Sony start mandating PSN accounts for Helldivers 2, anger community 

I don't think Sony understood the principles of Democracy with this one. PATREON: www.patreon.com/yongyea TWITTER: twitter.com/yongyea INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/yong_yea TIKTOK: www.tiktok.com/@yongyea TOP PATRONS [BIG BOSS] - Devon B [BOSS] - Charlie Galvin - Gerardo Andrade - Michael Redmond [LEGENDARY] - azalea

Helldivers 2 was the easiest win for Sony. They just couldn't help themselves.

Sony saying they want us to link our Steam to PSN to improve our account's security measures is like hearing a drowning man say he wants to teach us how to swim.

It’s fucking hilarious hearing Sony say that this is for security when they’ve had more data breaches than PS5 exclusives 💀💀💀

This is fraud. Sony claims PSN linking was planned from the get-go, yet they sold it in regions they know PSN is not available in. This is illegal. They are committing mass fraud and people need to report them to their countries trade organizations

The fact that support currently has no answers to questions about region locking and how linking might affect cross progression shows how poorly thought out this was. At least have all your ducks in a row first

One week earlier: "Helldivers should be an example to all devs" Today: "Helldivers is killing democracy"

It's insane to me that parasites don't realize they'll die if they kill the host.

Just for the point of reference: Poland and Finland have PSN, whilst Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia - two countries that are a stone toss away from them - currently do not. How absurd is that for Sony to cherrypick which nations get to and which don't get to set up an account WITHIN THE SAME CONTINENT

The major complaint is that this change is of no benefit to the players and just helps Sony boost their account numbers for their next shareholder's meeting, with a bonus of getting all our information stolen when they get their database hacked next, which seems to happen on an almost annual basis.

I can’t wait till Sony goes "Technically, playing Hellduvers 2 online is a PS Plus feature so we're gonna need you to pay for PS Plus on Steam". Mark my words.

Trying to get a password recovery email from sony is like to squeeze water from charcoal

Linking to PSN is also extremely dangerous, as Sony keeps getting hacked all the time. Their security is completely useless. And linking also gives them access to your Steam info, ALL of it.

Mistreating indie devs, removing people's paid content from their account, censorship, and now this. Keep going, Sony. Keep going.

The true crime is consumers not having the right to opt out of data harvesting. This is just a symptom of that cause.

This is like Ubisoft telling you that you can only play their games with internet connection but then they remove the game from their service and now you can't play the game anymore

This is like how Microsoft now tries to force you to create a Microsoft account when installing the USB VERSION OF WINDOWS 11. I got the USB because it was a brand new PC I built, and couldn't connect to wifi before having windows installed, then they tried to force me to immediately connect via ethernet which I can't do. There's a workaround which involves using command prompt to bypass that so-called necessity, then on restarting the PC the option for "I don't have access to internet" shows up. Like they couldn't have just showed that from the beginning. All these megacorporations trying to get every bit of data they have on you so they can sell it is beyond absurd.

Reminder that the Baltics, which are some of the countries that don't have access to PSN, are part of the European Union, and this is by all accounts unlawful on EU soil. If Sony of America doesn't backtrack on this, *_there will be_* legal repercussions coming from this side of the Atlantic, of that you can be sure.

Did Sony sleep through the whole "games for windows live" era? It was one of the worst things to ever happen to PC gaming.

Anger? Anger doesn't cover it. The PC player base is riotous. If the Discord server was a building, it'd be engulfed in flames.

"take 120 seconds out of your day to enter an email and password and then forget about it." It takes 10 seconds to request a refund on Steam, zero seconds to not buy the game at all, and you don't have to worry about another Sony data breach or them selling your info to third parties. You aren't in a good bargaining position to mock us about it.

This should be criminal. People put down a full value of _non-refundable currency_ to play a game that will be stripped from them permanently. Policy be damned, this is theft.

“This game is awesome!” *Sony:* “Was.” “…huh?” *Sony:* *_”Was.”_*

It got worse. This was in their FAQ "I am currently in a country or territory that is not PSN-enabled. Can I still sign in and link an account?" Their response is: PSN requires users to register in their country or territory of residence. Individuals who are traveling, working, or studying abroad may create an account in a country or territory different from the one in which they are currently located. So basically if you ain't working, traveling, or studying abroad but still live in a country where you can't make a PSN account then sucks to be you

'Special Kind of Stupid' is the best way to describe the exec who okayed this...

