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The most depressing thing I’ve seen related to this topic. A small team that worked incredibly hard were lucky enough to achieve the impossible, and now they watch without any control as it is taken from them, for no other reason than greed.
Due to unchecked neoliberal capitalism, big companies like Sony already cover so much of the developed markets, that they have no way to naturally grow more. So they are forced to squeeze more out of what they already have, as stagnation is not accepted in this hellish system.
The line must go up, whatever the cost!
Edit: damn, Sony actually listened
The line must go up, whatever the cost!
Including lying, controlling narratives, committing outright fraud, controlling the fate of companies through “consultants”, changing the definition of Recession, killing of whistleblowers, killing of journalists who help whistleblowers, to name just a very short few.
This system blows, how many millenia does it fucking take to figure that out?
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
-Upton Sinclair
Jurgis recollected how, when he had first come to Packingtown, he had stood and watched the hog-killing, and thought how cruel and savage it was, and come away congratulating himself that he was not a hog; now his new acquaintance showed him that a hog was just what he had been-one of the packers’ hogs. What they wanted from a hog was all the profits that could be got out of him; and that was what they wanted from the workingman, and also that was what they wanted from the public. What the hog thought of it, and what he suffered, were not considered; and no more was it with labor, and no more with the purchaser of meat. That was true everywhere in the world, but it was especially true in Packingtown; there seemed to be something about the work of slaughtering that tended to ruthlessness and ferocity-it was literally the fact that in the methods of the packers a hundred human lives did not balance a penny of profit.
- Upton Sinclair
I read The Jungle a few months ago and its aged so depressingly well. Nothing has changed, it was obvious what was happening long ago, but we’ve done nothing but watch it get worse.
“The Jungle” famously spurred large reforms. The FDA exists and has a lot of power because people were disgusted by what they read.
That’s why you’re reading a hundred-year-old book: it was influential.
it was influential.
But only on one topic. Yes the FDA was created in large part from outrage over food condtions described in the book. But that really is only one chapter of the text, the majority of it deals with the exploration of workers in ALL sorts of industries (not just food), how preadatory home loans lead to finical ruins, how voting systems are rigged and how our policing system only produces more experienced criminals, not reform.
The last 2-3 chapters are explicitly socialist talking points that are still being said, for good reason, today. If the book was as influential as Sinclair wanted it to be, then we would’ve seen FAR FAR FAR more than the FDA.
I mean, heck, reread the passage I copied in. It’s not really about food.
The last 2-3 chapters are explicitly socialist talking points
My high school English class (in the Deep South) explicitly left those chapters out of our study of The Jungle lol.
So you’re intentionally exaggerating when you say “nothing has changed”. Yeah nothing has changed, except an entire Executive Branch department that didn’t exist before. It was more influential than many other books written at the time.
Of course the author wanted the book to be even more influential, that’s why authors write. No writer says “this book kinda sucks, I hope people read half of it and put it down”.
intentionally exaggerating
🙄🙄🙄
You can “uh actually” my phrasing if you really want to, but playing tone police is to miss my actual point how these are long standing and well known problem that Sinclair spoke about extensively.
If you don’t have anything meaningful to contribute to the conversation, it’s okay to just keep scrolling.
We haven’t done nothing. There’s Rojava and the EZLN building whole competing systems. There’s loads of people doing mutual aid or building cooperative economic structures all over the world, and those movements are gaining a lot of traction as people are waking up to how shit things are.
You don’t usually hear about all these projects, in the same way you may not notice termites hollowing out a structure until it’s far too late to save it.
Do you have any links at hand for all that?
If not, I will try to add find and them to this chain for future reference.
Oh thanks for reminding me!
Anark | Liberation in Action Playlist
It used to be really hard to give a good list of these sorts of movements, but this series by Anark just puts it all in one place.
The first video is him just reading off a list, but this is the list in written form, which I find much easier to parse: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W1wWjWNXhvHjMzzyxT5z5Es_kE6xmTYSadGSJfuVtpE/edit#heading=h.p04t775v871g
The next few videos are deeper dives into some of these, and the series is ongoing, so this playlist link should stay current as he releases more.
Thanks for the quick reference links!
I hope you have noticed that Rojava is next to Turkey, has lost much of its territory to Turkey, and can lose the rest anytime. Definitely fighting against it better than a certain UN member state too bordering Turkey (I’m being ashamed of Armenia here), but still.
EZLN may be in a better situation. Mostly because in Latin America “live and let live” seems to be not such an idealistic approach, since I’m confident there’s a lot of force which could squash them.
I’m afraid “this system” has existed since humans learned to lie and commit fraud, and it’s not called capitalism.
But there are some laws which these things follow - the more horizontal and decentralized everything is, the less such rot.
The political ideology is called distributivism and unfortunately associated with Catholicism, but it’s the sanest I’ve encountered.
Capitalism is the current name for the problem.
No, capitalism is a religious term among leftists, used for things much younger.
The lesson we learn here is that you don’t take money from the mob.
Don’t go public with youre company.
Don’t get involved with the devil.
Said this in another thread :
First off - yes Sony is in the wrong.
Second - Helldivers ain’t Flappy Bird. Making an online multiplayer game that needs the ability to do reliable matchmaking across multiple platforms with hundreds of thousands of players out there needs MASSIVE network and infrastructure support…
So you may say “don’t take money from the mob,” but this is more a situation of where if they HADN’T taken Sony’s support, they likely wouldn’t have been able to have the resources to have done all that themselves which could have made the difference between their great success and failure.
Remember that the first helldivers game was also a Sony published title where everything worked out fine for everyone then… but mostly because it wasn’t near as big a success story and making headlines but was instead a far more niche title lost mostly in the noise of smaller dev Sony titles.
I’m sure arrowhead has learned its lesson now and it will likely able probably to flex its muscles in the future thanks to its success financially - as I’m sure lots of publishers will be now coming at them with much more lucrative and favorable contract deals going forward, but they probably would not have been able to do what they wanted to do at the scale that they have been able to had Sony not been there to help provide that initial capital and infrastructure support.
This is Sony’s fault fully. The guys at Arrowhead are just wanting to have the means to make good games. They needed the resources to launch successfully and pretending it would have been feasible otherwise without said resources is sadly… naive.
