Q

Anonymous asked:

Thoughts on the Helldivers PSN situation?

A

For those who haven’t been following this story, Helldivers 2 multiplayer originally required a linked PSN account in order to play. The PSN back end was not ready, so the developers turned off the requirement. Recently it came back on and several players were upset because their games stopped working. There was a review bomb and a lot of angry feedback, especially because PSN accounts are not available without a Playstation console in several geographic areas. [Sony posted yesterday] to say that they would no longer be requiring a linked PSN account for Helldivers 2 Multiplayer.

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The situation is strange to me because there doesn’t seem to be a lot of reason for any real controversy. Sony is making all PC games that they publish on Steam require PSN accounts. That in itself isn’t that big a deal - lots of publishers require similar things. EA requires Origin accounts, Ubisoft has their UPlay ecosystem, Activision has Battle.net, Microsoft has XBox Live, and so on and so forth. Helldivers was always supposed to launch with this requirement but they ran into major technical issues at launch and had to disable the requirement (temporarily). I know that Ghost of Tsushima will also require a PSN account for multiplayer.

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The second thing with PSN accounts not being allowed in various countries is an issue within Sony itself and has nothing to do with Helldivers. The Helldivers team did what they were contractually obligated to do - require a PSN account to play. Sony’s internal PSN team is responsible for which countries are and aren’t on the whitelist for account creation via PC. Most game sales are in North America, Western Europe, and Japan/South Korea. There just aren’t quite as many players in Uzbekistan or Ukraine. When your customer count in those countries is in the dozens, it really doesn’t rank very high on the priority list.

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Early on, I think it should have been communicated to players that they would (eventually) need a PSN account to play multiplayer and possibly some other “here’s something for your trouble” bonus in game to help provide some value to the player. Now that it’s blown up so large, the decision to step it back is probably the right one. I think that, for Ghost of Tsushima PC, the PSN linking should be a requirement for the game from the jump so that people know exactly what they are getting.

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May. 6 2024
#helldivers #public facing #the business of video games #current events
20 notes

Notes

  1. vertyblog said: sony knew which countries had PSN and which ones didn’t. selling the game in those countries anyway knowing they would eventually rip it away for no reason is just bullshit
  2. supercomputer276 reblogged this from askagamedev
  3. robotslenderman said: Yeah they did what they were obligated to do, but also they weren’t that bright if they didn’t see this coming. You can’t let someone buy something and then say “actually we’re not letting you use it until you do X” without consequences regardless of whether or not the company was obliged to do that.
  4. space-wizards reblogged this from askagamedev
  5. scottbert reblogged this from askagamedev
  6. joshay98 reblogged this from askagamedev
  7. stephdudette reblogged this from askagamedev
  8. askagamedev posted this
    Thoughts on the Helldivers PSN situation?...For those who haven't been following this...