So... If they sold a product, in a country that is unable to use that product, for whatever reason, they can't be held legally responsible?

Calling the community 'angry' about this is the understatement of the century. I've never seen a steam news post with 0 upvotes before, even for tiny indie games. They locked the discussion thread about an hour after it was posted and then deleted almost half of the comments on it. The ones that remain are still almost entirely negative. The game has received almost 33k negative reviews and counting just today, at the time of writing. That number was 27k less than 2 hours ago. The discord has been on fire for hours. Anyone who posts or comments on the subreddit in support of this gets downvoted into oblivion in minutes. I've never seen a fandom riot like this over anything before.

"It takes 120 seconds to make an account". Well, it will take me less than 120 seconds to delete the game from my hard drive and move on. Piss off, Sony!

Sony Executives: "Damn this game is really good, tell Arrowhead they have to piss off their entire playerbase and ruin their game, quality games don't reflect what we do here at Sony. We only allow trash." Arrowhead: "..." Players: "How could you do this? How could you betray us like this AH?" Arrowhead: "I'm sorry, I signed a contract with the devil." Sony: "Good good...kill your game, kill it now." Arrowhead: *bang* Sony: "Wait I don't understand, why do all these people want refunds!? What is this class-action lawsuit? What happened!?"

Last week (April): Sony loses 70k PSN subscribers due to Stellar Blade This week (May): Sony attempts to gain more PSN accounts by force 3rd quarterly earnings report?: June (Few weeks to go) Coincidence? Absolutely not

The next step for Sony is to charge PC players for an annual PSN subscription to play playstation games on a PC...

I have a PSN account, but I'm siding with the people who don't want the account requirements. There's a lot of people who can't access PSN, some of my friends included. If they can't play, then I'm not playing. That's that. A line has to be drawn in the sand.

If having a Sony account was planned from day one, why did Sony/Arrowhead sell this game in countries/Regions where Sony Account was not supported.

"...if I cannot save this game from your failure Sony, then let the galaxy burn." -Horus, probably

"Provides safety and security..." Then wtf is Gameguard installed for????

HellDivers 1 is multiplayer, and does not require a PSN network account to play This is Sony trying to pad their stocks. This is actually illigal...

That is not very democratic, Sony.

Sony really just hamstrung ArrowHead and the player base for no legitimate reason. Sad to see.

I don’t care if it was always the plan. They still took money from people who live in countries that can’t have a PSN account. That’s wrong. They need to salvage the situation as best they can and FAST.

Sony releases games on Steam to reach a larger audience, limits the audience to countries with PSN. Management making big brain moves.

This fire is genuinely hilarious. Even the Arrowhead Devs seem to have been Blindsided by Sony. The people making it into Lore is even better... Saying the Automatons have taken over SYON and are pushing PSN.

Corporations do not even know that "long-term success" exists since they cannot think ahead of the next executive bonuses or quarterly review

A lot of companies want people to sign up for a useless service just to access games. It sucks that shareholders and investors never actually care about the people who give them money. The stocks drop and instead of fixing the problem, the shareholders and investors jump ship to sink another boat.

You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

My other question for Sony would be this: Why sell your console to a country that you won’t allow to use your services at the same time? Why? It’s baffling…. Let me buy a PS5 in the Philippines for $500 to never be allowed to use PSN?!?!? WHAT?!?

Sony trying bankrupt themselves speedrun

It's like having the golden goose, then taking it out back and shooting it to try and get milk from it.

This move is for sure illegal in so many countries, particularly within the EU, where some of the member countries are part of those who can't make a PSN account...

Man, they torpedoed their own best seller, people who live in certain countries can't even get a PSN account, so they essentially payed for a game they could only play for 3 months. Way to annihilate all the goodwill you cultivated in one day, truly a monumental achievement.

Oh man. Hasn't Sony learned? Remember when Anon took down the entire PSN network before? Yea Sony. Go ahead and poke gamers. And take away the most popular game at the moment. I'm sure that'll end well.

This kills the game for me. Sony has had data breaches before and I want nothing to do with them. Refund request submitted.

Just imagine. They created a game that rallies players together all over the world, from various platforms, teaching us to unite against an overwhelming force. Then Sony says yeah you're going to lose a third of your brothers in arms because we feel like it. Wait wait, where are you guys going?!

