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Arrowhead Studios confirm PSN Account Requirement decision was on Sony - Game received over 15,000 negative reviews and is now 'Mixed' on Steam

DeepSpace5D

Member
The negative reviews have nothing to do with the quality of the game u dumdums. The game is awesome ofc ppl who can play will prolly still play.
But then you see a ton of the negative reviews say they aren’t going to make a PSN account just to play the game. But if the player count is mostly unchanged, seems like many are just fake posturing and making that PSN account anyway.
 
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But then you see a ton of the negative reviews say they aren’t going to make a PSN account just to play the game. But if the player count is mostly unchanged, seems like many are just fake posturing and making that PSN account anyway.
Falling fast on both sales and concurrent players chart.
 

Ozriel

M$FT
That's the thing, it was there at launch. If Arrowhead had left it as it was people would be complaining that they are having errors trying to link the PSN account (which is why they disabled it and had the skip thing).

And now they’ve proved conclusively that you don’t need a PSN account to enable crossplay or for multiplayer to work well, it’s a tougher sell to try to bring it back.

perhaps the right approach would be to provide some incentive for people to set up these accounts. Or just leave the game as is and target mandatory accounts for the next live service game they’ve got queued up.
 
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Ozriel

M$FT
But then you see a ton of the negative reviews say they aren’t going to make a PSN account just to play the game. But if the player count is mostly unchanged, seems like many are just fake posturing and making that PSN account anyway.

The cutoff is still a month away.
 
Is it? 24 hour peak looks pretty much exactly the same it was 4-5 days ago on SteamDB.
Sales chart:

MKvOR48.jpeg
 
But then you see a ton of the negative reviews say they aren’t going to make a PSN account just to play the game. But if the player count is mostly unchanged, seems like many are just fake posturing and making that PSN account anyway.

Sony removed the buy option from said countries. Its going to drop eventually especially now with the negative press.
 

Mr Moose

Member
And now they’ve proved conclusively that you don’t need a PSN account to enable crossplay or for multiplayer to work well, it’s a tougher sell to try to bring it back.

perhaps the right approach would be to provide some incentive for people to set up these accounts. Or just leave the game as is and target mandatory accounts for the next live service game they’ve got queued up.
Yeah of course you don't need it, you don't need an account to play Ubisoft single player games but they force it. Probably the same with most other games that require linking.
 

Buggy Loop

Member
What else are you supposed to do when you don't like something? Just shut up and deal with it? I hate people like this.

I mean, I personally already have both PC and PS5 so for me it's not a big deal, but I still think it's retarded. Mainly when you can't even officially make a PSN account in a lot of countries and it's even been delisted in those countries now. How does anyone defend this is beyond my comprehension.

Arrowhead themselves are against it and ASKED the PC community to make negative reviews

Sony fans :

311c144d74a9746aa16257cccc0e8796ec490bee728f03f05c331b55f6855703_1.jpg
 
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DeepSpace5D

Member
Sony removed the buy option from said countries. Its going to drop eventually especially now with the negative press.
I feel for those people who were playing but can’t make a PSN account. We will find out how much of the player base that represents.

But I’m assuming if a negative review says they aren’t going to make a PSN account to play the game, then they are someone who has the ability to. There’s a difference between someone sayin they won’t do something and they can’t do it.

I’m sure the game will drop eventually, but I also think it can increase as well with worthwhile updates. It seems to be a good game at the end of the day. I haven’t played it yet.
 
You people saying the player count barely dropped are comparing weekday counts to weekend counts. The drop from the previous saturday to yesterday was around 50k.

EDIT: Not saying the drop was due to PSN, it may just be the typical drop as people move on to other games.
 
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Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
The minority weren't really getting screwed. It was those who weren't even part of the minority outraged about it. virtue signaling because they didn't want to create an account or just like outrage culture.
I mean, sure, you can, but...

hqA94sy.png


Again, I believe most people shouldn't have a problem even if they enter fake information. I'm just saying that telling people to go ahead and do something that violates the terms of service isn't exactly a good solution.
 

IDappa

Member
Future? It's been like this for years.
Needs Activision account
Needs Xbox account
Needs Ubisoft account (single player game)

Go play Halo without an account.
Thing is they retroactively have made this a requirement. People have purchased the game played however many hours and now are being told “no access for you unless you have an approved account”. Cannot argue that it is a bit bullshit.
 

Mr Moose

Member
Thing is they retroactively have made this a requirement. People have purchased the game played however many hours and now are being told “no access for you unless you have an approved account”. Cannot argue that it is a bit bullshit.
They didn't. It was there at launch.

