We are still learning what is best for PC players
More like
We are constantly limit-testing what level of exploitation our players can endure
It’s weird how collective action works so well but they only choose to do it for this linking requirement. You could get the rootkits gone as well, gamers.
Most people don’t know what they’re installing or don’t care about their privacy, which is why there’s not enough people rising up against kernel level AC’s. Also, not being able to play until you create an account is much more upsetting to most people, than just clicking ‘update’ in League of Legends.
Does the rootkit install alongside the game like without explicit user action? That’s pretty unfortunate.
There’s a tooltip next to the update button that says something like ‘Our Anticheat Vanguard is out now!’ or smth like that. The rest is exactly the same as any other update
That is despicable TBH.
Keep in mind this is purchasing a Sony product after they already showed us who they were with the first rootkit scandal.
The Sony BMG CD copy protection rootkit scandal was a scandal focused on the implementation of copy protection measures on about 22 million CDs distributed by Sony BMG in 2005. When inserted into a computer, the CDs installed one of two pieces of software that provided a form of digital rights management (DRM) by modifying the operating system to interfere with CD copying. Neither program could easily be uninstalled, and they created vulnerabilities that were exploited by unrelated malware. One of the programs would install and “phone home” with reports on the user’s private listening habits, even if the user refused its end-user license agreement (EULA), while the other was not mentioned in the EULA at all. Both programs contained code from several pieces of copylefted free software in an apparent infringement of copyright, and configured the operating system to hide the software’s existence, leading to both programs being classified as rootkits.
Brooooo this victory is an absolute game-changer for us die-hard Xbox fans, and it’s downright exhilarating! Sony’s constant blunders pale in comparison to the countless triumphs of team Xbox, and this might just be the knockout blow that finally converts those Lamestationers to our side. Brace yourselves for an epic shift as the unrivaled supremacy of our console dazzles and dominates, pulling every gamer into its unstoppable vortex of pure excitement and adrenaline-fueled gaming bliss!👊👊
I can’t tell if you’re being downvoted by dorks who don’t realise you’re joking or by dorks who DO realise you’re joking and feel attacked. Either way, sad, silly down voters.
Whoa, this gave me some late 2000s nostalgia.
Great shitpost!
This sounds like a chatGPT post ngl
“Annnnnnnd post!”
Doritos Dew It Right!
“we’re still learning What’s best for PC players”
Translation: We’re trying multiple predatory methods to see how far we can push PC players and figure out what we can get away with, compared to all the shit shows we successfully pulled off on our own platform.
We all want PlayStation exclusives on PC, their response now is going to be their own launcher. Just a guess on my end.
What’s wild to me is they’re making their own overlay for their PC games. Ghost of Tsushima is supposed to be the first release title with it. Do they not understand steam already has an overlay? I feel like 2 overlays would just compete and be obnoxious and possibly ever impact performance.
Also, why? If it is for co-op crossplay, just make linking PSN to Steam optional, and state it is needed for inviting/grouping with any PS5 friends. Then do what every other multiplatform game does and show 2 friends list in the game.
The lack of humility in their statement makes me think they haven’t learned anything.
Translated: Dear suckers who keep giving us money for half-finished products. We are sincerely sorry, sorry for getting caught. We thought we could squeeze through with this one, but apparently our PC fans are not as gullible as our console fans.
Yea, this reads more like a sorry, this was too forced we will do something more subtle in the future. Not an actual apology.
They don’t even say sorry. They did not use the words Sorry, Mistake, Problem, Wrong, or Fault. They say the approximation of “We see you’re absolutely outraged. We’ve decided to change our decisions. We are always improving.”
Yeah but the humility in their actions shows they did.
AFAIK the game is still banned in countries where you can’t get a PSN account and also it still ships with a rootkit, so…
People were saying that might have been Valve just covering themselves from potential lawsuits. We’ll just have to see if it’s reverted.Nope nevermind, I was hopeful it was good guy Steam but it was in fact Sony. Fuck Sony. Will never buy another Sony game.
This shows the power of steam reviews with it being driven by the actual community. People tried to downplay and belittle its effectiveness, but it being front and center on the store page does have more impact than there would be without steam reviews. If there were no steam reviews the PSN requirement would have been pushed through with it being easier to ignore some random internet comments on social media than a store page.
Reviews aren’t pointless, but their impact only goes so far. I am assuming the massive amount of refunds had more to do with it, tbh.
