I bet it was the incoming refunds/lawsuits in the non-PSN countries that was the decision maker. The refunds or litigation wasn't worth the $$$. The normal gamers that were just angry didn't change shit. They are used to angry gamers, they don't care.
For me, who has no idea about this, why Sony was so forceful with adding that PSN integration and what it would mean for the gamers, that they were so angry about it?
Edit: ok looks like Louis explained the POV of gamer to me: https://youtu.be/I2VA0eum6w4 though I still don't understand what was the motivation for Sony to start this shit show.
huge demand and server load make linking psn for PC players buggy and difficult
psn requirements are disabled "temporarily" around that time to ease the load
the game becomes even more successful, tens of thousands of players buy and install it, without ever being prompted to make a psn account
Sony has wording in their PC requirements that said linking to psn is optional for PC users
now, months later, Sony decides they want more psn users for their metrics, and make a psn account mandatory retroactively
huge amounts of players feel duped out of their product, especially those from regions steam serves, but Sony doesn't, because they will essentially lose access to their product completely. Others are mistrustful of Sony's data protection record, they got hacked with disturbing frequency over the years, and dont want to give them their data on principle, especially with the knowledge that the game ran perfectly fine for months without psn
Players are up in arms, barraging the arrowhead (who were forced by Sony to do this) community managers with hate
players review bomb the absolute shit out of the game on steam, causing it to go from mostly positive to mixed over the course of a day
Sony half heartedly rolls back the requirement after a weekend of huge community backlash, poor press coverage, and depressed arrowhead CEO tweets
It is still a corporation. Think of them like sauron in lotr, a sort of evil giant you can successfully defy with concerted effort, but you can't really defeat them without throwing the ring into mount doom (destroying capitalism and intellectual property in this case).
Years of cynicism got jumped by this announcement. Alongside with the community feedback, gotta give kudos to Arrowhead for dragging their feet with Sony instead of mindlessly becoming their sockpuppet and prioritise community goodwill.
Team effort where I trust the devs and be far more wary of Sony.
That ship has sailed due to being present since release and most people being ok with an intrusive anticheat since that has an intended positive purpose.
Thank god, that was one of the more idiotic decisions in modern gaming history. Like the time the flappy bird dev took the game down right when it reached it's peak. I dunno if HD2 will really recover from this blow, that might have been the high water mark for the game. I will probably give it a whirl again sometime, though.
He didn't realize people were trolling when describing flappy bird as addictive. But I would beeline if you told me that the dev deleted the game because of Nintendo lawyers
Nice! Glad the devs listened and helped convince Sony they're dumbasses for this. I do hope Sony will realize this for their other games including Ghosts of Tsushima. Hell I hope all of these other dumbass publishers stop with the bullshit of external accounts and launches.
Still I'll add that I'll wait until there's and official announcement, after all it's still Sony and there may be some other side of the coin on this.
Yeah and I only want to buy it on PC for the MP expansion since I already played it on ps4 when it originally came out. So again, fingers crossed on that one but already wasn't going to buy it going in.
Yeah the reality was probably that someone thought it would be a good way to boost some numbers somewhere to justify their position or get a bonus for 'increasing the user count' or other nonsense.
I don’t think I’ve seen this happen since or before ID backpedaled on adding anti-cheat to DOOM Eternal, and even backpedaled on adding an entire multiplayer mode because the players hated the anti-cheat so much.
Leave it to the communities of hell divers to force corporations to bend to their will. Fuckin awesome man.
I suspect someone ran the numbers and realized they're likely to lose more money on reduced future sales and microtransactions than they would have gained through data scraping.
A win is a win, but don't fool yourself into believing Stony listens to anyone but the almighty dollar.
A little unfortunate that the first Helldivers game was review bombed as well, but looks like that even came out above with more positive reviews than the negative ones in the end:
Edit: more fun numbers.
Yesterday's number of Positive reviews: 2,217
Today's total positive reviews (at the time of this edit about 15 hours after PlayStation announced the news on twitter): 47,743
I really want to know why it was delayed in the first place. I’ve heard some rumors. One being the devs knew 6 months ahead but just messed up the deadline. Others said the servers were overloaded on launch. Does anyone know the answer? Maybe some sources?
It wasn't "delayed", it was temporarily waived. The function was there on launch and had the game not blown up it would have remained, and anyone not in psn regions would have simply refunded the game enthusiasts they learned of the requirement. Instead, because it got so big, the PSN linking was a part of what caused the really terrible server issues early on and so it was disabled. I don't have easy access to the messages but some of the CMs and the CEO both confirmed this - I think someone shared the messages a few days ago here on c/helldivers2.
Yeah i don't know. But i highly assume that they had no idea how popular the game would be and didn't care enough. Then they suddenly saw millions of potential psn users
Starting to think all the people who are so “upset” with Sony and AH (essentially refuse to change a review) are the same people who whine every update or push for the META… a toxic vocal minority… if you enjoyed playing HD2, appreciate the amazing steps the community took and want to support the developers (not publisher) I look forward to spreading managed democracy with you… if you are so upset, stop playing and let us enjoy it!
LOL, what? The people that were upset with Sony are the people that didn't want to link their accounts or worse, lived in a country that did not even have a PSN. Imagine that. Imagine buying a game and then a month later, a notice says that to continue playing, you need to link your account. You go to link it and it says, "sorry, that service is not available in your country." That's just a massive middle finger and most certainly illegal in most of the countries Sony did this in.
The fundamental problem is developers and publishers have too much legal control. They can ban players without reason. They can make changes without answering to anything more than "bad reviews." The fact they can even make changes like this retroactively shows that digital rights are in the dark ages; favouring only big business, never the player.