What does it matter if the game “launches successfully” if it doesn’t sustain itself? They knew theyd likely lose their players but they were hoping theyd be special - this game is not successful in the end.
Your entire argument boils down to: they wouldn’t have been able to cheat us into thinking this was a good game without sony. If theyre going to take my money and kill the game anyway, it would have been better to not make it at all. That’s what thousands of indie devs have to contend with every day.
I think his argument comes down to, don’t hate the playa, hate the game. Far better for them to have made the game, as it clearly is a good game. The publisher coming in and shitting all over everything is what makes the situation bad. Hopefully, this can serve as more inspiration for indie devs (who do make most of my fav games) and maybe lead to more studios not accepting Sony as a publisher. I can’t fault Arrowhead for wanting to make what they love, but I can hope Sony burns to the ground never to rise again.
You’re talking like this was premeditated by the development studio…is that really the case?
Unless there’s evidence that AH got a special deal, there’s no chance they didn’t know this was an eventual requirement.
I’ve been an engineer in the AA/AAA games industry for almost 2 decades, my job often involves assessing the technical feasibility of games that big publishers like Sony want to invest in/ acquire.
Someone somewhere at AW agreed to shove PSN sign-in requirements in the deal, hoping it would blow over like many games before. (e.g rocket league / epic account debacle). Now the devs are sorry it’s not working out and say “their hands are tied”, but they must have known this was coming. There are way too many legal ramifications for this to be a random power-move by Sony.
Edit: sony apparently lifted the requirement today
I’m gonna be honest. It didn’t matter to them at the time. Look at it. They made their game and we all played it and loved it. For that time they were on cloud nine. They definitely got what they wanted, for a moment anyway. I can’t say I wouldn’t end up in the same situation if I was ever more than a shit dev.
Edit: but to add, I’d put huge banners in game saying it was a requirement at login. As far as I know I was never bothered in game for it. And if I was it was too easy to click and ignore.
I agree with you that they most likely needed the money to do what they wanted to do at that scale.
But I think my point still stands. Because it is a deal with the devil in the most literal sense that is possible. You get to your goal faster, easier or at all but in the end you have to ask yourself if the price you paid for that was worth it when the devil comes collecting. That is the moral of the fictional Storys, isn’t it?
But to add to this. I think we, as consumers, aren’t completely innocent either. Buying only the best looking, 1000 hours, other buzzword games. This undeniably sends a message to indie devs which can lead to people making self harming decisions.
One could argue that we got groomed to want that. And I do. All those blockbuster-games that were made under gruesome conditions are unsustainable. But we didn’t knew that. We thought that they were the new normal.
But now we know better. This is just normal if you walk over corpses to get to your goal. And if we want developers that value our time and mental health, then we should value developers time and mental health in return.
Which means showing them that we will buy games that are not those 10 million dollar productions. And that we will measure the quality of the game compared to the resources that went into that particular game and not compared to a game that had an unholy amount of resources to burn through.
In the end we need to find a way to cut out all the rich people who came into the gaming industry as it broke into mainstream, who are throwing their weight/money around and bully everybody into submission.
And that needs strength of character. It means not buying the new shiny thing that we have seen an add for the hundredth time today, no matter how much we want that. It means not taking that deal which will make that problem go away quicker.
If gaming has taught us anything, it is how to prevail against overwhelming forces. That it takes compassion, companionship, a bit of anger and sacrifices.
If we haven’t learned that, why the fuck are we even playing.
Or make a game that doesn’t rely on those resources. I was considering getting this game when I got a system that could handle it. I’m gonna stick to my single player indie stuff.
This is like saying to any sort of person involved in commercial agriculture “don’t buy a John Deere tractor if you don’t like their draconic business practices.”
Like… there’s not really many other choices if you want to make a game that can do simultaneous cross-platform networked multiplayer and want to be able to launch on any console.
I mean, unless you want them making something that has massive difficulty coming to console… like maybe Lethal Company is the only recent example I can think of that’s a small non-major publisher-backed title that has networked 4-player multiplayer… and even then i’m not sure what sort of challenges that dev had when trying to implement any sort of netcode for gameplay.
Funny. I’m in thew ag sector and I would not recommend anyone buy a NEW John Deere tractor. Not unless you have the skill to flash the tractor firmware.
My peak multiplayer era was from then Arena shooters were kill. I don’t touch Live Service games because of what we’re seeing now. This game was going to be my first real try at one once I got a system that could play it as a lot of people were commending how it avoided the pitfalls of other Live Service games.
Just give me a game with a map editor and the ability to self host servers. The community itself will take care of the rest.
simultaneous cross-platform networked multiplayer and want to be able to launch on any console.
Quake 3 Arena came out in 1999 and has versions for AmigaOS 4, Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Mac OS X, Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, iOS. There’s even fewer differences between PC and console hardware now a days.
This is the situation we’re in, even if you don’t like it. Yes, communities can take care of a lot. Yet for so many people the creation process and love of a product is why they create, not the money. I cannot blame the devs for wanting their game to reach as many people as possible. Nor can I blame Sony for wanting to make money, without that desire we wouldn’t have as many opportunities to play amazing titles as we do, though we can absolutely blame the way that money is made.
So perhaps you may have gone a different route. Maybe it would have worked, maybe not. Maybe many of us only recognize John Deere, and maybe people in the industry know of alternatives. Point is, I am hesitant to blame devs for nearly anything nowadays. Because this isn’t 1999, these titles aren’t for the PS1, Dreamcast, or even PS2 or original Xbox. It’s 2024 my dude and they had to make a choice: Get the resources, finagle some barely working alternative, or get help. I think many of us would have done the same.
Go shit on the big companies who are almost always the problem. Everyone else, man… they’re just making the shit they want because many of them love the process. We’re lucky we see so many projects reach the light of day, especially when for every successfully finished one I’d bet there are a 100 which are scrapped part way through.
What’s the difference to the end user? I’m supporting indie devs by buying their retro shooters. Asking for server software and map editors don’t hurt the the devs. It hurts the stock investors that demand the line goes up.
What I don’t buy are Live Service games. This game was going to be my first in a while after being burned the few times I’ve tried before, but Sony thought they could fuck around.
