What's the context here? I've never played it, but I thought it was generally well-liked. I'm guessing the publisher is up to some nonsense?
this post was submitted on 04 May 2024
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Few days ago Sony announced through arrowhead (the developer) that you had to have a PSN (PlayStation Network) account linked to your steam account or you would not be able to play through steam. PSN is not available in certain regions that steam is, and so now a bunch of people who have bought the game and sank hours into it have no way of creating and linking a PSN account and will no longer be able to play a game they paid for. People are also throwing this on the “don’t take my info” bandwagon as well, but the real travesty is the people who paid for it that will no longer be able to play.
“don’t take my info”
In some regions, like the UK, you have to upload either a photocopy of a personal ID or a photograph of your face to verify your age before creating a PSN account. I think it's fair to be uncomfortable with it when you have to trust Sony, a company with notoriously bad cybersecurity, not to leak it to criminals.
Tbh I'm kinda amazed Sony hasn't gotten fucked in court due to their negligence yet.
Their security is really effective when they want it to be. For an example, afaik the DRM they use for theater DCPs has never been cracked. It took 4 yrs for the PS5 to get jailbroken and even then you can't jailbreak the newest firmware yet. The ps4's newest firmware has just been cracked, and so on.
They can make their consoles secure enough that it takes a while to crack them despite being literally, physically in the hands of hackers, yet they can't keep their cloud data secure to save their lives.
The difference is that the firmware presents a tiny attack surface. You can't social-engineer machine code, or use an unsecured access point to gain entry.
Really? I've never done that for my PSN account and I'm in the UK
It is truly amazing how you are forced to do that in the UK, for a company regularly getting hacked. Before disposable virtual credit cards, I always charger my account with coupons, to avoid giving them my financial data.
If you live in the US, the government practically hands your data over to credit score agencies.
Agencies that HAVE been hacked in the past, as well. People are too ignorant for their own good if they're this pissed at Sony whilst Equifax isn't burned to the ground...
Was not downplaying the other arguments, just putting emphasis on the argument I heard first. The “take my info” argument is just as valid.
Also those of us that really rather just keep our various accounts separate. I want them isolated, and I really dislike the idea that should something happen to my PlayStation account, then I’ll have to think about purchases in jeopardy on a completely separate account. It’s just future problems, and I’m not here for it as it’s so entirely unnecessary, and a frustrating trend in general with more and more games requiring third party accounts and especially launchers
I would love to listen in on the meeting that decided this. How did they think this was remotely a good idea
Their justification is that they need the PSN to moderate the community; right now they can't ban anyone, and only didn't launch with this requirement because it wasn't ready. But now the temporary grace period is ending. You need to agree to terms and services by signing up for PSN, including PSN codes of conduct they enforce in every game. Without that, they can't ban you for conduct you didn't agree to.
The counter argument is that they didn't make it clear enough that this was an eventuality, and that they could and should find alternate means to moderate their PC community that doesn't exclude so many players.
I suspect this is more about policing third party monetization than community moderation.
Wait no, this doesn't make sense. Other games easily ban their own players from Steam. For easily available example, Rust.
There are several camps here in the negative feedback side. The crux, is that Sony, who published the game, is making Arrowhead, the studio that developed it, to require players to login using a Playstation Network account to continue playing the game at the end of this month.
Communication about this requirement was murky at best, with Sony never really saying anything on behalf or about Helldivers at all, in a PR way at least, and Arrowhead never said anything about it until the new update on Thursday. This has lots of people pissed off, some for good reasons, some for slightly less.
