https://twitter.com/Pilestedt/status/1786454659256758447
Not sure about the consumer laws where you live but it might be possible that you can return it when you cannot use it anymore because of this
It is likely that the countries with the best consumer protection laws are among the ones served by PSN because those tend to be policies enacted by richer countries.
An honest reaction... From a ceo? That's the first time I've ever seen that. I figured those people were clones and programmed to say the same thing as every other ceo.
All it takes to be a CEO is to be the person in charge of running a company. There are a lot of companies that are a lot of different sizes doing a lot of different things. If you start your own company you're the CEO, but you're also the head of sales and the person who makes coffee runs.
The stereotypical CEO (who makes boilerplate, sanitized public statements) is stereotypical in the first place because they run big companies, reporters care what they have to say. If you read the news you hear their words a lot.
Smaller firms, self started firms, and a lot of the more unique operations that would have CEOs that go against the stereotype don't make the news often, so the stereotype stays intact.
It's not so much honesty as much as trying to stem the bleed.
A CEO has a fiduciary obligation towards maximising the profits of the shareholders of his company first.
Another comment here said how they needed money and expertise from Sony to roll out a game that could support concurrently the number of players they do support and how Sony is collecting their dues.
However, the fuckton of hate that's being piled on now goes at least partially on to the developer which puts a wedge in the previous alliance.
As a developer, because of the demands of the publisher, they've gone from a position of such extreme good will that they had only blue skies in front of them - heck they could have crowdsourced their next game with ease and people would buy it sight unseen, meanwhile I bet Sony would be considering buying them to become in house studio, MS has a history of scooping such studios also - to revulsion and betrayal.
It also opens up a strategic vulnerability for a different developer to white knight the now proven market.
That's not good news for the shareholders and future prospects and the CEO is trying to stem the bleed without pissing off the publisher. Seems pretty tame to me.
If this is about the new PSN requirements, I don't even think Arrowhead should take the blame. That was obviously something that came down from the publisher.
Arrowhead, as the developers and artists who worked to create the game, deserve little to none of the blame. Arrowhead, as the business entity who voluntarily entered into an agreement with Sony to have this requirement in their game in the first place, definitely deserves the blame. Whatever project lead thought this was an acceptable concession to make in order to secure funding from Sony was definitely not on the same page as the rest of the team who actually made the game.
Seeing a lot of parallels to the Cyberpunk 2077 launch; beautiful game created by a passionate team who loved their craft, massively damaged by short-sighted, greedy decisions by studio execs.
I believe Sony owns the Helldivers IP, so they may not have had much choice in the matter.
Oh, that is a great point. It’s possible their hands were 100% tied on this simply due to who controls the IP.
They may not be to blame, but they are responsible.
For instance if they knew this was coming down the pipeline as a requirement, this should have been in place on day one.
So they should’ve delayed the release until Sony got their shit together with the PSN API?
If they wanted to make PlayStation networks 100% hard requirement for the game, that should have been there on day one. The enforcement should have been there. Even if the API servers were having issues the enforcement should have been there.
The software's behavior is the social contract with the user. If steam says a PlayStation network account is required, and you load the game and it's only needed for cross play or it's optional. That is the defacto contract. And that has existed for about 4 months.
It's entirely possible to buy the game, without seeing the PlayStation button. If you just click buy now, or get it from your wish list or whatever, you're not presented with anything indicating PlayStation is required. So the common use case for a steam user, is to run the game, oh it needs this network That's not cool refund. This program has broken that pattern.
So yes it is entirely the developers fault, if this is a hard requirement it should always be hard requirement, not after 4 months. That is changing the lived gamer experience.
The devs hate the requirement too: https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjyll7/some_discord_updates/
This is 100% a Sony thing
It was. PSN linking was available day one, and they disabled it temporarily when the traffic was too much for the auth server to handle. Not reading doesn't mean the requirement wasn't communicated to you.
100% it wasn't communicated to users as the experience did not require it. For 3 months.
This is a policy CHANGE. Hence the need for an announcement
This is a lot of words to say "I'm angry and I want to blame a hardworking creative studio, instead of the massive, famously consumer unfriendly, publisher that's actually at fault".
Does the game on Steam deserve the downvotes? Yes. 100%. The game on Steam is a direct result of the developers work and Sony's publishing. But it's not the developer's work that is causing problems, but Sony's publishing decisions that have negatively impacted the experience for huge numbers of people.
So does the developer Arrowhead deserve blame for accepting a contract to produce a game for Sony's IP? No, they did that and did their jobs as contracted. Sony is the only party here that deserves blame for enforcing an asinine account policy that they're competitors (i.e. Microsoft), do not.
This might be true but this one title's success will have a bigger impact on the developer's (≈100 staff) future prospects than Sony (≈113k staff).
