Steam

The requirement was always listed on the page.

It not being enforced seemed to make people think that now they have a right to be mad about it.

I just don't see a case for this upset. What am I missing? The requirement was spelled out the whole time.

All I see is people not reading the not-fine-at-all print and then being upset when the rule starts being enforced.

I honestly don't understand the problem here.

Now why it was offered for sale in regions that can't use PSN is a mystery. Those accounts should definitely be refunded beyond the "normal" refund window and Steam needs to pay attention to that kind of thing a lot better than this. They wouldn't have necessarily known that the account wasn't possible for them, so that's totally understandable.

But for those who are in a country that can get the account, I just don't see a leg for them to stand on here.

If I'm missing something here please tell me. I love using my pitchfork. But I just don't see justification here specifically.

The PSN account, which is free, was required but turned off during launch. It's been working fine. Now if you don't link your PSN to steam you can't play after the end of this month. You lose a PC game on steam because you don't have a PlayStation Network account.

It's totally unnecessary and Sony has a shit cyber security track record.

Sony has shot the game developer in the face with this.

Seems like you've basically figured it out.

Is PSN a mandatory paid subscription service? I suspect it isn't and this will further entrench the notion that "games" as a group come off as way too sensitive.

Sony executives need line go up on active users for PSN.

The tl;dr seems to be:

After such and such date (end of the month I think? Sometime soon either way) you will be required to sign in with a PSN account in order to play. Some say this was not advertised when the game launched, some say it was (I believe people found wayback machine captures that say it was but I may be wrong. Some people don't want this, some countries aren't allowed to sign up for PSN accounts outright (and if they have Helldivers 2 they would then be losing access technically).

Sony offered up the usual explanation of security and whatnot, which most aren't accepting that as Valve/VAC do the job of security, leading most to assume it's a way for Sony to gather more info and data from customers which they can then sell or otherwise market somehow.

Overall souring people on the whole situation of a bit of a bait-and-switch.

The issue isn't so much the PSN requirement, its the PSN requirement after 4 months of building up your character and buying in game currency. If this had been a requirement on day 1, people would grumble, but it wouldn't cause outrage. It's a rug pull, a subversion of expectations, the antithesis of what AH was supposed to be doing.

it feels like a betrayal.

Not to mention the required PSN account, means you now have to accept the PSN terms and conditions and if you don't you lose 3 months of character work and any ingame currency you bought..

PLUS PSN is only available for 69 countries, about 33% of all countries in the world. That means many helldivers simply cannot make a PSN account at all, and are facing the prospect of losing everything (unless they lie to make a PSN account using a VPN, which is banned by the PSN terms of service, so a real catch-22).

.... so.... a betrayal