Sony backs down regarding Helldivers PSN account linking on PC
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https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/1787331667616829929
Ahh, it's been ten thousand years since a multibillion company walked back from simple but bad decision.
I just wonder if they'll leave it at this or find a way to roll it out slowly and silently in some places anyway. I certainly hope they genuinly learned from this.
Hopefully "we're still trying to learn what's best for PC" isn't some sort of code for "PC players are too whiny and won't bend the knee, this weekend was bad PR that wasnt worth it. we just won't release future games on PC"
Ehhh, I think its probably code for
"We want to try to convince you that this was unintentional and not a calculated business decision that was made with the objective of profit at your expense.
We want you to believe that our multi-billion dollar company did not foresee this even though we have hundreds, if not thousands, of business analysts who work for us globally who definitely suggested this was a possibility in the first 10 minutes of account linking on PC after 4 months being suggested internally.
Also our PR people probably suggested it as a possibility.
Also our legal team probably suggested it as a possibility.
But even though we analyze the industry and the market and the users, and the business, and the case studies, and the marketing, and the games constantly, not stop, day and night, globally; please believe us that we are still trying to learn whats best for PC teehee.
In the future, we will be sure to try to force you into account linking from the beginning with any future release.
Please ignore our transgressions and instead give us money. Goodbye"
I mean $107 million in Steam sales within 2 months is something worth it for Sony to put up with a whiny playerbase. If there's something I know Sony likes, it's more money. I doubt they will pass up the opportunity to collect money from PC gamers, and digging their heels letting players develop grudges against them were going to hurt Sony's future sales figures all around than what they would have benefited from PSN integration.
You know, part of me wants to believe there was actually nothing malicious going on here and when this all went down some guy at Sony was just very surprised this turned out to be a big deal and wa just kinda like "if it matters that much to you we just won't do it I guess, idc."
I don't even work for Sony and "you need to create a third party account to play our game" isn't something I expected to generate 300k negative reviews in 3 days. There are a lot of games that come with third party accounts and launchers. With all the shit companies like EA, Epic, and Ubisoft force onto their players, I'm genuinely surprised this caused any pushback.
We think the main reason was the amount of countries you couldn't make a PSN account in, locking out a lot of people from playing a game they bought. So honestly, with that in mind, it's probably justified.
Yeah also at one point they claimed this was the plan from day one, but if that was the case why would it have been for sale in countries with no PSN support.
Their terms even stated that a psn account would be optional for PC users, right up until this debacle. Then they quietly changed the wording to "some games may require it"
To be the Devil's advocate, I've noticed that PC gamers are unpleasable, they all have different machines to optimize, they sometimes play a new game on their shit machine and give an unfair bad rating based on that, throwing off the review ratings, and something like %35 of PC gamers pirate their games. That honestly doesn't sound like an attractive market to me 🤷♂️
35% of players don't pirate every game... Thats absurd. If you're referring to the pc gamer survey from like 10 years ago, there was way more nuance to it than that. Go read more than the headline please.
But even so, its not up to the consumers to bend over and be "pleasable". Devs should treat the platform well, instead they shit out bad ports, they dont bother with basic options, they require more layers of launchers and stores, drm, kernal anti cheat, etc etc etc.
The pc market is huge, even excluding people who haven't upgraded in 10 years. Its plenty attractive
It hurts, but PC gamers are the most toxic, unpleasable, tribalist gamers out there. This thread is proof. I'm getting a lot of hate and no actual facts. You debate my source numbers, but you provide none in return.
I’m getting a lot of hate and no actual facts.
Maybe that's because you didn't provide any actual fact yourself.
I’m not a PC player but you start off attacking a whole group of people and wonder why they get upset about it. Take a step back and reevaluate your position.
Love how you say that while ignoring that the difference between total sales and PS sales is topping the charts and hitting 20th place. But yes, let's talk about the pirates some more.
End of the day, a lot of people prefer consoles. I looked up the price of making a gaming PC even comparable to a ps5 or Xbox and it was easily double the price. And I don't wanna hear about PC building, I could build my own car too but I don't want to.
You come home pop in a game and it works, and years later new games come out and they work! With PC you're outdated within a year
With PC you're outdated within a year
That alone shows you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about, let alone the rest of the bullshit about PCs you're spewing.
And I'll never want to learn because the toxic PC gamers just shit on everything, instead of being productive
Bro, you're the one shitting on everything here by being misinformed. But you take any critique of your opinion as hate and then get defensive af. Lol...
After Bungie signed a deal with Activision, Marty O Donald talked about treating the goose right and itll lay golden eggs, and an activision dev said cooked goose is good too.
If they tried it once, they'll try it again.
Some of us have had managers like this: implement something dumb, walk it back, try again every 15 months.
Welp, this is how you're supposed to deescalate a situation. Not by having a CM slandering a public figure that spoke against this.
Too late, I probably won't buy this game anymore if they're willing to do shit like this lol
Yeah, this and the completely over-the-top kernel level anticheat rootkit for a PvE game really turned me off.
::: spoiler CW: extremely cringe joke It looks like this democracy...
...has been managed.
:::
Hopefully they restore the game in all regions where it was disabled. It went from being region free to blocked in 172 countries.
Likely they won't make this a requirement..... But will of you want to do crossplay.
I mean they could and it would actually hurt the PSN players more than the PC players. Of course that's well within their right but would be pretty stupid and we all know how Sony executives are at this point.
sadly i doubt they learned their lesson here, they will just be more careful next time with how they do it.
theres probably money on the table here and those are not the types to leave money on the table.
If it hadn't been for steam issuing refunds for it, they wouldn't have changed their mind