I feel sorry for the Arrowhead devs. They made a spectacular game that was revered across the entire industry and loved by its fans, and their overlords at Sony went and caused so much damage to their reputation overnight. Literally just 24 hours ago people were writing articles about how Helldivers 2 is the right way to make a game and should be an example for the rest of the industry, and then Sony calls in a hellbomb on the reviews.
I feel sorry for the Arrowhead devs.
After seeing a community manager on Discord mistreating on people who voice their concerns with this change, I certainly do not feel sorry for the Arrowhead devs.
my man genuinely doesn't understand how steam usernames work
also the implication that steam reviews don't matter? then why are you mad about them?
I believe he was saying. Don’t complain here on discord. Go complain in a review on steam we have no power here.
So how does Steam tell their own users’ usernames apart if they’re mostly duplicates? Something smells like bullshit.
I assume they're talking about player names, not usernames - steam usernames are unique, but steam player names can be whatever you want and are often duplicates.
Except for the fact that there are ways to differentiate accounts uniquely, like SteamID. Games have access to it, obviously. Hell, even external websites do, like trading bots. You log in through steam and they know who they need to trade with.
Why can't they make a unique username when you create a character the first time that is just your "account name"? That would give you the samw powers as a psn username when it comes to banning. Edit:spelling
They literally don't need to do that. Every platform has some sort of unique user ID, usually numeric.
I really like the community manager's reply in the first one, pretty funny
I've never understood why players can't demand a refund when a fundamental aspect of a game changes.
Well, to be fair, they did write - in bold letters - on the Steam page that a Playstation network account is required to play.
They simply didn't enforce that rule up until now.
Also locks out anyone not living in the 66 countries serviced by the PSN.
Also now requires giving your personal info to yet another third party and their friends. A third party which has a storied past of losing user data.
The game was sold other places (like the Humble store) without the PSN warning.
Also it’s been sold in countries that the PSN doesn’t support.
I'm totally with you on that latter point - Sony needs to do something about that.
Idk about other places than Steam, but I'm surprised more people haven't gone at Steam for allowing the game to be sold in countries that will get essentially blocked from playing. I feel like they should've had some kind of cross referencing going on there.
I thought someone had gone to the waybackmachine and confirmed that it said it was optional initially and changed it when they made this decision?
Greed
Game companies sure are completely disconnected from their audience these days.
When I was growing up, game companies were happy that their games became popular. There was none of this shit going on.
I don't know when you grew up, but game publishers have a long history of fucking things up. Rushing development, buying studios and firing the core staff were and are frequent stories.
Just a few weeks ago helldivers was one of the poster child dev teams that got gamers and therefore deserve their success. What a turnaround...
Well they still are beholden to Sony executives that have no idea what gamers want unfortunately.
their decision to use an unnecesary intrusive rootkit ai should have clued players into how little the devs care about the players
They don't need to be connected to their audience. Dumbass people continue to buy loot crates, battle passes, unfinished early access games, overprices skins, etc...
Anyone wanna tell me what publishers do and why anyone does business with them?
Afterwards, who wants to crowdfund a super generic 'just gets the job done' publishing company that touches nothing else?
They fund game development where the studio can't afford to, and advertising which makes the difference between being an overnight success, and disappearing onto page 37 of an app store where it will never be seen again.
Like, sure, you don't need them, but the big indie games who made it without them are the exception to the rule.
I sort of work in the industry so I feel like publishers are pretty important in getting your game out there. You, as a developer, want to focus your energies in making the best game possible. To make a game successful, there is a whole gamut of tasks which are necessary but are a pain to do such as finding a QA team, finding someone to do localisation, porting your game to other platforms if needed, marketing, and in a good bunch of cases providing funding.
The last part is where things get ugly. Because publishers are the ones who are giving you the money to complete your game, you are naturally beholden to the timelines and goals that they set. Good publishers listen to the developers because good games make good money. Then there are fucks like Sony management here and whoever was at embracer group who have never played a game in the last ten years and are in the position because of their MBA degree. There are a bunch of decent publishers out there like Devolver but naturally they are going to be picky with their titles. For the vast majority, going with whoever is going to give you the money and support is the way forward.
They find funds and provide marketing, which is astonishingly expensive. I'm not in games, but I do work in a marketing adjacent function. The budgets needed even to do very small marketing exercises are really unbelievable. Campaigns exceed my yearly salary regularly, and we are not doing anything like consumer marketing which I imagine is significantly worse.
Not to justify publisbers' behaviour, but this is partially why they have such stringent demands, I suspect. I assume they are getting some kind of funding or something from the PSN connection, which funds both the game and the marketing needed to make it a success.
What I'm hearing is that marketing is the problem - if so much money wasn't wasted on it then the world would be a better place.
It's 62,477 negative for the May 3rd, and 18,604 negative so far today
Fans: "This sucks" Developers: "It wasnt our choice, it was sony" Sony: "Hahaha deal with it and give us your money" Fans: "Fine, okay"
The fans are fine with a $40 always online game with kernel level anti-cheat, a battle pass and micro-transactions. Somehow I think they will suck it up as usual and keep playing the game. Gamers are absolute pushovers and negative attention like in this case, is entirely random. If they would have enforced this from day 1, none of these people would have cared.
I think the people who live in the 100+ countries that the game just got delisted, are not supported by PSN, and Sony, the publisher, failed to region lock the game from being sold into, are rightfully pissed a game they bought up to 3 months ago is suddenly bricked because a corporation lied and wants to force a 'feature' onto an exsisting game just so they can get better internal metrics on people playing the game to bombard them with more advertising.
If they enforced it from day 1 then you're right, no one would have cared. At day 1 it would be upfront and everyone would know what they're getting and far fewer people would have bought it. Enforcing it at day 40 or whatever is not cool. I, along with many others by the sounds of it, was looking forward to finally buying this game and now I won't be. In general I am so fucking sick of good-sounding games coming along just for them to be fucked in one way or another, i.e., missing content, under developed/tested, broken promises, "we'll patch it later", etc.
My entire extended friend group has refunded. It hurts em
Based, fuck Sony and the power trip happy community manager at Arrowhead that wants to ban people easier.
I'm doing my part.
/insertmeme
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