullshit, good.

Companies requiring multiple log ins are fluffing their numbers. Using the examples in your post is disingenuous as epic own Fortnite, battle net is diablo etc.

Now, what's bullshit is signing in with Xbox live/PSN and then having to sign in to battle.net (I won't do it). Signing in to multiple accounts is many people putting their hands into their pot to double the user numbers and mau. 1 Xbox user playing diablo + 1 battle.net user playing diablo = 2 mau on 1 account.

In this example, Sony have introduced this sign in requirement after the game has shopped, which is a bit shitty, which is what is pissing people off. Coming off of the back of the stellar blade rug pull doesn't look good.
Epic own Fortnite & Sony own Helldivers it's their damn IP
 

ksdixon

Dixon Cider Ltd.
Icon Extra
22 Jun 2022
1,739
1,100
Let me play devil's advocate. Why can't Sony handle this shit at the OS/corporate level? Feed the publisher accounts into PS account?
 

Gods&Monsters

Veteran
Icon Extra
21 Jun 2022
4,559
9,318


So, why now is it suddenly a problem?

It's only a problem when the publisher is Sony. They are fine with literally every other publisher that asks the exact same thing including Microsoft for Sea of Thieves right now and Minecraft. I've never heard of people being scared of getting hacked on their COD or EA account 🤦‍♂️

PS5 users are not even complaining about MS account, no noise about it at all.

Well, that's Sony legally covered. So why wasn't this enforced from the start?
There was an issue with the many logins because of the explosion of popularity but the disclaimer was always there and on every promo material. You could just bypass it temporarily.
 
24 Jun 2022
3,327
5,763
Im convinced ever since 2019, the general public has accepted PlayStation as the defacto console, but then hardcore gamers on the internet went the opposite direction. It always seems like people trying to hate on them. Narrtives everywhere.

Remember when PS5 would run games way worse than Xbox hardware this gen?
Remember when PS5 would meet it's grave because Sony needed to copy gamepass day and date?
Remember how PS5 wasn't gonna have any exclusives in 2024?
None of these were ever true, with common sense it's obvious.

And now today Sony has apparently ruined it's shot at PC gamers because they want you to login to their network. It's all so pathetic to me.

At the end of the day, Sony (SIE specifically) invited this mess on their own accord. It's their problem to deal with, not ours.

Well, not mine, anyhow.

Yes, but if they only make certain countries exempt from the change the backlash will be legendary.

The only good way out of this for Sony (as the game's publisher) is to bow out of the whole thing.

Either that or make it opt-in (with incentives to encourage people to opt-in). But yeah, otherwise there seems to be a huge legal black hole here and they're just creating a legal problem for themselves if pushing the change as a mandatory thing.

And again, it doesn't seem like Arrowhead folks are too happy about it, either. You'd think SIE would go for something that was more lenient/less mandatory but I wouldn't be surprised if modern-day SIE feel they have Arrowhead by the balls in this scenario (since SIE own the IP rights). Hopefully this doesn't lead to any straining of the partnership between them and, well, hopefully SIE wisen up and just make the PSN thing opt-in for Steam users.

Plus, they don't NEED PSN enforced at the game level to count them as PlayStation MAU in the first place. They got Steam data access for players the same way the public does, they can prob ask Valve for SIE-related data as well I'd imagine. All BTS stuff. And they know how many copies the game is selling, too.
 

ethomaz

Rebolation!
21 Jun 2022
8,589
7,278
Brasil 🇧🇷
PSN ID
ethomaz
Well, that's Sony legally covered. So why wasn't this enforced from the start?
Because developers have priorities and they choose to fix these before add the PS account enforcement...

It is very simple to understand what happened...

Sony before launch asked them to add required PS Account login.
The Studio said they had a lot of things to do and so asked Sony to wait until they have time to implement it.
Sony waited.
Studio is now fixing what it was to be in the game since the launch.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Would_you_kindly