The idea that there’s a high amount of technician problems that need to be overcome to achieve crossplay though is nonsense. Just pick an engine with proven netcode and go from there. The biggest issue would be whatever red tape the console manufactures put up.
Have you tried Splitgate? They came out with a Forge-like map editor last year, and the gameplay is basically Halo mixed with Portal. It’s pretty fun and totally F2P. The only things you can buy are cosmetics.
Welp, you just gave me a new game to check out!
I mean netcode for pc-to-pc games at least isn’t really rocket science. I’m not as familiar with the crossplay aspect, but I’d hazard a guess that it is only difficult because console manufacturers have locked multiplayer networking behind their own subscription services. I can understand why they went the route they did, but maybe crossplay is overvalued if the cost is stuff like this.
what’s your solution for online matchmaking in a squad shooter?
Community hosted servers worked pretty damn well for a very long time, and aren’t reliant upon large amounts of infrastructure to continue being playable. In fact, I can still go play almost every game from that era that was good enough to maintain a player base without issue. Deep Rock Galactic seems to do alright without matchmaking, for a more modern game.
How do you propose bootstrapping a dedicated community? Genuinely asking, is the plan for there to be a dev-hosted service for a while until the community either develops or fails to develop, then to hand it off?
The developers can host a few servers, sure, that’s an option. If that’s the method they take, they also release what’s known as a dedicated server utility, that allows anyone to launch a dedicated server on their machine, or to rent out a server in a hosting center. You can find this model in games such as Counter-Strike, Quake, Unreal, and some of the Battlefields.
This allows for the community to self police, and people will naturally end up in a community that fits their preferences, and rude or toxic players will quickly find themselves banned from the majority of servers and be forced to change their behavior or play a different game. Players can modify server settings, or make entirely new game types that the developers may not have thought about or wouldn’t have the resources to create, and people can create tools that allow servers to easily moderate their servers, and elect moderators and admins from within the community for when they’re not online. This also allows for developers to negate the need to be able to host millions of players, and when the game dies, if it does, all they have to host is a Master Server list.
——
Another option, especially for games with small groups of people is to allow the game to be hosted live by one of the players in the squad or group. This is called peer-to-peer servers. In this case, and can either be done by “hosting” the game server and waiting for or inviting players, or by having the game monitor latency and automatically migrate to the best host based on connection and distance. Deep Rock uses the first of these two options, whoever starts the game becomes the host, and stays that until they close the server or quit the game. In this instance, devs host no servers except the master server list, allowing even the smallest of devs to be able to handle millions of people playing their game simultaneously without any real increase in their server costs.
Typically, for smaller squad based games, like Deep Rock, this is the better option, while for larger player per match games like battlefield, the former is the better option. In both instances, players choose from a list of available servers in a menu and load in from there. You can check out Deep Rock Galactic or the Diablo 2 Remaster to see what a server list looks like.
? Open server browser and whatever matchmaking system. Matchmaking doesn’t require the game be Live Service. Despite recent actions by Epic, running a Master Server for listing available games doesn’t actually cost that much. If you’re asking about Stat Tracking, I couldn’t care about that if you paid me. I’m sure you could track that reliably on a server by server basis. Maybe have different communities that trust each other have a Stat Network.
So many threads about Hello Games (No Man’s Sky) and other Sony backed titles being “victims”. They knew what they were doing,
Highly recommend the Internet Historian video about no man’s sky.
Also that game is really awesome now
Highly recommend the Internet Historian video about no man’s sky.
I wouldn’t, that dude’s a nazi
If you don’t go public with your company, some other company will go public, and buy your company or your customers from under you with the money they got from Wall Street. There are some companies that can try and resist, but the field tilts against them.
When you own something and someone comes to offer you money to buy it, you have this thing called “No” you can say, and then they don’t buy it. It’s a pretty neat hack. I learned it from Gaben.
Epic is trying to IPO and has all kinds of investors. It tried to undermine Valve by buying out its partners by just spraying money at them for exclusives - you know, “disrupt” the industry. Steam prevails because they are real good at what they do, and they had a head start, but it takes a Gaben to not sell out, a good team and a lot of luck to manage that. Steam is playing against a tilted field is what I’m saying, and is one of the few players who successfully are managing it. They are the exception.
Yes, notice how the person who owns the thing gets to decide to sell or not to sell it. Wild concept, I know.
The point is that you can say no to selling it, but for that to work you need to:
- Actually own a deciding majority of the thing
- Have a good enough product to resist your business partners (eg. game developers) being paid with investor money to switch over to you, sapping value from your product.
The point is that if Steam wasn’t so much over the competition, Epic could have taken market share over with the exclusive deal shenanigans, or publishers could have started up their own marketplaces. The biggest reason for that is that Steam was early to the party and could get to a good product before others tried to enter the market.
If Steam didn’t have that, people would have switched over to Epic and publisher stores, and we’d be bitching over Steam not having any good games on it because of backroom deals.
i think you are right in your assessment but I would argue that consistency also is a crucial factor.
It may be harder because of the things you say but in the end the people who invest money (into everything but the games themselves) are just in to make money.
They will try to squeeze as much money out of the customers without losing them. Or at least without losing Profit. Losing customers and still making more money is a valid strategy it seems.
People will notice that. Some earlier then others but it will get noticed and then they leave. To the next thing.
You are right with the headstart etc. so as a Dev you should accept your limitations and instead focus on the things that you can control (to an extent) and that is planing the budget in a way that you can be consistent.
And when people are looking for the next thing, you will be there better then before. Then you got customers and an image that seperates you from the rest.
And people will remember.
Yes, when you own the thing you can say no to selling it. Why is this point so hard to understand? Even if you don’t have a monopoly or even if your product sucks you get to say no.
The most depressing thing I’ve seen related to this topic. A small team that worked incredibly hard were lucky enough to achieve the impossible, and now they watch without any control as it is taken from them, for no other reason than greed.
KSP’s original team must feel the same way
You were right though. And it’s only because we were all so furious about what they were doing and raised such a fuss about it that they decided to renege on that.
There are a lot of console exclusives that I like. I think an argument can be made that companies like Sony and Microsoft can add funding and support to make games better, sacrificing profits for console value.
With Xbox failing for another console, putting out half-baked products, and buying IPs instead of creating new ones, I’m worried that Sony will just start maximizing profits.