Steam needs to step in here. It's simply not acceptable to charge for a game that players are unable to play the game because of 3rd party requirements. Secondly... Game is bought on Steam. So banning players through PSN for cheating is a joke. Just ban them through Steam account. I did not buy Helldivers 2 - but I sure would be asking for refund now. And this makes sure I will NEVER buy the game. I don't own Playstation and have no reason to make account for it.

Sony also stole my account and banned it for no reason because I was inactive, I refuse to make another account with them.

I HAVE a PSN account. I have issued a negative review. I will file a refund if my people are affected by corporate bullshit. I stand with my community. What are YOU waiting for?

By the way, out of the 190 countries that Helldivers is being sold to, ONLY 70 have access to PSN. And as everyone has already mentioned, Sony is NOT known for it's Data Security Practices. The last one, was LAST YEAR!

Forcing player's to make or link a PlayStation account months after it not being enforced should be cause for a class action lawsuit especially since the game was sold in counties where PSN isn't available.

This moves unironically shows that we live in a corporatocracy not a democracy.

The fact that there's *nothing* in the EULA indicating the necessity of a PSN account/connection, and them having zero answers for the region locked playerbase, tells me that this was an ad hoc decision that wasn't planned from the start, but Sony simply didn't expect how successful HD2 would become and so now they jumped on the opportunity of datahogging and do what they can to strongarm us into it. If this wasn't on the EULA before I bought HD2, I shouldn't be forced to do this. If I wasn't warned prior that this would be happening, or that they would've made this a requirement in the future, I wouldn't've purchased HD2 or any amount of Supercredits at all before clocking hundreds of hours. EDIT: mark my words, next they’re gonna try and force Steam users to have a PSN account with an active PSN Plus subscription to play HD2 with friends in the future, which is why they’re trying to force people to have an account connected.

Sony, Sony, Sony. Please stop pissing off your fans. The Stellar Blade situation is still fresh, and now Helldivers 2? Two of the biggest surprise hits of this year so far, marred by piss poor decision making on Sony’s part.

"We want to protect you... by making you give your info to yet another company."

Sony should just disable crossplay for those who dont want the PSN account. Period.

Publishers always end up killing good games

Man, I’ve never refunded a single steam game. That may well have to change now. This is beyond pathetic and anti-consumer.

First they make you create PSN account regardless of platform you using, then they make you pay for PS+ to play their games online regardless of platform you using :D I know right now it might sound absurd, but....remember "horse armor"?

Today they are forcing you to have a PSN account to play and maybe in the future they will force you to have a PS Plus subscription. Dont let this slide.

They're effectively cutting their playerbase in half.

It started with them mandating platstation plus to play online multiplayer, and now they’re trying this

The last couple of weeks have not be great for Sony. First there was the censorship of Stellar Blade, then the news that the PS4 release of Tsukihime's art book is also censored (while the Nintendo version is strangely not), and now this. Is Sony trying to see how many Ls it can acquire in a short time?

Some of the community managers for helldivers really shouldn't be community managers lol

Sold in countries that PSN doesn’t support. PSN mandatory not stated in their EULA. Stated in Helldivers 2 webpage that PSN is optional. PS store still says it’s optional. And added a skip button on your games initial launch for the PSN link up. This is going to cost Sony and Arrowhead their consumers trust and refunded money. 😢

As I said on other videos of this nature...this behavior of requiring accounts and subscription style services is going to accelerate, and the average gamer will be labeled as "unreasonable" for opposing this..🎉

Sony also just implemented new terms of Service that state you are only licensing ALL products on their service. A forced TOS change which cannot be opted out and is in fact illegal due to it being retroactive change to ownership of content.

Saying you need to link your account for security purposes is like saying "were improving your home security by installing another exterior door."

This is what you get when players keep making excuses for letting megacorps take advantage of them. You would think Sony would be quick to backpedal to prevent long term damage to the game but when has long term considerations stopped a modern game megacorpo from trying to boost their next quarterly report?

Well, Sony KNOWS that a potential data breach is way more expensive to deal with, than the money they'll lose over this controversy... so suddenly panicking and buffing their security makes sense. HOWEVER, if they were going to do it all along, why offer refunds? Why sell a product in a country, when you KNOW it will be refunded? Doesn't seemed to me like they planned for this. Seems to me that they flat out lied. Allegedly.