I suspect someone in accounting ran the numbers and decided they stand to lose more to reduced microtransaction sales than they would have gained via selling scraped data.
Though I agreed with you. It’s still a win, but we have to be careful not to conflate this with Sony “caring”.
It was not “someone in accounting”
This shit goes all the way to the top. Every manager in the chain will have their take and influence on the numbers.
Sure, and I’m not suggesting said bean counter was responsible for the decision. What I am suggesting is that the only thing that influenced the decision was bottom line finances. Someone ran the numbers, and when the suits discovered that they stand to lose more money than they’d gain, they reversed the decision. Never mistake this as Sony “listening” to anything more than their investors and their bottom line.
I still think the biggest reason why they wanted to push their shitty platform is to artificially push player numbers. “Look how many people use our scam network, see?”
Now the hilarious part is that hopefully someone has to explain why people go these lengths, just to not join their shitty service.That isn’t why. PlayStation doesn’t view this as a problem and in fairness, I don’t either. If the game had shipped with this requirement, it would’ve been fine. Many people put up with Ubisoft and they have a whole separate account plus launcher.
What Sony actually wanted was to make it easier on their server side to authenticate purchases and then to use the same PSN account systems to matchmaker for easier cross-play.
Would they collect data? I guess. They can already do that if they want as a publisher. So yeah it’s purely just to use their ecosystem, which makes sense.
Insane take imo. How does purchase authentication or cross play suddenly become “easier” with this change? Either it works or it doesn’t; having PC players connected to a PSN account doesn’t alleviate server load.
Did I mention server load? What I mean is that having a PSN account means that whatever game is processing your account details doesn’t have to deal with Steam accounts, it just deals with a PSN account the same as it would if you were on PS5.
What I’m saying is it streamlines the code on the developers side of the games they’re publishing and again if Sony is using systems already to authenticate purchases or whatever that can be collected in systems they already have.
This isn’t rocket science, PSN may just be a translation layer.
It absolutely has to deal with a Steam account every single time I log in to confirm ownership of the title. And then again every time I make a purchase from my Steam wallet. And again every time I connect to a friend through my Steam friends list.
It’s literally adding another potential point of failure and removes none of the necessities of dealing with the other service. I only suggested the server load bit because I can’t for the life of me understand how you can think it’s “easier” to insist that these two systems interact in a new way when they’re already up and functioning, and the original reason account linking was disabled was to make the game more stable.
But… that’s the exact opposite of what actually happened. The PSN requirement was so buggy they had to disabled it for the game to work.
Now do it for things like universal healthcare and taxing the rich!
It’s a good reminder that collective/democratic bargaining works. It’s about time we bring back unions and cooperatives.
Made me imagine a page where everyone everyday can leave 1 vote on how good the government performs
If the scores are too low for a prolonged period of time, the government is dismissed.
(Obviously a very first-second concept with millions of flaws - just a thought)
In a two party system, that would just make it so we switch governments every day.
Two-party system is the enemy of democracy to begin with
But maybe even they would be more inclined to do better everyday
‘member We the People?
Many countries actually have such systems in place today, even Russia (lol) - not that they work too well.
Normally, there are two sources of issues here: petitions can in fact be declined, and, in cases where the signature count depends on scale of the petition they can be intentionally escalated as to make it impossible to gain enough signatures. Besides, in many cases petitions can be left unanswered for longer than promised.
Long story short, the system is open to shenanigans and doesn’t make the government truly accountable.
We need the system that would actually make politicians rapidly lose their jobs when they ignore public opinion.
Good detailed response :)
make politicians rapidly lose their jobs when they ignore public opinion.
Under such conditions, would the US have ended slavery or enacted the Civil Rights Act?
Negative reviews should remain until the purchase restrictions put in place on Steam for non-PSN countries have been reverted.
Until then this looks like a temporary move for damage control and they’ll try this again when refunds are less likely and wont be from restricted countries.
https://steamdb.info/sub/137730/history/?changeid=23416542
Democracy has not won yet.
There was a theory that the purchase restrictions were put in place by Valve, not Sony (because those countries couldn’t make an account without violating TOS). If so, Valve might shortly remove the restrictions.
Would the publisher not have to request the game not be sold in those countries before Valve restricts the sale of it?
I believe that Valve may be the ones who do it, but just doing it without permission sounds… Illegal and out of their jurisdiction.
I know Valve controls their storefront and can absolutely pull games down, just looking for some clarification on whether this could be true or not.