Sony brought out a console that was almost impossible to buy and has no games. Now they try to inflate their numbers by forcing people to make psn accounts. Fuck them. Not that i ever planned to buy a playstation, but i make sure to stay away from everything sony related
I mean it’s entirely possible this was for crossplay or cross save … I doubt this is about the number of accounts created in a given year.
I play FFXIV and Warframe. I don’t have a PSN account and crossplay is fully functioning with both Playstation and Xbox users. Heck, Warframe is even available on Switch and crossplay works just fine with those users without any account linking.
crossplay is fully functioning
Well I’m sure they’re working on fixing that
They just gave to us with last 5 years lol
Good shit don’t last?
Yes, but presumably you have accounts with those games? If not, you can play with people on those platforms but you can’t play with specific people on those platforms (e.g. a friend on the platform – which is the bigger deal in my mind with crossplay).
Like, the PSN account is the equivalent of a Bungie, Paradox, or Crytek account, something that allows the game developer to maintain a cross platform friends list? No?
I suppose they could use a room code invite system for crossplay but that’s way less convenient.
I never got into Hell Divers because it legit would not run on my system so I’m not super up on all the details but that’s been my impression of why they might want it.
Either way… With all the negative feedback I’m surprised they’re not screaming from the rooftops “we’ll do something else!” I understand Sony is tying their hands as well though.
The devs that made Helldivers MUST have been aware of Sony’s mandatory PSN policy. This is just a sob story and throwing Sony under the bus at this point.
This would have been less of an issue if it remained enforced from the start. Re-enforcing it after demonstrating it clearly works without makes it look scummy and greedy. People could also easily refund if they didn’t agree. Now its too late.
For a lot of people it now looks as: now that the game is a success we want to collect everybody their data as well so we can make even more money.
Tbh, other games just require a 3rd party account without linking them explicitly. This requires an actual link which ( likely ) gives them access to a lot of your steam information which you’d rather NOT give to a corp that doesn’t seem capable at guarding people their data.
People can still get a refund. It just has to be manually reviewed and deemed justified instead of just being okayed by the automated system.
That is true, but it I’d an additional hurdle. Sony is playing it smart.
They made an announcement and had a bunch of Outrage now. If they had just enforced it people would have refunded on mass probably. Now people can still actually play.
I’m guessing steam might be less eager to refund when the actual deadline hits. I also feel like a lot of people will just cave and link/create the account.
That’s definitely what Sony is expecting. And it’s also what I’m hearing from friends. That they dont want to, but that it’s a fun game ans they’d rather keep playing with friends.
The thing is that it was enforced right at the beginning. There was a period where you couldn’t play without a PSN account, before they made it optional while Sony rolled out more infrastructure to handle the player numbers.
It’s an issue now because it wasn’t stated clearly enough and loudly enough that not having a PSN account was only temporary, and I think Arrowhead screwed up because they didn’t know that PSN accounts aren’t available everywhere and so were selling the game in places that couldn’t play it unknowingly.
Steam is usually pretty good about refunds and has apparently already pulled the game from the store in places where you can’t make a PSN account, so I imagine they’re planning to refund the game. This looks like the kind of thing that could be class-action lawsuit worthy.
The thing is that it was enforced right at the beginning. There was a period where you couldn’t play without a PSN account, before they made it optional while Sony rolled out more infrastructure to handle the player numbers.
That’s what I heard as well. I was a bit dumbfounded when I read that it suddenly became mandatory.
I think Arrowhead screwed up because they didn’t know that PSN accounts aren’t available everywhere and so were selling the game in places that couldn’t play it unknowingly.
I think this is the most plausible reasoning. It’s what I’m thinking as well, and also what seems to appear through the CM. In which case it is a screwup on their end. Though in 2024 I do get you’d expect people to be able make an account anywhere in the world for a company like Sony.
Steam is usually pretty good about refunds and has apparently already pulled the game from the store in places where you can’t make a PSN account, so I imagine they’re planning to refund the game. This looks like the kind of thing that could be class-action lawsuit worthy.
If they did that’s good on them, but not wholly their responsibility. It is a good move to prevent new purchases they’d have to refund anyway ( or until there is clarity on what will happen in those regions ). I would kind of expect the publisher to do this once they figured out this was possible though :/
I’ve had three refund requests rejected so far (~10h playtime).
You have to put in an actual support ticket. There’s examples of people who wrote something like “The publusher is forcing me to sign up to a 3rd party and I do not consent”
Re-enforcing it after demonstrating it clearly works without makes it look scummy and greedy.
Day 1 policy was that PSN linking was mandatory. Arrowhead execs knew this. Players who bought the game in non-PSN countries should have gotten a pop-up banner saying as much instead of the payment screen.
Im not even sure if the game would have taken off at all. Psn servers couldn’t handle the load which is Why it was disabled ( temporarily ) in the first place.
A lot of people, including myself, never even linked the psn because I could skip it.
Sony bailed them out when their servers went down in February by sending engineers to assist. It makes sense that Sony wants a favor in return.
Sounds like a mobster kind of favor. If that is true, then it sounds like Sony took advantage of Arrowhead weakness.
In what world is that a mobster deal? The game initially released saying that PSN accounts were required, this is in every store front description. The devs clarified that was not enforced due to technical issues at release time.
Sony funded the game in the first place too. They didn’t take advantage of a moment of weakness. This is all contract stuff agreed upon long before release.
It absolutely sucks ass, but this is an incredibly basic business deal. Sony stepped in to provide server support because it’s Sony’s game, and Sony makes money off it. Now that the game is more stable, they likely went back to Arrowhead and said “Hey, it’s time you sorted out the contracted requirement for PSN accounts. You agreed to this.” and here we are.
Maybe Sony told Arrowhead that PSN accounts could be made by everyone. Maybe Arrowhead thought they could push back on the requirement after the game came out without them required. We likely will never know what went on behind closed doors.
But this isn’t shady, just absolutely monumentally fucking shitty.
Unfortunately, as long as refunds are handled reasonably well like they were with Cyberpunk 2077’s PS4 release, gamers won’t really have a leg to stand on. It’ll just be complaining that they can’t play something they wanted to play, after getting a number of hours in it for effectively free.
Sony announcing the PSN requirement without detailing what unsupported country purchasers should do is at least nearly shady. Dumbasses
Or… think like an adult… they have support contracts in place.