We knew about it at least a month before launch. It's in their trailer, it's on the Steam page, it says it when you open the game.
classactionlawsuitag.png
 
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FunkMiller

Gold Member
What's clown shoes about a guy being honest and owning up to a fuckup? There are people out there incorrectly making up this idea that AH didn't know about the requirement and it caught them off guard.

The fuck up is the clown shoes.
 

FunkMiller

Gold Member
They didn't. It was there at launch.

We knew about it at least a month before launch. It's in their trailer, it's on the Steam page, it says it when you open the game.
classactionlawsuitag.png

Why does this argument keep getting made, when it was quite apparent that a PSN account was not required to play the game from launch, no matter what Sony wrote?

'This thing is okay because they say it was necessary, even when it wasn't.'
 
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IDappa

Member
They didn't. It was there at launch.

We knew about it at least a month before launch. It's in their trailer, it's on the Steam page, it says it when you open the game.
If it wasn’t ready they should have delayed it so they could make sure on boot up everyone knew they’d have to have an account. You can’t give access to something then retro actively make a requirement to play. You honestly can’t defend it, if you do legit you look like a shill.

FYI it doesn’t bother me as I have a PlayStation account. I am just one of those people that can see bullshit for what it is.
 

Mr Moose

Member
Why does this argument keep getting made, when it was quite apparent that a PSN account was not required to play the game from launch, no matter what Sony wrote?

'This thing is okay because they say it was necessary, even when it wasn't.'
classactionlawsuitag.png

Would you rather them stop your access to the game while they fixed it? (I mean, yes that's what they should've done).
If it wasn’t ready they should have delayed it so they could make sure on boot up everyone knew they’d have to have an account. You can’t give access to something then retro actively make a requirement to play. You honestly can’t defend it, if you do legit you look like a shill.

FYI it doesn’t bother me as I have a PlayStation account. I am just one of those people that can see bullshit for what it is.
It was always a requirement, it was disabled because people were having issues with it. Should not have taken this long to fix.
 
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DeepSpace5D

Member
You people saying the player count barely dropped are comparing weekday counts to weekend counts. The drop from the previous saturday to yesterday was around 50k.

EDIT: Not saying the drop was due to PSN, it may just be the typical drop as people move on to other games.
Yeah that’s a fair point, but if you go back another week before the previous Saturday, it looks like the previous Saturday also saw a drop of around 40k. And so on and so forth if you go back further Saturdays. So it kind of just looks like a natural progression moreso than a sudden drop from controversy. Which is I think saying pretty much the same thing as your edit.
 

FunkMiller

Gold Member
classactionlawsuitag.png

Would you rather them stop your access to the game while they fixed it? (I mean, yes that's what they should've done).

Your logic is incredibly circuitous.

You're saying 'people can't read!' because they chose to skip the unnecessary requirement to have a PSN account.

They could read the big skip button quite well though, couldn't they?

Can you at least concede the PSN account is entirely unneeded to play Helldivers 2 on PC, and does not benefit the consumer in any way?
 
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Mr Moose

Member
Your logic is incredibly circuitous.

You're saying 'people can't read!' because they chose to skip the unnecessary requirement to have a PSN account.

They could read the big skip button quite well though, couldn't they?

Can you at least concede the PSN account is entirely unneeded to play Helldivers 2 on PC, and does not benefit the consumer in any way?
Yes, it is unneeded. It benefits Sony with MAU numbers and possibly to help with bans.
For the record, I find account linking annoying. I'm just saying it has always said it is required and was only disabled because of errors they were having with it.
This is me in January about it:
 
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FunkMiller

Gold Member
Not sure, I think they are requiring it for all of their MP games. The upcoming release of Ghost of Tsushima has it required for the MP portion of the game.

Okay. How about this. Do you not think it's fair enough for PC players to not want this extra unnecessary step, and that the backlash is understandable?
 

Mr Moose

Member
Okay. How about this. Do you not think it's fair enough for PC players to not want this extra unnecessary step, and that the backlash is understandable?
Linking accounts is annoying. People can review how they want but I think the backlash is going a bit overboard (except for the people who can't create PSN accounts in their country, that's very valid). People refunding with 200 hours played is a joke.
 

IDappa

Member
classactionlawsuitag.png

Would you rather them stop your access to the game while they fixed it? (I mean, yes that's what they should've done).

