Changed my review to positive. I also added a note that a thumbs down from a second bait-and-switch won't be coming back up.
HD2 is a very rare example of a AAA live service game done right, Sony really had to come this close to fucking up what will be one of their top sellers.
In related news, HD2 is already Sony's 7th best selling game. Of all time.
Note: this wasn't my original source, but still
Yeah fuck no. AH can sue Sony for this (and should). But my review stays there for life as a reminder to Sony (and anyone else who tries to pull this shit).
Just because they backed down =/= they did the right thing. They caved to public (and I'm sure legal) pressure. Nothing more. Fuck Sony and fuck changing a review because WE made a company back down.
No no no no no. No.
Do what you want, i dont care if the reviews are bad or good.
But i just have to react to your "legal" argument.
Legal pressure over an EULA you accepted when you bought the game and got reminded on when you first started the game? The game you didn't refund for over 3 months and probably have 10s if not 100s of hours in? That EULA?
Because contrary to what you seem to think it was in there from the get go. That it didn't work is nice, but doesn't mean anything.
That they created a workaround because it didn't work is nice of them but again, besides the point.
You accepted the EULA. you clearly didn't read it. Who's fault is that?
The only pressure they felt where you guys making a lot of noise. And that was and is great.
But what did Sony learned? What did they really learn?
I'll tell you:
Next time, when they fuck up.... Don't back down. Because if you do back down the negativity stays anyway and you gain nothing.
That's the lessons the corpos have learned. They've learned they can't win. Just accepting the damage is the better strategy. That way you earn something (the ones who did link) at least.
People make mistakes, even intentional ones. I'm a big believer in recognising when people admit to their mistakes because otherwise why even bother to right any wrongs you have made?
100%. I hate how everyone wants to completely burn all bridges with people who make mistakes, even when they own up and demonstrate that they understand what was incorrect about their actions. It's a very pervasive attitude on the internet and it's leaking into real life too.
Absolutely cut out toxic people and companies that continue to abuse, but recognize legitimate attempts to change and give people credit.
To be fair, this was less of a "legitimate attempt to change" and more "the devs and community forced Sony's hand."
I am 100% behind this sentiment outside of continued abuse (like that of nearly every publishing company in the video game industry) as long as they apologize.
But the problem is that corporations are not people. One of the biggest downfalls of America getting into the shit situation that it is in was legally treating corporations as people. It screwed them over
The same is true socially. Corporations are not people. They are composed of people, but the problem is that many or most people will compromise their personal values to keep their job or get a promotion. That has been shown time and time again. A corporation's goal is 100% exclusively, both legally and internally, to make profit for the shareholders. It will do whatever possible, screw over whoever possible, and even harm whoever necessary to create extra profit for shareholders. (Ex. Boeing, Nestle, Coke, Blackrock, palantir, exxon, the lidt goes on) The only thing that makes them back down in regulation or people threatening their profits.
This time, gamers were vocal enough, outraged enough, and ready to actually affect their profits (and future prospects of microtransactions or profitable sequels) enough for them to back down.
THEY DID NOT EVEN APOLOGIZE, read their statement, they did not make a mistake, they just chose a wrong time to try to squeeze some extra profit and were surprised that the pushback was enough to affect their profits and not just fade away like it usually does.
I'm not changing mine until (1) after the 30th, (2) game is back on for purchase in restricted countries, and (3) Sony doesn't backpedal yet again before then.
Look, I honestly get the sentiment and AH deserves the praise for sure, but at this point I honestly can't confidently say I trust Sony to not just be doing all this for positive PR.
Whether or not they're going to walk back the changes, steam still has the game delisted in the countries where you can't make a psn account. Until that block is lifted, not changing my review at all.
Right on! NO ONE CHANGE THEIR REVIEW! This needs to be there for ever. So when Sony a year down the road thinks "maybe?" they can see what happened last time.
No no no no. Review states indefinitely!
Abusive relationship much?
Fuck that shit, leave your thumb down, they didn't deserve any kindness from you from the moment they thought it was a good idea to require a PSN account.
"It was not AH decision" they signed the contract with Sony didn't they? Hell, just take the time to actually read the announcement and it's clear that Sony is just trying to find ways to do the same thing but in a way we won't care, they don't deserve any sympathy.
Maybe you have a problem with the publisher-developer relationship in general or even problems with the profit motive but somehow I think you're not coming at it from those perspectives.
I wonder if you think the game would have been made if AH didn't "sign a contract with Sony." Like it or not, publishers financially support developers and influence their creations to maximize their return on investment.
I'm with you if you wanna take down capitalism, but selectively being mad at one set of creatives for working within the system seems like a pretty immature take.
No. At this point, it's more about the message.
The only message you're sending is "They gave me what I want but I'm still holding onto this anger".
We won, son. The war's over. You can let go now.
Good reminder. Was happy I got to update mine. And for folks saying "future buyers should know about this bullshit", leave the original content, just update the rating and add some commentary.
I don’t think they should, TBH. Sony needs the reminder that this was a giant mistake. HD2 is already a successful game with extremely positive reviews from before the PSN issue. Now that we know the HD2 dev was not included in the decision to require PSN, not many still hold a grudge against Arrowhead.
