I didn't buy it before because it had kernel level anticheat which is incredibly invasive and unnecessary for a PVE game, and now I'm really glad I didn't buy it.
I wonder how many times I will have to see a publisher significantly harm their reputation in the PC market in a yolo bet to set up their own ecosystem and store.
I thought Sony had been conservative and decided against it when their first steam releases hit but with this move it seems possible that a Sony PC ecosystem was always in the works and it just wasn't ready for those original releases. Oh well.
Its also wild how much Stockholm syndrome console players have for their corporate overlords, where they think that having a purchasing decision affecting level change forced on them after purchase is an ok move to make, just because the possibility of it was nestled in the fine print
Yeah same, bunch of my friends had been playing it for a week or two, but between the in game story, the season passes and the utterly intrusive DRM, I figured I'll wait for a good sale at least. Well, guess I'll be saving 100% on this, now!
To be fair there is a lot of speculation that the delisting is actually entirely from steam's side not sony or arrowhead. Nothing is confirmed of course but the thought is that steam is throwing the kill switch on selling in these countries right now because obviously the publisher hadn't thought this out and just straight up doesn't have a plan for it. Valve may be doing this to put extra pressure on the situation drying up sales a little prematurely and more importantly to protect Valve from legal repercussions. Again this is entirely speculation but it makes a lot of sense, Arrowhead and Sony have been pretty quiet.
The cm's have literally said it's Sony. Why would there be speculation that it's steam?
Edit: I misunderstood. I meant that the whole initiative was from Sony. Kroxx was talking about the delisting in specific. I don't have any info on that.
Yeah I've not seen them address the delisting anywhere yet, if you have a link or anything please add it I'm trying to stay as updated as possible on this.
Edit: I also edited the first line, I had written "this" originally and I replaced it with "the delisting" because I can see how it was a little ambiguous before.
Same old shit with everything. A company makes a move that users don't like. The company just ignores all the flak they are getting online. The uproar calms down and then things continue.
We're seeing this more and more. Windows with ads, Amazon adding ads to their prime video account holders. Spotify moving lyrics to their premium subscription. The past couple of years are shit and companies continue to do whatever the fuck they want.
Holy F, what a smooth brain move. They had an IP with incredible goodwill that would have been printing money forever (think about DLCs and merchandise, maybe even a TV series), and they chose to destroy all that to increase the active PSN account numbers by <1%. Which doesn’t even have a direct financial benefit, just something they can peacock in their quarterly reports, trying to boost the stock price.
Adding all those helldiver's players into the "Sony account to PlayStation now subscription service" sales funnel is the financial goal here, likely along with selling any data they collect about you to any bidder.
This does make Sony money, but it likely doesn't make them more than an indie becoming the 7th most successful game this year, but here we are anyway.
I understand that sales funnel logic, but I would still argue its actual financial impact would be marginal. It’s wishful thinking from Sony that just because you got your claws into a PC player by making a PSN account, they will start buying PS stuff. The data monetization is much more direct, but still, not much additional money to be made by a few (tens of / hundred) thousand extra registrations (especially as they had to be aware of refunds happening). These are definitely valid upsides, but I don’t think they are big/certain enough to make this call, and compensate for the negative consequences.
My gut / experience tells me this is mostly about the PSN account numbers, and some execs getting a gazillion dollar bonus if they can push it above certain target by the next report, even if they damage the revenues in the process.
My gut / experience tells me this is mostly about the PSN account numbers, and some execs getting a gazillion dollar bonus if they can push it above certain target by the next report, even if they damage the revenues in the process.
I'm inclined to suspect the same. A move like this does not happen without a project "champion" pushing through internal resistance.
I have seen exactly this kind of shortsighted min-maxing, where an exec will fixate on some metric or goal, and just wreck everything in their path.
The actual answer is that everyone should play Earth Defence Force (they just announced EDF 6), which I feel was a big inspiration for helldivers 2 bugs.
Oh yeah definitely, Starship troopers is a huge influence to both, I don't disagree at all, the Starship troopers games seem to be a bit more serious and gritty in comparison to edf though. I'd say the gameplay in helldivers is very EDF also with the huge big swarms and over the top weapons.
I much prefer the extremely deliberate aiming and the heavily physics influenced combat of Helldivers. Just makes it feel a lot deeper than EDF that sort of makes up for that granular detail by instead being extremely arcadey and over the top in its weapons and class abilities.
They play quite differently even though they have some surface similarities, but EDF is indeed also awesome and I wish it was more popular.
While 177 countries sounds like a lot, it's not where the majority of players are. PSN operates in the top 15 countries by GDP and the top 4 by population.
Of course there's still the question of why they work in so few countries when literally none of their competitors (that I know of) have those limitations.
It's because it's a Japanese company. I'm not saying this out of racism but because they're known for being archaic in how they do certain things. Like game modding and work schedules. Their public transit is top fucking notch though.
I thought you were being racist until you said that thing about public transit, so we're good 👍
EDIT: I was making a dumb joke, y'all. I thought OP did not need to worry about sounding racist at all so I was trying ricochet off of that. Sorry, pretty clearly did not land right, I apologize.
That wasn't in response to my racist comment but in response to the archaic comment. They're as much archaic in procedure and bureaucracy as they are advanced in tech.
I think the mistake was ever thinking that one company is "good" while the other is "bad". Companies are just different flavors of bad once they grow above a size of, well, once they are companies.
I've been to Japan a few times. Only Tokyo is super accurate with time. Go to any other Japanese city and it's no different from any other city in the world. Late trains. Buses that are 10 mins late or not even showing.
Can we kill this narrative that Japan is hyper efficient with public transportation?
PSN (PlayStation Network) is available in 73 countries.
It was PSNow (PlayStation Now, their game steaming service) that was only in 19 countries.
PSNow was merged into PlayStation Plus as the Premium level package, and is in 30 or so countries.
This is accurate. I work at a international company. We will tell a bunch of countries to go fuck themselves since combined, they make like 1% of sales.
I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm just saying it's a thing many companies do.
I have knowledge on mobile gaming, they do this too.
It doesn’t pay to manage some shitty off brand Android phone’s compatibility issues when your whole country spends less in a month than a half dozen midwestern moms in an evening on the game.
Honestly, I think Sony is going to be more stubborn than Valve. I saw in another thread where some people were getting approved for their Steam refunds even after passing the 2-hour refund window, so it looks like Valve may already be the first to cave.
Sony's probably going to continue digging their heels in, though.