Helldivers 2 gets delisted in more countries without PSN access, blindsided devs call for it to be "available worldwide"

[+] helenslunch@feddit.nl 68 points 1 year ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

[deleted]

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 year ago

Sony's death-grip on their platform is more profitable than selling the game. They only fund games to promote the Playstation brand. There is nothing else propping up the Playstation brand. Without lock-in they only make a decent gaming PC with a weird OS.

I sincerely think they're rattled by Microsoft turning Xbox into a gradient... or whatever the fuck Microsoft is doing. Xbox exists specifically to PC-ify the console market, and they've succeeded so completely that the console market is now two AMD laptops versus an Android tablet.

Sony saw how much money they were making just being a PC publisher and it scared the shit out of them. They desperately do not want to be just a PC publisher. This debacle has been a direct overreaction to that possibility.

So on the plus side, Sony's not extracting value from your name and phone number. They want it to be 2004 again. They want every game to be for one platform, so no matter how good or bad their machine's games are, they can sell the machine as having their games. But that model nearly sunk the PS3, as multiplatform development triumphed, and now Microsoft has tricked them into releasing PC ports. MS isn't talking about Halo on PS5 because they need the sales, you know? Sony wants to keep winning the console war... but Sony needs there to be a console war.

[–] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

more profitable in the short term

there's no way you can build a 10- or 20-year business plan around that.

[–] Xanis@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

It won't happen, though part of me just wishes ol' Gaben would up and find a loophole in the Sony contract and tell the Helldiver 2 devs to directly partner with Steam. Not because I think it's a legitimately good idea; because the pure chaos this would cause would be extraordinary.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 59 points 1 year ago (1 children)

170 countries are being undemocratically denied the sweet liberty of managed democracy.

My review stays negative until super earth is liberated.

Do you have the strength and courage to be free?

[–] Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 22 points 1 year ago

I would like to know more

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 35 points 1 year ago (5 children)

"Quick quick! More reviews need to switch to positive!"

It's funny how we don't see these people around here anymore and none of them will admit they were wrong, right?

Glad I got downvoted a week ago for pointing out that changing reviews to positive was a bad idea.

[–] Sharp312@lemmy.one 15 points 1 year ago

I changed my review to positive and realised i got played , its back to negative now and will stay that way until the 3rd party requirement notice on steam is gone and all the countries are unblocked. The people who refuse to admit they got duped are just coping like hell. I for one believe

WE DIVE TOGETHER, OR NOT AT ALL!

[–] mihnt@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My bad review is staying for posterity. People forget too easy.

[–] littlebluespark@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Sadly, it'll just get sorted by new as default and will never be seen by the cast majority of spastic glances. 🤷🏼‍♂️

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago

The important date is between May 30th and June 5th. I keep track of these things and if Sony ends up enforcing PSN again making it impossible for the people who bought the game in blacklisted regions to be played, then I'll return my review to negative permanently.

[–] Crackhappy@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Yep, back to negative for me as well. Like... come on Sony. What the Fuck are you doing?

[–] littlebluespark@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Same. 😅🤌🏽

[–] inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It really is amazing how Sony is still learning to kill off their own games.

The major order has less players because of Sony's stupid push to bulk up PSN numbers.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think it's fair to say Sony actually doesn't care about a successful game or not. They want a permanent recurring slice of the PC gaming market pie. Games be damned. They want their own platform like epic

[–] saigot@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't wanna be a party pooper but the Steam conccurent players doesn't reflect that at all. The downward trend (that all games have after release) has not changed velocity at all.

[–] ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

This. The game had an insanely strong peak but is leveling off. It will peak again with new Factions introduced and if there are big expansions, but there are other games too. My friends went and played some other stuff, and even I have no desire to grind up to level 150 for no reason, and have already finished all the warbonds.

If they're lucky it holds a strong 50k player base over time and they can keep healthy matchmaking and an active community. But drop off is kinda inevitable.

The sales lockout in certain territories is a legal issue. It sucks, but they gotta figure that out now.

[–] laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

(Edit to note: I wrote this before seeing what at least appears to be confirmation that it was Sony who instituted the block, though it was just a support agent who said it and we know that always get everything right and have all the info available to their company...)

The block was implemented by Valve because they were blindsided like the rest of us and wanted to protect themselves when there was no plan available how Sony was going to handle all the copies that would be left unusable. I imagine Valve isn't going to revert the change without some direct assurances by Sony that the PSN change is not happening and will not be attempted again because they don't want to be in the position of having tens of thousands of copies that rightfully should be refunded because they never should have been sold in the first place.

I still believe Arrowhead is doing what they can about this, and that Sony only cares because they got a financial black eye over it. At the end of the day I think Sony is doing to prefer getting money from non-PSN countries as well as continuing to get money from the rest which they likely won't if reviews go that far back into the dog house again.

I don't regret putting my review back to positive but I don't begrudge anyone who wants to wait and see more first (or feels they should leave it at negative as a reminder). If this doesn't get resolved, though, it will be changed back to negative and it won't be updated again after that, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that