Valve can remove games from sale for any reason they like - it’s been a point of consumer contention when they are accused of censorship for certain risque anime games, too.
- They can completely remove a game from sale if it turns out to be bricking people’s computers or function terribly. (Sony did this with Cyberpunk on PSN, without CDPR’s approval)
- There may be suspicion the game is not legitimate for sale, for instance it illegally uses someone else’s work.
- Going country-specific, if a game is revealed to be slightly less than universally positive to the perfectly infallible, totally-not-genocidal Chinese Communist Party, they may want to stop sales in China.
If a game lets you buy it in Tanzania, download it in Tanzania, and then to play, has you sign an agreement that says “I truthfully state that I do not live in Tanzania”, then that bone-headed agreement reflects poorly on Valve, so they have almost a legal need to take it out of sale in that country.
Basically, each country has its own laws of sale. Having those switches to turn off sales in certain places is important for the store’s own safety. While 60% of the blame for selling a faulty product goes to the manufacturer, 40% still goes to the storefront that chose to stock and sell that faulty good. In this case, the fault was specific to the country of play.
We don’t know their personal contract, but calling it illegal is ridiculous, I’m sure Valve explicitly allows for this.
That’s why I said I wasn’t sure and that I was asking for clarification?
Honestly I’m keeping my negative review permanent. The game is great and I enjoy it, but besides a temporary back lash I want the sting to stick around to hopefully teach companies about fucking around and finding out.
They won’t learn anything. They only nulled their bullshit because it would hurt their financial quarter because their biggest cash cow game at the moment is bombing. They only way to maybe make them learn would be if every single one of the “outraged gamers” would just uninstall and never play it again, but that won’t happen and Sony knows that (which is why they can try pulling that shit in the first place).
Good for the peeps in non-PSN countries tho. For them, this is a real win.
Maybe you’ll be teaching them that changing course brings no relief from punishment
Maybe he’ll be teaching them that trying to force enshittification on people in the first place has repercussions.
Just another nail to the bootlicker’s coffin of “review bombing does nothing”.
Review bombing and mass refunding too. Hit them where it hurts
God I hate bootlickers. Fuck em.
Holy shit I was wrong
Now, now, don’t be hasty. Sony can still screw it up somehow.
Cyberbullying works 🎉
Is that the new term for boycott?
Ya, it’s the good ol’ “voting with your wallet” that can bring companies to their knees
The fact that they specifically mention that date makes me think they’re simply pushing the date back
They specifically said “not moving forward”. Seems pretty clear and concise. No PSN requirement.
And they also said “We’re still learning what’s best for PC players […]”
They’ll be back.
They won’t be back - they’re not leaving.
But that phrase also seems like pretty normal rationalizing in an apology.
If I had to bet it was mostly steam issuing refunds and pulling the game in more than 100 countries that changed their mind.
Where are the: “just make an account bro” people now? Probably pre ordering skyrim the definite edition
I was one of them to begin with but once I found out about the whole thing with people of certain countries not able to have an account even though they had already bought the game and were even previously able to play are now locked out, then I was on board.
I’m not against just making accounts, I must have thousands across the internet, what would be one more if I hadn’t already had a PSN account.
Wouldn’t it be nice to not have your info spread across thosands of accounts that you yourself even implied you don’t keep track of?
What sony pulled, and coporate moves like it, are at least in part a result of people saying “meh, what’s one more account, I’ve already got thousands.”
We as a community aren’t an immaculate entity. Companies don’t just make these moves out of nowhere, they analyze what we’re willing to do so they can take advantage of those things to make money. That’s not some sleazy secret scheme, thats basic market research. If we collectively show we do actually care about this stuff and won’t supoort their business when they do it, it might not happen so often.
For now… 🖕🏽 They worded that so weasely, they’re just waiting for the storm to pass and for Legal to come up with some compelling reason why they’re totally “obligated” to make it happen, “hands tied” “so sorry” and all that.
Fuck Sony. They made this SOP way back when, and there’s no way they let this stop them forever. It’s all about profit, not what “we” want.
“Helldivers 2 players get exactly what they wanted, still unhappy.”
You don’t lower your guard just because the fight is over. It’s not like Sony has morals or any trustworthiness to keep to this even in the midterm.
Or, more rationally, you all invested so much of yourselves into your gamer outrage campaign and built yourselves up as the underdogs fighting the big, mean corporation. And when, to your own surprise, you actually won and got all of your demands met without compromise, you still can’t let it go because you managed to incorporate all that upset over a video game into your personal identities over just a few days time.