Why do you care that a company as scummy as Sony is getting thrown under the bus? Outside of this fiasco Helldivers was a pretty great game. If throwing Sony under the bus gets this decision reversed literally EVERYONE wins, and honestly, as the Publisher, thats probably one of the things that comes with the title, taking the heat for shitty ass decisions that could otherwise tank a game
My argument here is that Arrowhead is not some great dev that is helpless.
I didn’t think that’s necessarily true. They were contracted to make the game by Sony and when they started probably had no idea it would even be sold on PC.
Sony just did a Unity here. How the hell can you ruin such a beloved game in a single cheer stupid move, for the purpose of just gathering data. It’s beyond me.
I feel like Sony did a Sony here.
I’m old enough to remember when Sony shipped 22 million malware infested CDs because they were worried about Napster.
Also earlier this year they stole purchased content from millions of their customers
Also they bait and switched everyone with the advertising for the last of us pt 2.
I am unaware of this one. Can you share what is this about, or share the relevant search keywords?
Spoilers ahead for the game:
Yeah so if you look at the pre launch trailers
spoiler
Joel is portrayed as being a part of the journey of the game. He dies in the first “chapter”. They went so far as to switch a character out for him to make it look like he would be alive for the game. And then they try to make you sympathetic to the person who killed him by making you play as them for half the game. :::
It makes my blood boil how bad pt 2 is after the first one is one of the best games ever.
Yikes. I am yet to play the game but I knew Joel dies in the second one, as it almost felt like a setup for his death was built-in.
However, I wasn’t aware of Sony going to such lengths to misdirect the game’s players.
Thanks a lot for sharing the context.
P.S. you might want to fix the formatting for the spoilers as it is currently not hidden.
I tried my best. I can’t tell when it works
Your spoiler syntax is incorrect (or not working on Jerboa).
I clicked the formatting button on boost…dunno why it ain’t working. Thnx I’ll mess with it.
I dunno why it won’t work. I put the content between the tags and formatting with spaces and without. No dice
spoiler
You need to put the text after the two spoiler words, not between them, no? The first sets up the tag, the second is the name
Fancy words for fancy people
Like so, non?
That’s not working on boost for me looking at it
Not just any old malware, but insecure rootkits that allowed ANYONE to have total control over the system with their own malware above the OS-level with no way to even know the malware was there.
Did that actually break computers? I remember hearing about it at the time but I also don’t remember having a problem. I didn’t think I took any real precautions either, I just carried on as per and nothing ever happened.
the starforce driver sometimes prevented some exotic cd drives from working or caused bsods while playing audio cds, but the cases were relatively rarenvm i didn’t realize they were talking about a different kind of drm
Sony being scumbags? Who saw that coming? They definitely don’t have that reputation…
Saving this comment on my Memory Stick Pro Duo
It’s not fair the developers take the heat for this. We should learn to find the right people to complain to.
That’s why Spitz said to be angry in the Steam reviews instead of their Discord. People mistakenly took it as a dismissive whine, but that was actually a very important comment that I feel many people overlooked. Sony ain’t gonna do anything differently unless there is actual, tangible damage to their brand. That damage doesn’t come from chat rooms, that comes from storefront reviews.
Keep the bad reviews coming if you want any hope of Sony relenting.
Doing a pretty good job so far
lmao rekt
I really hope Steam doesn’t consider this “review bombing” and take down such reviews. The response is entirely justified.
Good guy Valve appears to be quietly figuring out refunds for folks, even though almost all are above the hours played limit
Reminder that the hours played rule is only a limit for the automated refund system. You can request a refund for a game at any time for any reason. It just has to be manually reviewed and deemed justified by a person.
I wonder if it’s more damage control, why are they allowing games to be sold in markets where the mandatory linking wasn’t possible?
Steam should know this limitations, the devs knew about the requirements from Sony, it was listed on the store page since it was listed.
Apparently they recently updated the store to no longer sell in unavailable psn regions.
Its probably BOTH damage control AND Valve being staffed by PC nerds who ALSO dont want toxic console BS infecting the PC Sphere
Every single one of those reviews missed multiple warnings about the required account linking.
They are false reviews by definition, the store had the requirements listed, and there was a splash screen you had to accept when loading the game.
Every single one of those reviews is someone who made an uneducated purchase, they shouldn’t be defended for their willful ignorance.
Steam shouldn’t sell products in a country where you cannot use them
You’re absolutely correct, how many of those reviews are pointing the blame correctly? I haven’t seen a single one yelling at Steam or arrowhead for selling the game in these markets that wouldn’t be able to play the game.
There’s no way Steam is 100% in charge of what regions a game is available in. The publisher absolutely has a say in where, and if it was available in all regions at the start that was on purpose.
Steam just limited the purchase to right markets today, so yes they are.
Multiple being TWO at most, one nestled in the effectively credits section of the Steam page which almost never contains information pertainant to the purchase of the game, and another nestled in the “Skip over this usually optional content” settings after you have already installed the game. I didnt even know this game was linked to PlayStation in ANY WAY until this whole fiasco. Its only uneducated because it was HIDDEN.
I’m guy buy it just to get a refund just for you
EULA roofie-ing shouldn’t be defended
This isn’t about Sony “relenting”, Arrowhead needs Sony’s PSN support network to deal with support tickets: it’s the whole reason Arrowhead signed up with a publisher instead of self publishing and developing an international workforce of support agents. I hate Sony as much as the next person but let’s be honest, Arrowhead needs Sony and PSN, and it makes sense given they want to spend their time making games rather than getting into being a publisher and help desk.
Ultimately, Arrowhead should have made it a day one requirement and delisted the game on Steam for every country that lacks PSN support. Instead Arrowhead and Sony decided to let it ride and enjoy the sales and accompanying popularity.
And now because of that the PSN requirement is a poison pill. If that was a requirement from the get go, I likely would have reluctantly agreed to it. It now being retroactively enforced means if Sony doesnt relent, I and likely a lot of others will abandon the game and do what we can to get a refund, which will end up costing them a lot of money
It was a requirement from the beginning but it was not enforced due to the initial server issues. It was always there…
Not saying it’s a good thing but a lot of the discourse I see online seems to overlook that crucial detail and imply this was pulled out of the blue with no warning.
