You missed the main issue my friend, it's not about having a launcher or an account, it's the way their doing it.
this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2024
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Rockstar, EA, Ubisoft, Epic, Blizzard and probably some more all make you use their launcher/account as well. Sony doing it is no different. Doesn’t make it the nice thing to do but it’s the sad reality of PC gaming. The price of flexibility is having to deal with tons of accounts (or piracy).
No, that's the price of consuming content from exploitive corporations that leverage capital against you to better exploit you. Stop being a class traitor.
Well, unless you exclusively play games made by small indie studios and that are distributed directly, that’s still the price you need to pay if you want to consume said content while playing on a PC. Or you pirate and thus don’t support the people who created it. I don’t like that situation either and there are some developers I definitely won’t support with my money. However, that decision isn’t based on the need for some account, when it’s trivial to make one. That’s annoying but the dealbreakers should be scammy, unfinished games, predatory, gambling-like micro transactions, bad company culture, etc, not the need to have a burner email account.
Yes, unless you exclusively give your money to people who aren't exploitative and abusive, you get fucking exploited and abused, and contribute to others getting exploited and abused. It's 1 + 1 = 2. You're making it way more complicated than it needs to be. But yes, it's something you have to be mindful of ALL the time.
We know that Sony has done or does almost all of those things, or worse. You're defending your abuser. This is a common pattern that many many people demonstrate. Break out. If you think the abuse is going to stop with "needing to have a burner account," you're fucking lying to yourself and you probably know it.
You seem like a very angry person.
Having to make a PSN account isn’t exploiting you anymore than you’re already being exploited by having a Steam account, which you do have when you bought the game on PC. You don’t even have to give Sony any real information. Faking one’s birthday and using a burner email isn’t that hard to do. It’s annoying, it’s a dick move by Sony and yes, you should complain about it, but it’s not the culmination of all capitalist evil.
No wonder indie games are getting more popular each year
I don't like this requirement, but I can understand that this is their product and they can do that. The real problem is that I can't even buy these games as Sony isn't selling them in my country. What is more hilarious is that I can get Ghosts of Tsushima or God of War for PS5 on a physical disk, but I can't buy them on Steam. Sony even has official stores where they sell PS5 in some of these countries, including mine. That looks incredibly strange. I wonder what Sony is trying to achieve. Apparently, they think that the end justifies the means. I guess we'll find out soon enough. I'd bet on an independent PC store.
I don't buy games from big studios. I don't have this problem.
If no one bought games from big studios, this problem wouldn't exist.
Go play games that were made by less than ten people. Go play games that don't have microtransactions. Go play games where no one involved has a business degree. Go eat a vegetable and brush your teeth. Do things that are good for you.
Consoles are dying.
Yeah, the PS5 is doing alright, sales-wise. But even its fanboys say 'it has no games.' What they mean is: almost every game is on every relevant platform. Multi-platform development won. Even hardware has to reflect this: Sony and MS had three lockstep releases of nearly-identical AMD laptops. Nintendo's latest money-printing handheld is literally an Nvidia Android tablet.
Everything is a computer now. Some of them are needlessly locked-down.
This market where every game has to be certified and pressed three separate times in different-colored boxes will not last. It is an absurdity. Sony finally recognizes this, after Microsoft starting doing weird shit with the Xbox brand. Because really - the Xbox whatever-it's-called selling half as many units as the PS5 is still a metric shitload of units. Microsoft still has recurring revenue from millions of customers and the apparently-standard one-third gross cut from retail sales. The Xbox is not hurting.
Microsoft is acting weird because the Xbox was always an effort to PC-ify the console market. They aimed for something 360-ish, whiffed, and released a literal Pentium 3 PC. Then they did the 360, as a generic compiler target, and it got all the good ports. It also gave indie developers something novel: money. Once the Xbone launched, the PS3 had recovered, but only by helping PC devs deal with their wonky vector processor. And the Kinect fucked them. But it was already too late: the PS4 was just a PC. The PS4 Pro and PS5 couldn't even tempt gamers to "wait and see" or jump ship for instant gratification, because MS launched similar machines at the same damn time.
Helldivers 2 finally showed Sony how much money they could make, being just a PC publisher. They desperately do not want to be just a PC publisher. Their overreaction is a desperate effort to protect their platform - because being a platform is all they have. They didn't design whiz-bang hardware that allows amazeballs games like nothing else. They don't have Nintendo's damnable first-party appeal. They need their releases other platforms to coerce people into entering the Sony ecosystem.
Meanwhile: Microsoft is teasing Halo on Playstation because it makes no difference to them. Microsoft doesn't give a shit if all the money in a game sale goes to Sony and Valve, so long as the game's running on Windows. They want a market driven by developers, developers, developers, because they know they can dominate it.