It was always a requirement, it was disabled because people were having issues with it. Should not have taken this long to fix.
As stated should have delayed the game until this key feature was implemented. No excuses.
 

Mr Moose

Member
As stated should have delayed the game until this key feature was implemented. No excuses.
You mean until it was fixed? It had already launched before the errors were found. They'd have to stop selling the game after it had launched or what they did, disable it until it was fixed. It should not have taken this long to fix the issue.
 
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FunkMiller

Gold Member
Linking accounts is annoying. People can review how they want but I think the backlash is going a bit overboard (except for the people who can't create PSN accounts in their country, that's very valid). People refunding with 200 hours played is a joke.

Yeah, that's where we disagree. The backlash is because this is a blatantly obvious attempt by Sony to increase engagement metrics, and force people into their walled off, over-priced eco-system. Not surprised many are pissed about it.

Yet another example of a games corporation make life needlessly more annoying for its consumers because of greed. Sony needs their wrist slapped for this, and I hope the response will do just that (though the only response that matters is the game losing players, and I'm not sure that's going to happen).
 

ManaByte

Gold Member
You mean until it was fixed? It had already launched before the errors were found. They'd have to stop selling the game after it had launched or what they did, disable it until it was fixed. It should not have taken this long to fix the issue.

The problem was server capacity and the engine the devs used that caused that. They should've known that more than 400K people might want to play their game at once and not launched it until they could support that.
 

IDappa

Member
You mean until it was fixed? It had already launched before the errors were found. They'd have to stop selling the game after it had launched or what they did, disable it until it was fixed. It should not have taken this long to fix the issue.
Mate they are pulling helldivers from 170 odd countries on steam. How do you defend this?. Just take the dick out of your mouth and accept that it was stupid. They should have never put it to market if they always planned it as a requirement or here’s an idea not made it mandatory as it was delayed and tried to incentivise the use of psn and just made it mandatory for future releases. People can’t be this dumb surely.
 

Mr Moose

Member
Yeah, that's where we disagree. The backlash is because this is a blatantly obvious attempt by Sony to increase engagement metrics, and force people into their walled off, over-priced eco-system. Not surprised many are pissed about it.

Yet another example of a games corporation make life needlessly more annoying for its consumers because of greed. Sony needs their wrist slapped for this, and I hope the response will do just that (though the only response that matters is the game losing players, and I'm not sure that's going to happen).
Sure, as long as they keep the same energy the next time they buy a game that requires that shit too (CoD and Ubisoft single player Assassin's Creed games).
The problem was server capacity and the engine the devs used that caused that. They should've known that more than 400K people might want to play their game at once and not launched it until they could support that.
Yeah they had a few problems at launch. It was their engine spitting out errors for the PSN account linking?
Mate they are pulling helldivers from 170 odd countries on steam. How do you defend this?. Just take the dick out of your mouth and accept that it was stupid. They should have never put it to market if they always planned it as a requirement or here’s an idea not made it mandatory as it was delayed and tried to incentivise the use of psn and just made it mandatory for future releases. People can’t be this dumb surely.
I've already said that's the actual issue, requiring PSN in countries that don't support PSN.
 
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IDappa

Member
The problem was server capacity and the engine the devs used that caused that. They should've known that more than 400K people might want to play their game at once and not launched it until they could support that.
Maybe not made this mandatory since it was broken and enforced it for future releases. Possibly should have not sold it in countries that do not support psn. Idk couple ideas. Man I wish I could get paid the big bucks like these execs to leave my brain in the trash.
 

FunkMiller

Gold Member
Sure, as long as they keep the same energy the next time they buy a game that requires that shit too (CoD and Ubisoft single player Assassin's Creed games).

If those companies also decide to only insist upon an account months after the game's successful release, then yes, they should keep that same energy.
 
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IDappa

Member
Sure, as long as they keep the same energy the next time they buy a game that requires that shit too (CoD and Ubisoft single player Assassin's Creed games).

Yeah they had a few problems at launch. It was their engine spitting out errors for the PSN account linking?
I've already said that's the actual issue, requiring PSN in countries that don't support PSN.
Seems like excuses my friend.
 

ManaByte

Gold Member
Yeah they had a few problems at launch. It was their engine spitting out errors for the PSN account linking?

They made PSN account linking on the PC optional due to the server issues. The server issues were caused by capacity limits due to the game engine. At one point more than 100K players would cause server full errors. The managed to get it up above 400K after a couple of weekends after the devs publicly cried about having to work on weekends it fix it.
 
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