Yeah as if they had no idea what’s going on. They just thought they get away because they played the “cool” developers as long as they could
If the high-ups at Arrowhead knew and made that decision anyway, it’s squarely on them, full stop.
Generally publishers handle storefront and distribution
Sure, but if I put myself in their shoes, what better options did they have?
Communicate better? Not sell the game in markets where it wouldn’t work. The limitation was something from the get go.
Easy: Don’t be a greedy asshole and don’t sell in regions with no PSN support.
I can fully understand the agreement between the two parties was “also requires a psn account” while AH being completely unaware that getting a PSN account is so restrictive.
Sony likely didnt explicitly add that the game cannot be sold in regions where they can’t create an account.
Edit: or the didn’t explicitly state which regions a psn account CAN be created in.
Push their scummy politics at launch so people know what they get into or not.
It was a bit frightening for me to see how quickly the mob turned on AH during this fiasco and just how much vitriol and propaganda has been generated on the subreddit like this is any other ingame operation with the associated shitposting… except this time it could very well shape the futures of real people and fate of the company for years to come.
Unfortunately this is the only way to accomplish anything. If there wasn’t an outcry like this both AH and sony would just ignore any criticism and move on until it gets buried and forgotten. It’s a world of extremes and the scales could have easily tipped into the other side, with people rightfully complaining about these shitty practices but getting ridiculed for complaining about just another account or sth.
And that second option already happened with this exact game when people expressed concern over the DRM, which is designed like a rootkit, giving it essentially full control/access to your system while it’s running.
Sony backtracked! The PSN plan is off!
This is good, but I think there needs to be some regulations. Companies keep introducing all sorts of anti-consumer practices to fuck over users (not only in gaming land). Now it got (for the time being) reverted, but the trust has (again) been broken.
Consumers (should) buy something based on what has been presented at the point of time. If that changes in the future with negative effects for consumers, than this should get investigated and ultimately penalized. Companies have become too big and too powerful, which can lead to shit like this
This. I’ll forever be mad at Rockstar for removing songs from their games, because their licenses expired. But it’s cheaper to just “update” the game so they can continue selling it without the songs, instead of renewing contracts. Oh, you bought the game before that? Too bad, update to continue playing
I’ve heard that this happened with Scrubs (and possibly other TV shows) leading to the original box set of DVDs having different songs playing in the background than the streaming versions.
Yay ! I don’t know what happened honestly other than drama suddenly everywhere, but I am glad its all over.
Long story short: Sony decided (after sales!) to make it impossible for players to get into their already purchased copy of Helldivers 2 without a PlayStation Network account. Originally, players could just use their Steam accounts.
The problem, aside from bloating and privacy concerns, is that there are many regions in which PlayStation Network isn’t even available, meaning hundreds of thousands of gamers would just be locked out of the game they bought.
Now, after immense pressure (players immediately dumped game reviews into oblivion, and bombarded the developers, forcing them to renegotiate with Sony) it was decided not to make PlayStation Network linking mandatory.
I was on Steam, but never got the message honestly. Maybe my account was already linked.
would just be locked out of the game they bought.
Well I am gla the got the bullet out of their foot.
Take Two interactive is really lucky this happened right after they sacked the KSP2 team, otherwise people would be talking about that instead.
I’m not sure ksp is popular/broad-based enough to generate much of an uproar. I’m unhappy about it, but most people just see another headline.
And Roll7
what ?
This statement reminds me awfully of the Living World Season 4 Story in Guild Wars 2.
And yes, before people become angry about this comparison: I said “reminds me”, not “the same as” or anything else.
Explanation (hard spoiler!):
spoiler
In essence, you do everything you can, unite different people for the fight that determines the fate of the world. But… you lose and that was the only chance. You barely survive with your friends; but not all.
https://youtu.be/jk5nfHxyQno?t=7220
The Commander (you) are asked what to do (because you always had some kind of answers; a plan; every time). But since this was the only hope, you say “I don’t know.”
That line hit hard when I played it. It’s rare to see protagonists acknowledge being at the end of their wits and have no clue what to do in face of impending doom.
It really did hit hard.
At least for me I could get into the next story part after I was like “wtf just happened” but for players at the time of release this was the latest part of the story and they were stuck with this awful last line for week(s).
I don’t know whether this is sad or really funny.
Comedy is just tragedy + time
To be fair to them, I don’t know either.
Patient gaming for the win.
Does that really apply to a live service game?
Like I get your sentiment, and I agree…but waiting for a game like this to die and then going see it wasn’t worth it good thing I waited doesn’t make any sense in a general way. Like imagine waiting for destiny servers to shut down in the future and say good thing I didn’t waste my time. Like yeah of course it does when the player base moves on. The point was to play it before that happened.
Like…youre right…but whats the point of saying anything. You don’t like live service games because of the risk of stuff like this happening. It’s not like a no man’s sky thing where you wait for them to patch and offer discounts
Yes I would say so. If game doesn’t show itself able to stay around for years and shuts down early like other live services games then I’d personally have considered it a waste of money due to it becoming unplayable compared to non live service games.
Most successful live services games are free too, so that’s an additional uphill battle for paid live service games. It depends on if someone is willing to spend full retail money on what may be a temporary experience. I’m not one of those.
For paid online only games I don’t rush in. If it seems like it will stick around after steep discounts that’s when I’d be fine with spending money. If it dies before then I’m glad I didn’t waste money on it. No need to be offended that I take the same approach to paid live service games as I do regular games. You can choose to pay for early access if the experience is worth it too you, and if it is worth it you should.
Oh I’m not offended, I don’t play hell divers. I just associate patient gamers mentality with discounts and all dlcs and patches included. So I wanted to know what you said that for
They devs say the knew of the requirement from Sony and it was also part of the store requirement since it was listed, so why would they list it for sale in those countries? It seems Steam should have some limitation in place on their end, and the Dev picks sales on Steam, not the publisher.
Theres shit to go to everyone here, not just Sony in this case. And no one seems to want to accept personal responsibility for not reading the game requirements and ignoring the splash screen when you first loaded the game. Everyone who bought and missed all the warning flags should also take a look back at themselves before complaining about something that was always going to be required and was at the very start at launch.