Sony could simply ignore the issue and they wouldn't be losing any sleep.
On the other hand this game is the only title the studio has released since Helldivers in 2015, they have the most incentive to protect the reputation of the new title, the IP, and the studio.
They might not be the at fault party, the guilty party but they are the responsible party. It's their game, their interface with people, their reputation.
I think they knew they would get backlash and factored that in.
He didn’t say anything like “I hear your concerns and we will look into them”
That’s because there’s nothing he can do - this was Sony’s decision as the publisher and the developers can’t do squat about it unfortunately
I've heard that their community manager was caught shitting on people who were upset about the announcement. That kinda suggests that it wasn't a publisher decision, or at the very least, that their community manager(s) are handled by Sony. It's possible they may be trying to court Sony into buying the company, or that Sony gave them an offer they couldn't refuse.
This is definitely the work of Sony, not the developer. There is no motivation for the developer to require PSN signups for the game and all the motivation in the world for Sony. In addition, anything dealing with how the game is distributed is solely within the purview of the publisher- the developer almost never has any say in what happens in that case.
That kinda suggests that it wasn’t a publisher decision, or at the very least, that their community manager(s) are handled by Sony.
Eh, could likely be that the CM is tired of the bullshit. Everyone has a breaking point and a thousand frothing fans is gonna bother anyone.
As far as the decision behind the policy goes, the game’s community manager said on the game’s official Discord server that it was a Sony decision, not Arrowhead
https://insider-gaming.com/helldivers-2-ceo-apologizes-for-psn-account-requirement/
I don't live in a place without PSN, however I uninstalled because of the malware style anticheat files that a small update tried to sneak into my system. Fuck off Arrowhead and Sony both, no thanks, I don't need to jnstall that kind of stuff to enjoy games with my friends on PC.
Only reason I can think of is to sell MTX boosts for xp or currency, like Activision does in COD
To be fair they did make a great game, and the current drama has little to do with the actual game.
I am not defending them, I understand why people are cheesed off, I just don't think it affects how good or bad a game is.
I'm not denying they made good game, their choice of publishing it with sony is what is soiling it.
As someone else in another thread pointed out, the helldivers IP is owned by sony. They may have no choice.
That is really just flavor, you could always make a very similar game with a custom background story. It is not as if Helldivers is some huge, well-known IP like Star Wars that significantly contributes to the sales figures.
I get ya. It sounded like you were saying they were unable to make great games because of the partnership.
I agree that the current situation is shit and I feel bad for those who can't play it anymore.
I wonder if the game would even exist without the partnership.
I mean, have we heard whether the dev decided to make this game and then licensed the IP from Sony, or whether Sony contracted them explicitly to make a Helldivers 2 for them?
Not defending Sony, but I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to make a game that can have hundreds of thousands of players playing multiplayer matches simultaneously all over the world, but it needs a lot of infrastructure, and network support and other expensive hard to do stuff that you can’t just shit out like it’s Flappy Bird.
The problem is is they probably needed capital and support to get it off the runway, and Sony attached strings to the capital and support they gave them.
Now that it’s a hit, Sony is trying to flex its legal power via said strings - I’m guessing - and probably have all but threatened this relatively small dev with pulling the rug or taking them to court if they don’t follow orders.
TL;DR - Making games is expensive. Sony probably offered the small dev with limited resources a Faustian bargain and now the Devil is calling for his dues. They probably never had a choice.
Given that even Microsoft first party games let you play with your Steam account on the Steam version, this is clearly and unequivocally a case of
"Fuck Sony."
I honestly dont get why gamers have such a hard on for Sony. They're such a consumer unfriendly company overall.
I just want to make great games!
(And I can't do that without money from big publishers and without installing anti-cheat on your PCs)
I am probably completely wrong and this is just my opinion but an indie game dev that sells out to any of the shit companies, isn't really in it for the love of games, they want money.
There are plenty of indie devs that haven't sold out to ea/meta/Microsoft/etc and are perfectly able to feed their families.
Then don't act coy about wanting to make games as if that's the driving force behind you being CEO of a studio.
Be honest and say "yeah, we have contractual obligations and this is one of them, sucks that they are mismanaging it but we have to abide by it because they gave us a bajillion dollars, and we gotta keep the lights on. Hopefully they'll change their minds.”
The reality is that they mismanaged this severely, they should have either held off the launch or made it abundantly clear that this was temporary and it would have been mandatory in a few months, not whatever the fuck this was.
And it should have never been possible for people in non-psn countries to buy the game in the first place.
Then don’t act coy about wanting to make games as if that’s the driving force behind you being CEO of a studio.