If they hold to their promise going forward, the reviews will start coming down/changing. Let’s just see how they deal with Ghosts of Tsushima release.
From what I've read elsewhere AH was aware of the PSN account linking long before the game's release. Also just because Sony is backpedaling because of the negative reviews, I don't see that as a reason to change my review. Even if the gameplay is widely praised, I think the negative reviews explaining what shitty practices were at hand should stay for future potential customers. I doubt Sony is done doing stupid stuff like this
Also just because Sony is backpedaling because of the negative reviews
Duh.. That's what we wanted.
I agree. But the attempt was made, why change all the reviews to pretend like it didn't happen?
Because we got what we want? I don't get what's so confusing about that.
I guess for now. Can't imagine Sony is done trying to push account integration for all future titles but I guess we'll see
I urge you to reconsider. That review hurts Arrowhead way more than Sony... which is unfair to the team that put their heart and soul into the game.
It is very clear that the CEO cares a lot about this game, and I'm sure many, if not all of the devs that worked on it care a lot about it... And that to me means a lot more that trying to "stick it to Sony". Yes, the CEO knew about the account linking but he wasn't aware of all the limitations that come with it (i.e. the country limitations). SONY is also responsible for the countries the game is being sold in.
I'm not convinced AH was unaware of what account linking would lead to. In the 6+ months they knew about it, not one person realized PSN access wasn't available in all the countries they were selling to? I think AH did a good job appearing shocked and betrayed by Sony, and sure there are plenty of devs that likely didn't stand by that decision, but erasing all of the reviews that warn potential buyers of the bad practices doesn't seem like a smart idea. I think they are capable of regaining genuine positive reviews and community trust, but it shouldn't be overnight
In the 6+ months they knew about it, not one person realized PSN access wasn't available in all the countries they were selling to?
Localization and regional sales are typically some of the very last tasks in a game's development cycle, and six months is a lot of time for a memo to get misplaced. Configuring the Steam page's region settings for the game very likely happened in the last couple weeks before release, and somebody very likely applied the wrong default settings (likely using settings Sony would normally use for games that don't require PSN).
Not that that makes it okay, but it's not like there was some secret conspiracy at AH/Sony to hide PSN linking and intentionally sell to users they're guaranteed to issue refunds to. This was a combination of bad business decisions, poor communication, and most likely a dash of human error.
You're probably right, thanks for the reply
Shoutout to you, thanks for being a reasonable Lemmy user and not losing your cool despite receiving a few downvotes!
AH wasn't just aware... The game did require linking at launch, just like the Steam store page has said was required since day one. It was a requirement, enforced, and not hidden at all. The shitty PSN servers were part of the overall server issues at launch, so the linking was temporarily made optional while that was all sorted out.
AH just didn't do a good job at making it clear that the linking was mandatory, and only made optional temporarily. That could have been because they were told the issue would be fixed quickly, and the reality was it took much longer than planned. Wouldn't be the first time for Sony there. Sony and PSN server issues go hand on hand.
Sony, as the publisher, however also did not prevent sales in non-PSN regions as they should have from day one.
Man some of you are some real indignant mother fuckers. Imagine punishing a dog for misbehaving, and the dog changes it's behavior and does what you say. But then you still continue to punish it.
These companies are worse than dogs. Don't even compare them.
Difference is I care about the dog
Why? Nothing has changed yet.
Wait, did they ever stop people logging on? Was this drama over a promise in the future?
I thought everyone was blocked from logging on over the weekend and they only recently promised to remove that feature.
did they ever stop people logging on?
No, this wouldn't have happened until May 30th as the tweet mentions. Starting May 6th is when new players would have been required to sign up for a PSN account before playing the game for the first time.
Was this drama over a promise in the future?
Yes, nothing actually changed on the players' side of things. The announcement was made and subsequently backtracked on before any updates to the game were even pushed out. No one was blocked from logging in at any point, but they were told that without a PSN account by the end of May, they would have been.
They still thought it was a good idea and AH didn't care enough to not sign a contract with Sony.
Wait, is it possible to publish a PlayStation game without going through Sony? They own that particular platform, and I have no info on if they allow third party publishers or not.
There was a timeline update from the devs, they signed with Sony 8 years ago, were made aware of this requirement 2 months prior to launch, then disabled during launch because servers were exploding. Apparently this wasn't something put directly in the contract 8 years ago and if you think a tiny game studio has the resources to litigate their way out of that detail or decide to go it alone 2 months before launch you are wrong.
Sorry to link to this shitbox website. I don't know where wlse it's hosted. https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cl4b2w/all_roads_lead_to_sony/#lightbox
I absolutely will as soon as i get home from work!
No
I did Monday morning before work, if we punish them when we are upset, they fix it, and we continue to punish them then what is Sony's incentive for backpedaling ?
Has arrowhead opened the discussion board on steam so I can troubleshoot why I (and hundreds of other players) can't use in-game voice chat?
Oh, they haven't? Oh, arrowhead has ignored all the support tickets I've posted? Oh, you're here trying to fix this shitty companies public image while they ignore serious issues with their product?
Nty.
Will test today after work if they require a account, if not the thumb goes up :)
The requirement was not in effect until some point at the end of the month either way
Welcome to the Helldivers 2 Community on the Fediverse.
Links
Galactic War Status
Rules