I don’t care about it, they can sell to whom they want
My thoughts on this is that people, regardless of financial status, should just skip buying a PS5 and for a lower price just get a refurbished Steam Deck from Valve for cheaper. Also to straight up avoid buying PlayStation titles on PC in order to send a message that this toxic behavior is unacceptable.
That's me I have bough most consoles over the years. Now I have a steam deck and I'm staying there. Purchase a game and being able to play it on the next version because it's just a PC is going to be nice. No more worries about backwards compatibility.
I'm honestly against all the other launchers too, but at the very least I'm able to make an account without inputting false location info, as well as actually buy their games! But with Playstation it's a special case; Sony is the only gaming company that refuse to provide PSN in many countries for some fucking reason!
The fact that they do shitty things like this will male me ignore their games or wait for a crack. I ignore most EA games as well or anything that has another launcher/account forced on you.
Ultimately my main issue isnt that the company is doing shit things. The issue is that they don't have to care because people will keep paying them money regardless and our opinions/objections mostly go unnoticed and inconsequential. Although public backlash did help the Helldivers 2 situation.
Great analysis!
It is their prerogative. They (and Arrowhead) fucked up with Helldivers by removing and then retroactively requiring it. By the time I got the game though it was already required for new players again.
If it means we can cross play to their console I'm fine with it (a feature I wanted). For a single player game it's annoying but as long as it costs nothing I don't care anymore.
I do feel strongly that we need some consumer protections though - and this extends beyond games alone. Any server shutdown (authentication or gameplay affecting) should have a mandatory removal of the requirement or opening of the server to self host. But I digress...
I think it's a stupid hill to die on. You have EA, Ubisoft, Epic, gog, steam, and even 2k and GTA accounts but this is where you draw the line? Come on, that's just stupid. I would also point out that those also have games that not only require the associated account but also the associated launcher and for single player games.
I get that there are people that can't purchase the games due to region restrictions on psn accounts, but this is quite possibly the most hypocritical and idiotic circle jerk I've ever seen in PC gaming.
I think the difference is that helldivers 2 never required me to log into anything except my steam account to play until only recently.
Just be cause the game says it may require it, but it's not enforces from day 1, doesn't change that feeling of having the rug pulled.
People don't have a problem with needing an account, they have a problem with suddenly needing to have an account if they purchased and played it without one.
Helldivers is a completely different scenario. I'm talking about God of war and ghosts of tsushima and any other game that gets ported over with the requirement from day 1. Helldivers was a screw up, the other games aren't, and frankly it's absolutely ridiculous anyone is complaining about it when you have to make accounts for damn near every fucking publisher. How is this different other than the region issues? I'll give you a hint, it's not. Pretty sure at this point anyone downvoting me right now is just pissed I'm calling their stupidity out.
you might make accounts for every publisher, but not all of us do.
What do you mean? You have to for Ubisoft, ea, and Activision, I'd love to know how you're bypassing this but honestly it's just not worth my time.
Pretty simple. I don't play games from those companies
So you're complaining over nothing because you don't play games that require accounts.
I'm not complaining. You made the assertion All gamers are already making accounts outside of steam, I provided you a counter example saying gamers don't necessarily have to make those accounts.
So for the population of gamers who don't make a bajillion accounts with all of the proprietary networks, and just have steam accounts, they can remain steadfast and not make PlayStation Network accounts. There's nothing particularly compelling about any single game. You can decide how you spend your time and money, and what behavior you want to incentivize. The choice is yours. But you are not powerless
I have a PSN account through owning a PS3/4. I don't have anything against using it on the consoles since you'd need it to use their online services through there. On Steam however it seems like it's just a means to track you and I'm not willing to do that lest it gives Sony the idea to start its own platform like Origin or Uplay/Connect.
No PlayStation (last one I owned was the first one, though I did play on some shared/friends' devices for PS2 and 3). No PSN account. Voting with my wallet and not buying any of their shit.
Will the games still run on linux?
I don't particularly care...
It sucks for people that live in countries that Sony doesn't sell to ... but also Sony just doesn't sell to those countries.
Ultimately they made people use an account, something that's long been extremely standard behavior.
I think people are overreacting, particularly those that are in a situation where it's just "create a free account with your throw away email address."
Last pennies Sony got from me were for Horizon: Zero Dawn, on steam. At the rate they're going, they won't get another out of me, maybe ever.
It's bullshit but I get a feeling that gamers in general are going to take it like usual for their hit of dopamine.
I respectfully think you're an idiot if you buy psn games on steam with the current situation, respectfully.
Common anti-consumer move by huge companies against the consumers who made them rich. What's new?
Honestly this behaviour comes off as some way to enact a loss leading strategy. Thing is, I can't figure out what they would be trying to sell here?
Like making everyone use an account for Sony games does not lessen the blow of potentially paying for online, or using a hypothetical PC Sony store, or buying a PS5. It honestly feels like they're just incredibly out of touch and don't understand what the hell they're doing.
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