Those rightly pissed off, are those who do not live in a country where PSN is not available. The game was sold globably for 3 months, with player data available to the public suggesting as many as people in 140 different countries playing the game somewhat consistently. The bulk of these players are in North America, Europe and Japan of course, but people observing the stats through SteamDB have suggested anywhere from a few thousand people, to 50,000 to potentially 100,000 paying customers will not have access to play a game they rightfully bought, come June 1st. If Sony's intention was for the PSN requirement to always be firm and realistic, the game should only have been allowed to be sold in the 69 countries PSN is available. Instead they sold it globally for 3 months and only yesterday did they de-list it for sale in the 177 countries who don't have PSN access. https://steamdb.info/sub/137730/history/?changeid=23416542 Which is pretty sleezy to do without even making some kind of announcement.
Others, are upset because Sony's history with being hacked and data protection, is sloppy at best. With 7 major leaks or hacks in the last 14 years, People are not exactly thrilled at the idea to put their info in the hands of a company with a subpar security, especially if some of that info could be linked to a credit card or other personal info that could be used to steal their identity. If you take privacy and personal data security seriously, this is could be a big deal.
And then there is those, who are mostly just mad Sony is trying to put their service overtop of steam, as the game clearly works without that extra layer and login already, so it's presence really isn't needed for anything gameplay wise, and just some method for sony to add people to their internal metrics or potentially use it as a backdoor way to throw more adverts for other sony products onto users who don't already own a playstation. The late entry of such a service and not even making it a requirement to at least register it to a PSN account even if the login feature wasn't working as intended at the time could have at least cushioned the blow here.
Ultimately, this entire thing is a PR nightmare where the publisher basically did nothing and sold in regions they should have known were ineligible for PSN access, made no serious comments on the game or their intentions, and expected a small studio to handle everything on their end with seemingly no support aside from the start up investment in return for the studio pushing out premium warbonds once a month to keep the income flowing.
The game had a requirement to link your PlayStation Network account to your steam account but it has been disabled due to server issues. Now Sony wants the dev to enforce that and people feel like they have been bait and switched. Another issue is that many people who have already bought the game live in areas of the world where Playstation Network is unsupported so they couldn’t link an account if they wanted to.
Not enforcing it out of the gate, and then only choosing to do so months later after selling it globally when the PSN is not available globally is a complete bait and switch. Then there are two concerns specific to the announcement which is that the PSN couldn't handle the load on release, which certainly doesn't inspire confidence that it will be stable if everyone starts to use it, and the reason for implementing it being 'player safety' which sounds like they want to play nanny to the playerbase which has so far been pretty awesome for an online multiplayer game.
I chose to link the PSN to enable cross play when I bought the game so the change doesn't impact me, but the way that they are handling this made me annoyed enough to leave a negative review.
Just an FYI to you and anyone else who might read this but you don't even have to link a PSN account for cross play. I have no PSN account and cross play works just fine.
It is a fuzzy memory from months ago, as there isn't any other reason I can think of off the top of my head why I would have made a PSN account.
IIRC the dialogue that pops up about PSN implies you might want it for cross play, but I think maybe it's just to be able to see your PSN friends in game and invite them to your squad? Not sure if I'm remembering correctly or thinking of a different game though.
Same boat here. I had no problems making a PSN account because I like the idea of crossplay, but if they were planning to add this requirement back in later they needed to be much more clear about it. Like "gigantic popup every time you load the game if you don't have a PSN account" clear, especially with PSN not being available in certain countries.
There's also the larger question of why this is required. Clearly the game works just fine without it. Whatever the reason is, it's not for the benefit of the players.
What if I do not have PlayStation account (I do not have PlayStation and never had)
Then they will require you to make one. To play on PC.
They are forcing you to create/link a PSN account to continue playing.
They being Sony of course. The devs also seem pretty bummed by it and have encouraged people to leave negative reviews if the change upsets them.
Ooh. That means sale incoming.
There are other rootkits you can download without paying anything you know? No sale required
Link?
I guess one good reason to have wasted money my PS5 lol
You can just run Helldivers on SteamDeck/Linux if you want to avoid the rootkit.
You mean you prefer store-bought rootkits to downloaded ones?
It can't rootkit on linux it's just running containerized on proton with literally no power.