this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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Well they learned to announce that it would require an account before releasing the game rather than after people had already bought it, which was the complaint with Helldivers, right?
While it was the complaint, the game did mention a required PSN account on all storefronts. This was disabled when auth/login was unplayably bad on launch week, then not re-enabled until a while later (with a week long heads up for new players and a month long heads up for existing players). Nobody actually got locked out of the game, and as my PSN account is registered somewhere I do not live, I don't think anyone would've been stopped playing by the change if it had been pushed.
What we "won" and sony "learned" is that they can't get accurate metrics on playercount since HD2's statistics aren't being tracked correctly by the game's session system and the playerbase is uncooperative. In this era where data is king, this just means we'll stop seeing Sony funded helldivers ads on youtube while they market their giants that correctly report the data they're looking for that helps them make a userbase that prints money.
Oh, and we marred the all-time and recent review score from overwhelmingly positive. Guarantee you the successful action was the steam refund count on the game - truly unsolvable problem. As refund requests that don't meet an automatic metric need a reply, and resolution usually takes ~an hour, the 6 digit refund count was not realistically solvable without rolling the requirement for a legitimate PSN account back. You can track how many total refund requests steam has day by day, as this is a public count in steam's support page. There were 800k more than the average weekend.
Tl;dr: while the complaint was this, the reality was not. The review bomb hurt arrowhead's relationship with sony more than it hurt sony. The refund bomb didn't cause steam to change policies this time but damn if it isn't justified now.
It also smells a lot like always-online DRM for a game that otherwise exists entirely offline. The previous game is available on GOG.
~~You can't make an PSN account in 175 countries.~~ What's why people don't this stuff.
EDIT I was wrong. You can't make an PSN account in 121 countries, https://insider-gaming.com/countries-that-dont-have-psn
TIL you can make a PSN account in North Korea.