I'm pretty sure that, even under guidance from a support rep, Sony would still ban your account for not registering it in a valid country if they ever somehow detected it.
They really need to put out some concise messaging on this, ASAP.
They have put out concise messaging. They have committed fraud selling a product which now cannot be played in multiple locations. That was the messaging.
I loved this game but PSN isn't available in Estonia so I'm just locked out a month from now. I don't even want a refund, I just wanna play with my wife and friends.
This reminds me of that GirlfriendReviews joke about multiple game stores. "You mean to tell me that instead of clicking this thingy over here to launch my game, now I have to click this other thingy over there?"
If you take a look at its reception, the community definitely treats it like a major departure from other live service game practices. I’d tend to agree— the price, micro transactions, content and quality all seem very fair compared to other live service games in the space.
Please inform any inactive / retired Helldivers to ask for a refund if their country does not support a PS account as they should not have been able to play the game in the first place.
I am unable to verify which countries are affected.
I think people were playing the game because it was fun and for it's quality, not for the specifics of its genre/mechanics. If people stop playing helldivers, they will probably look for other high quality, fun games, of which there are plenty.
Especially since EDF is fun, but shitty on purpose. The glitching bugs are a feature, giant frogs you fight, etc. It doesn't take itself seriously. But you can't call it a quality game because of that.
But maybe, just maybe enough folks will review bomb or request refunds to get Sony to backtrack.
50k negative steam reviews in a single day is a pretty good incentive to reverse course. Thats more negative reviews in a single day then a fair amount of games recieve overall. Folks were absolutely not keen on what they viewed as a bait and switch.
As for how much it'll impact actual numbers I think time is going to be the important factor, more particularly trending players over time... and what happens on the proverbial D-day.
It wasn't required before? I was prompted to do it when I launched the game for the first time, and it didn't look like I could skip it. I fumbled with it for a bit because I apparently already had a PSN account with my email when i tried to make one, and ended up having to reset the password.
I was pretty late to the party tbh (the TCS had been deployed right before I started playing), so maybe the option to skip account linking had already been removed at that point? Either that or I was distracted while going through the first time launch.
What a dumb move, timing this with trying to convince people to buy the new warbond. Hopefully Sony reverses this decision after seeing how badly this damages the health of the game.
Unfortunately for those requesting refunds, unless you're in an area that's soon to be excluded, you likely won't get your money back. The game has had the requirement for the PSN account linking listed on the Steam page since day 1, so it's unlikely that Valve will do much in this situation.
Arrowhead isn't free of guilt in this, but Sony and Valve should have both done a much better job at making this clear to players earlier on, since they're in charge of marketing/sales on PC. Like, in-game messaging would have been good for this. They also should have never allowed the sale of the game on regions PSN isn't available to in the first place, since they already knew they would killswitch non-linked accounts eventually.
Arrowhead isn’t free of guilt in this, but Sony and Valve should have both done a much better job at making this clear to players earlier on, since they’re in charge of marketing/sales on PC.
Well they kinda did. When you first launched the game it did say that you need a PSN account to play. I know this because that's when I learned PSN isn't available in my country. But you were able to skip it and after skipping you never saw this notification again. Valve also has it on the store page "Requires 3rd-Party Account: PlayStation Network (Supports Linking to Steam Account)", but nobody reads those little notices. I don't blame anyone for missing that information, especially since not linking PSN accounts has not affected the game for months.
I'm not going to to anything hasty. I hope Sony walks it back because I do enjoy the game, but if by June nothing has changed I will ask a refund from Valve because I'll literally be unable to play the game, unless I go against PSN ToS. I have no problem getting on the FUCK SONY train once they've left me no other choice.