Buddy, you need to grow up; unless you're a trust fund baby, nobody gets to dedicate a significant amount of their life to doing anything without also finding a way of making money at it. Trying to create a fun game, and running out of money halfway through development, and having to layoff all your friends and cocreators, gets nobody anywhere.
Be honest and say "yeah, we have contractual obligations and this is one of them, sucks that they are mismanaging it but we have to abide by it because they gave us a bajillion dollars, and we gotta keep the lights on. Hopefully they’ll change their minds.”
That is basically verbatim what he has said.
The reality is that they mismanaged this severely, they should have either held off the launch or made it abundantly clear that this was temporary and it would have been mandatory in a few months, not whatever the fuck this was.
The reality is that Sony probably didn't care until Helldivers was a massive success and they've suddenly started caring.
That is basically verbatim what he has said.
Very far from that.
The reality is that Sony probably didn't care until Helldivers was a massive success and they've suddenly started caring.
We need people to not just state something like that, but hate such decisions by default and act whenever possible. Just like with any other issue involving caring about minorities. Every customer who bought your game deserves the same regardless of where they live and how much the paid you.
Haha. Regain trust. You lost people gaming because of that PSN account linkage. Those people are not playing anymore. How will a continued great game experience regain their trust?
In a week. The changes aren't coming for a week. Nobody has quit because of the changes, they are quitting because they heard about an upcoming change they had the opportunity to read about on all primary storefronts the game is available on, excepting humble.
Helldivers 2, and the recently announced requirement starting at the end of the month to have a PSN account for a game many people bought a month or so ago on Steam.
The thing I don't get about this is that is says on the steam page for Helldivers 2 that it requires a PSN account. Did it not say that before they made that announcement? Or did people see that they weren't enforcing it, buy the game, and now complain that they're starting to enforce it?
Ah ok. Then yeah, changing it weeks/months after release to require one is pretty shitty. Especially for those who live in countries that can't get PSN accounts. The game should never have been sold there as now it will become unplayable for them
I remember vividly that it did say a PSN account was required on the store page when I bought it a month or so ago. It was a pretty obvious yellow box
Helldivers will never be what it was from now on, shame I missed that train. Specially considering it's now essentially a free Steam refund (if you insist past the automated responses).
"Oh no, this seems to be bad for everyone. Too bad there's nothing we can do about it!" Says CEO with enough control and influence to reverse the policy.
Their publisher decided it. And it's probably in the contract. Apparently it was originally a requirement, but was made skippable when there were login issues.
The only thing they proved by making ot skippable is that it wasnt even necessary at all. The reason they're giving for making it mandatory ( for security and being able to ban for griefing ) is bullshit. Not to mention They're already using a super invasive anti cheat, which apparently isn't capable of catching any cheaters.
I already turned down a free copy of this game because it installs a rootkit, and now this happens. I hear the game itself is a lot of fun, and I feel bad for the actual developers who are watching people shit on their work because of management and publisher bullshit.
I don’t really understand the hype behind helldivers. To my eye, borderlands is essentially the same game but with greater variety, fewer hiccups, and a lower price.
Interesting take. Do you also think of Mario Kart and Forza Horizon to be the same game?
I mean, more midnight club vs need for speed but I take your meaning. And yes, aside from the stories and one having significantly more content, they’re essentially the same game. I’d have said battlefront 2, but I don’t respect the remake and fishing out multiple ps2s to play online is preposterous.
Very different games to me tbh. Squad pve with gun focused combat, but thats where the similarities end. Borderland is crunchy with tons of guns stats and special movesin a RPG open world with a set narrative to go through.
Helldivers has a way smaller arsenal and a tighter mission based combat loop. They have more of a meta narrative that you affect vs being the main protags. The tighter gameplay loop is probably the biggest reason I liked it but haven't play borderlands in forever. Like its very much built for dropping in blowing up your friend and maybe some enemies too, try to do objectives against mounting odds, pass or fail the mission, continue. The fact that weapon progress almost always makes friendly fire a even bigger threat makes it almost a trade off and not a clear path to success.
What should they do in your opinion? Remember this is a Sony decision Arrowhead have no power over.
Give people full refunds.
They put themselves in this position and now they are going to eat shit for it.
The only chance they have at not pissing everyone off is offering full refunds. It won’t happen tho because of corporate greed.
What they should have done was not jump into bed with the enemy (Sony).
Sony required the PSN account, which Arrowhead didn't enforce. Clearly they didn't want it either. Until Sony forced them to enforce it. Arrowheads mistake was not enforcing it the entire time. They tried to be the good guys by ignoring the Sony requirement and when this was no longer possible ended up with an apparent bait and switch. If they just listened to Sony and required it the entire time, they wouldn't get into this situation.
So yes, they should give refunds.
If they acknowledge it is a mistake and change it, I’m going to play it again. Everybody makes dumb mistake sometimes.