So now, instead of celebrating your win, you’ll limply cling to your hatred of Sony for a few more days or weeks until everyone finds something else to get upset about.
You talk like this never happened before
I talk like I have seen this exact same thing happen over and over and I’m sick of capital-G Gamers throwing tantrums over every inconvenience. You aren’t Union Men fighting for your rights. You’re gamers upset by a TOS change to your new toy even though Steam was going beyond their own policy to honor refunds.
NGL, you sound like a capital-R Redditor.
Aw, the gamer is upset I forced some introspection into their life.
But no, I’m sorry. You’re totally a noble warrior who fought back the evil Sony and now must remain ever vigilant lest Kazuo Hirai leap from the shadows and scream “Riiiiidge Racer” at you and take away your toys while Gabe Newell gives you your money back and sheepishly shrugs like “I know, right? This guy, man.”
Seriously. Jesus Christi, peopke
“We’re still learning what is best for PC players”
Well PlayStation staff member, it definitely isn’t having people create another account when they already have a Steam account.
Also gaming on a PC is 40 years old, what do they still have to learn?
How much less bullshit PC players are willing to put up with compared to their console counterparts, apparently.
Uhhhh, people install shit like Vanguard just so that they can keep having their mother insulted in the ingame chat.
And many people put up with cascades of different lauchers (and accounts).
So I am glad that there was some push back this time, but it’s not like there would be some sane baseline of PC players in that regard.
Imagine doing this for all kinds of stuff like ads, over priced groceries, other games that required needless launchers.
Just surprising how this works so often and every time there are still people trying to convince everyone to just move on.
If people were capable of choosing long over short term value then the market might be working instead of the shitshow it is right now. IDGI either.
It’s almost as if cheaters ruin hyper competitive games like Valorant. How dare they try to keep the game free from cheaters. The nerve!
Honestly I’d rather have a cheater in my lobby than Riot Games deep into the sections of my PC they should never have accessed.
With that said, I do not play Valorant for this reason (and also because it would require me to dualboot since Vanguard cannot be ported on Linux, lol)
This has nothing to do with the shitstorm (it mostly hit Arrowhead anyway), and I think the review bombing didn’t affect their decision making that much. What I think happened was, Sony saw the massive refunds. They got hit right into the wallet 😩
This makes me smile.
Once again, Arrowhead decided to go with Sony as publisher, they agreed with PSN account linking. No offense, they are are an independent studio, they did not need to do that. It is sad they lost money, but the developers already got paid. The worst thing that can happen is they have to switch jobs.
Arrowhead did not have the infrastructure for this many people. Sony barely pulled it off at launch and cross play still sucks.
That’s what pisses me off with the steam review bombing.
If that’s the only way to express discontent then that will fucking sucks for everybody involved in game development.
If at least review bombing was a last resort but now it’s the norm. These reviews will have a lasting effect on the game even though the drama bubble has now popped.
These reviews will have a lasting effect on the game
Good, let them learn their actions have consequences.
Sure let’s destroy this game all together because of this issue.
A well thought out and mature reaction is to pretend the game is bad in the steam reviews even though you clocked 100+ hours into it.
I mean there is a ton of things Helldivers does better than any other games and we are gonna trash that because of a PSN account requirements ?
I understand this is a valid issue for certain players but is it a proportionate response to this situation to trash the game on steam? I don’t think so.
we are gonna trash that because of a PSN account requirements ?
Yes, next question.
No problem.
Legit question: Did you completely stopped playing Helldivers 2 ?
Is it uninstalled?
Did you ask for a refund ?
Because if you still play the game and at the same time say it should be trashed that’s a lot of hypocrisy.
It can’t be both. You can criticize the game that’s fine. But if you still play it and you are so vocal for its demise then you are definitely part of the problem here.
I never played or bought it, because I hate Sony and don’t play always online multiplayer games because they treat players as cattle and not as users.
OK now they can go ahead with plan B where they allow you to link your PSN account to get some super cool cosmetic. I wonder what the reaction of the consumers will be then.
People actually thought that this was a very cool solution. People are the worst.
I really don’t see the problem, provided it is cosmetic. If you don’t want to link, you don’t get a glittering, whatever in game. If you don’t mind sharing your datas, then you get the shiny thing (and everyone knows you don’t mind sharing your datas).
I mind.
Still not going to buy it.