Did the CEO of Sony write this? A bait and switch scam is fine apparently, as long as there’s some legalese to protect the company in there.
It seems Steam should have some limitation in place on their end, and the Dev picks sales on Steam, not the publisher.
Then what is the job of the publisher? To perpetrate scams it seems, because seemingly the devs published the game just fine all by themselves to Steam. If they didn’t do that right, the publisher suddenly has no responsibility to make sure that was distributed correctly? Whose job is it to ensure the product is published in line with their inevitable goals, we wonder.
so why would they list it for sale in those countries?
Because they botched the bait and switch. And now Valve is cleaning up Sony’s mess. Too bad they couldn’t clean up Sony’s mess of leaked customer data. I guess they can’t fix it but prevent the next one by making publishers agree up front that they can’t require data from players, in order to publish a game, but I digress.
no one seems to want to accept personal responsibility
No one should have to expect to be subject to a bait and switch scam in the first place. Which is what this clearly is, because if they were truly up front, they would have required the account on day one and had the appropriate region filters in place, so consumers could never be in this position.
Stop blaming the victims of corporate greed and scams; people should be able to reasonably enjoy things they paid for without being molested and exploited. Personal responsibility my ass when there should be laws to prevent this kind of thing in the first place.
A publisher in gaming bankrolls a lot of the costs and hurdles. Why do you think developers often use publishers? You think they just want to have a boss and give a cut of the profits away for nothing?
Steam and arrowhead both allowed the sale of the game in non-compatible markets.
Everyone is to blame in, it all depends on how you want to swing it.
I’m not defending any single entity, I literally blamed them all lmfao.
But of course someone is a shill when they go against your bias and narrative…. Give your head a fucking shake.
Sony ripped you off here, so did Steam and so did arrowhead. Arrowhead is kind of being the worst here throwing everyone else under the bus instead of owning up to their mistake and sever lack of communication though. They are trying a strong arm tactic now that they got caught with their own hand in the jar.
Steam and arrowhead both allowed the sale of the game in non-compatible markets.
No. Sony handles the publishing on Steam. Sony set the countries allowed for sale – neither Steam, which is only the platform, nor arrowhead, who did not publish the game, have any responsibility in the matter. You’re taking away blame from Sony which is the single culprit for that mistake
against your bias and narrative
If being a regular person who just wants to enjoy the things they pay for in peace is bias, and being fed up with this crap is narrative, what does that make you?
Stop trying to normalize exploitation by greed, and stop normalizing the acceptance of it.
Just because Sony can manufacture a bait and switch with some boilerplate doesn’t mean they should. Regular people should not be blamed for being exploited when purchasing in good faith. The developers made a game that works, clearly, and Steam delivered it, so they are culpable, but if Sony can stop their horseshit, and this all goes away, it is clear who really is to blame.
Was it actually for sale in countries that don’t allow psn accounts, or did people spoof locations to buy the game from those countries? I’ve been trying to find this out the past two days and still haven’t gotten confirmation that the game was or is for sale on steam in a place like Egypt. All I’ve seen is people saying it was for sale there, but it’s all coming from assuming it is, because others also not from any of those countries have made the same claim.
So; can anyone from a region that doesn’t support PSN confirm if they were able to buy HD2 with their correct region selected? I just genuinely want to know, because if so, I would think at least those individuals should be able to get a refund, even though they ignored all the warnings about the psn requirements.
The game was allowed for sale worldwide, Sony changed the restrictions today on the steam store, delisting the game in 177 countries where it was previously available
deleted by creator
Steam article May answer that question
I’m not really sure that does answer the question, actually. I think that’s a bit different of a question.
and the Dev picks sales on Steam, not the publisher.
Do you happen to have a source for this? It was my understanding that the publisher handled all distribution. Hence the name. And if I’m wrong, I’d like to fix my misunderstanding.
I never even had the option to skip linking accounts. Granted I bought the game within the first few weeks of release.
The option to skip was there 20 minutes after launch until now.
It said required in the popup, but still had a skip button with no consequences.
Oh I guess I missed that. I wonder if I can unlink.
Open minded but not sure I agree: is it really on the consumers to ensure that a product won’t completely stop working for them?
Ya ArrowHead knew what they were doing and what was going on. They signed up for it. There’s no way this wasn’t on their risk matrix ahead of time with the resolution already scoped out.
It’s extra funny that not even a week ago they took shots at tarkov.
Can’t you make a free PSN account from any country? I know people in countries with no PSN using US PSN account, without any VPN or anything. You just set your country to US, or UK.
Yes you could. Then you Break TOS and Ban you, so still you cant play. Thats the issue (and ofc dataleaks every year)
Well, 3 data leaks in the last 10 years, at least one of which wasn’t their fault at all. This change is bad for several reasons but “data leaks” isn’t really one of them.
There are probably workarounds sure, but they shouldn’t be the default. Keep up the pressure on these suits so they know what their stupid decisions cause
Workarounds get banned. So PSN gets to keep your money but also denies you the product that you bought.
If buying isn’t owning, the high seas isn’t stealing. Drink up me hearties yo fucking ho.
I agree, but that doesn’t apply to multiplayer with server side verification and matchmaking. It’s notoriously difficult, near impossible to pirate exclusively multiplayer games.
Personally, I think the best way to protest this is to continue to play and use the servers to the point of overload, but no one buy anymore super credits. Make Sony continue to pour money into the servers but get no return as no one buys war bonds anymore. Would take ENORMOUS coordination, but Sony not getting paid by this cash cow yet having to still put money into their servers would hit them where it hurts, line go down.
Pipe dream, but if everyone just didn’t buy in game content for a little bit, I think they would see the effect. As of right now though, they don’t care, because “consumers will pay for anything”
Do you know what Sony and its stakeholders would see? High player counts and growing active PSN userbase.
The best way to protest is to stop playing, request a refund, and rate the game negatively everywhere. Arrowhead is now talking to Sony about dropping the mandatory linked account, showing them that they’ve fucked the golden goose will get their attention better than trying to strain the infrastructure.
Arrowhead also knowingly sold a game in markets where it wouldn’t be possible to play the game, even at launch with the restrictions in place you could buy the game in these markets. Steam also allowed these games to be sold in markets where they knew the restrictions wouldn’t allow them to play the game.