I’m a player from the Philippines, I will be asking for my refund should they not backpedal on this horrible decision.

Something I just mentioned to a friend. Both on Twitter on Pilstedt's comment on the reviews, in the comments of the Steam announcement, the twitter announcement, all have a theme for people defending the enforcement of the PSN account thing. Every single one of the defenders uses the phrase "Crybabies that just don't want to take a minute/two minutes/five minutes". Nearly every. Single. One. I genuinely think that the only ones truly defending this decision are Sony-based bots. That or it's the fastest I've seen people pass a single braincell around.

This is incredibly frustrating because 2 of my coworkers and I were going to buy this and do coop playthroughs of the game, something we have been dying to do. Now it’s all just up in smoke.

The PS5 players this affected was exactly zero, because they didn't get their PS5s yet.

Steam can't keep up with the negative reviews, the steam API is showing over 52k negative reviews. Sony is to blame, but Arrowhead hitched their horse to the wrong Wagon. EDIT:57k

Just put in a request for a Steam Refund with the reasons being I am unwilling to risk my steam account of over 15 years and 600 games to sony's shoddy security. this is a rug pull of the highest magnitude.

It's genuenly fascinating how you can give an absolute golden goose of a product to one of these companies and they will still casually pick it up and throw it out the window JUST because it isn't following each and every policy to the letter.

when it comes to gaming the one community you dont want to piss off is the pc community

In one week, from April 26th to May 3rd: -Sony censors StellarBlade despite ShiftUp proudly claiming it will release uncensored everywhere -Tsukihime will censor their artbook ONLY on Playstation and not Switch -Sony forces mandatory PSN accounts on Helldivers despite having the weakest security in gaming

This is a shame because apparently I HAVE a PSN, but I cannot access it because I don't remember the password for the account that was made YEARS ago. I've tried to get help for this, some kind of password reset link to the email or something, but since all Sony asks for is things like "linked cards" or "last few purchased games" for proof that it's my account, and, again, it's an account that was apparently made years ago (I dint even remember making a PSN account), they basically said "tough luck, no account for you", and I can't even have the account deleted to be able to use my email to make a new account.

"technical issues" Gosh if that isn't the understatement of the decade.

Devs should've learned by now, if you want the Publishers to NOT SCREW UP YOUR GAME, refuse to comply with asinine decisions, and if they put pressure on you, go public. Call them out on their bullsha. Stand your ground, ffs. And get a better anti-cheat while you're at it.

So wait, now I can't play helldivers now because I don't have a PlayStation network account?! Well this is stupid

Sony snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

1990's Game Industry profit strategy: Make good games, hope people buy 2000's Profit strategy: Created additional charges with DLC and MTX 2010's Profit strategy: Predatory battlepasses and releasing games unfinished 2020's Profit strategy: Mass Fraud, federal crimes This will never be punished as long as executives have bodies to shove under the liquidation bus. Physically go to the executives directly and perform a citizens' arrest.

I don't understand. So a game like Minecraft requires you to have a MS account and nobody bats an eye on that? But then this happens and everyone is pissed. I don't really like the idea of requiring an account for something to play it especially if I bought it.

I feel bad for the dev team who just want to make a great game and hope they understand this isnt their fault. This is 100% Sony's doing just like Stellar Blade where their dev team had to take blame for Sony's decsions.

Sony is requiring steam accounts be connected to a PSN account "for the safety of your data" 2011, 2014, 2017, 2023, and that's only the databreaches we know about. If that link is made your info is going to be as private as a trackside bathroom wall.

It just goes to show that incompetence and greed are hard-wired into AAA psychology. Sony had an absolute slam dunk on their hands, and they just _had_ to go and piss it away simply because it's AAA's nature. And then they sit back and wonder why the industry's in a slow-burn crash.

It's like Sony and BSG are in a competition to see who can rug pull and backstab their community the hardest.

You just know the devs are desperately screaming at Sony with us to stop. This game got a better reception than anyone saw coming, and well deserved at that, and sure enough the publisher is destroying it.

Im starting to believe that as long as a studio has a corporation backing of any sort, its physically impossible to create a multiplayer game that has consumer friendly practices.

I'm doing my part! I've left my negative review, have you!

Sony backed off from requiring linking to a PSN account. Well done everyone! 😎