They fucked up and are now trying to deflect blame from themselves, yeah Sony is shitty, but arrowhead and steam both saw dollar bills and tried taking them.
Edit, if anything, Sony can turn this around that Arrowhead and Steam strong armed their way out of the contract requirements. Steam and arrowhead should take the fall and costs in this one if that’s the case.
Or, Arrowhead didn’t know that only certain regions of the world can make PSN accounts and Steam isn’t directly involved in the creation of any individual store page unless they have reason to be - like limiting the regions Helldivers 2 is sold in after the fact.
You and I both have no way of knowing whether or not Arrowhead knew that they were selling their game in regions where people wouldn’t be able to play it, but I could totally see it being the case where Sony didn’t tell them and it just never occurred to them that that was a possibility because it’s not an issue where the company is located. The PSN account requirement was in the game and listed on the store page from day one; it was only temporarily made optional due to how overloaded the servers were at launch. Arrowhead themselves said they expected an active userbase of around 10k people.
And if Steam is anything like Etsy, then the most involvement they have with setting up any individual store page is their automated systems like the profanity filter. I run a business on Etsy and they have no direct involvement with any of my store besides providing the hosting platform and systems to create the storefront and listings (as well as backend systems like tracking pageviews and such). The only time that they’d get involved personally would be if something like this happened.
Regardless of where the blame lies, I think Arrowhead are the only ones who will suffer unless Sony relents on the PSN account requirement. The money for refunds isn’t gonna come out of Valve’s pockets, and I can’t imagine Sony forking over the cash now that they’ve taken their cut.
Arrowhead didn’t know that only certain regions of the world can make PSN accounts
Ignorance? Really?
It would go without saying that they would be informed of returns, so after the first return of the game in one of those markets that defense would no longer be valid.
Arrowhead has no excuse for not educating themselves before agreeing to a contract, and for continuing to sell it after obviously knowing about the issue for months.
Except that people didn’t realize that the account was mandatory until this announcement because they didn’t read the store page nor the message you get the first time you launch the game, and Steam probably doesn’t tell devs why a game was refunded.
The PSN account was mandatory when you first logged in on day one, but was made optional later that day due to server load while Sony rolled out extra infrastructure. Why would they knowingly sell a game in 20 countries that would just refund it 10 minutes after first launching it?
Why would they knowingly sell a game in 20 countries that would just refund it 10 minutes after first launching it?
Simple answer greed. Sony is the most greedy and bullshit company ever. Proprietary ports, storage media, software. Never following open standards. They know of all the people they have screwed over won’t ask for refund. Even if a big chunk do ask majority of thise demands will be rejected. All companies are willing to take that small a risk.
I don’t disagree there, I was talking about Arrowhead specifically. I’ve now seen people saying that Sony is the one in charge of the Steam store page, and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Sony had done it knowingly.
Why are you blaming Sony for Arrowheads greed here? Sony sucks, but it’s arrowhead and steam in this case.
Why would they knowingly sell a game in 20 countries that would just refund it 10 minutes after first launching it?
Because the refunds stopped after the first day as you said, why would they stop a cash flow coming in knowing it would now no longer be refunded anymore?
And yes of course steam passes that information along, why would you claim they don’t?
Since posting, I’ve learned some extra context that may or may not be true but would be very relevant here. Supposedly, Sony are the ones in charge of the actual store page. Which would mean that it was their decision to have it listed in countries where you can’t make PSN accounts.
Meaning that there are two mistakes here: Sony knowingly listing it, and Arrowhead not making it clear that the optional account linking was temporary. The second of which the CEO of Arrowhead has already taken the blame for on Twitter.
I’d love some sauce with those claims.
That arrowhead and steam sold a game in markets that the game was restricted? Just go to the steam page I guess.
Steam also just today restricted the sales to the correct markets, they always had the capability it seems.
I don’t see Sony caring about reviews and refunds, they are the publisher, they will let the developer be the fall guy, walk away smelling like roses and go on to the next method of fleecing gamers. Bottom line is all that matters. They made their money off on Helldivers, they could hit the kill switch right now and be up. I just don’t see this ending well for arrowhead, and I see this blowing over for Sony, not even a footnote. I hope I’m wrong, I really do.
Apparently, they cared.
Make Sony continue to pour money into the servers
I work in IT. I can pretty much guarantee that server load for a game like this is nonexistent from a cost perspective. They’re not going to be using cloud services, they’re going to privately host because it’s way cheaper. Early days playercount woes were before they added more nodes to their solution. Whatever cost they had for servers is already paid. Electricity and facilities costs are whatever because they are paying it anyway. They can’t just fire the people maintaining their solution either but that’s also baby bucks compared to the money spent building this thing or marketing it.
Gaming protests of popular games never work unless the objective doesn’t alter the bottom line.
I’ma press X to doubt here.
They’re not going to be using cloud services
Job listing for back-end engineer at Arrowhead says:
- Cloud Engineering: Utilize Azure services to build and optimize cloud-based backend components and make use of monitoring tools to track live performance.
Our tech stack
- NET/C#, Docker, Kubernetes/AKS, Azure, SQL Server, CosmosDB, Redis, Grafana, Terraform
Early days playercount woes were before they added more nodes to their solution.
CEO said during the early day playercount woes:
It’s not a matter of money or buying more servers. It’s a matter of labour. We need to optimise the backend code. We are hitting some real limits.
They can’t just fire the people maintaining their solution either but that’s also baby bucks
A good back-end engineer is at least 100k. And a just-keep-the-lights-on crew is probably 3-4 of them.
FWIW: I also work in IT, on an IoT system that you might also assume has a “nonexistent” server cost. (I assure you, the cost exists.) I also used to work in game dev.
That said: Yeah, protesting by playing the game is a severely misguided notion.
I completely understand where you are coming from. Not being knowledgeable about IT infrastructure and how to host game servers, I was making assumptions based on how publishers are shutting down games that have low play count. Assuming it was a nominal amount of money to house and maintain servers for a game that generates no revenue, multiple servers for 100s of thousands of players that generates zero revenue would be noticeable. But if it’s just pennies, then it really would just be a drop in the bucket.
Sony should hurt in the bottom line for this, and I don’t see them caring about reviews and refunds, they will just move on to the next fleecing method.
