Monday, May 6th 2024

Sony Reverses Decision of Mandatory PSN Account for Helldivers 2 After Negative Feedback

On Friday, Sony announced that Helldivers 2, a 3rd person squad-based shooter from Arrowhead, will require a PlayStation Network (PSN) account for gamers to link, in addition to their Steam accounts. However, that caused quite a stir in the gaming community, especially in the form of negative reviews on Steam. Since the May 2 announcement of mandatory PSN account linking, the game received more than 200,000 negative reviews from gamers. Not only is the PSN account another layer of log-in details, but it also doesn't work in 177 countries, effectively preventing gamers from those 177 countries from purchasing and enjoying the game. Arrowhead Studios CEO and Helldivers 2 Creative Director Johan Pilestedt noted that over the weekend, there were talks with Sony about reversing the decision.

Today, we have the information that Sony has reviewed its course and that the update requiring a PSN account, planned for May 6, will not be moving forward. This means that the game is PSN-free, and gamers are able to enjoy it on their Steam accounts. It has also been reported on Reddit that some users received refunds from Steam, even when their purchase was over two months old, and they had played 120+ hours of the game. As per the GDPR, terms that are changed after the agreement is made require action from the seller. This has resulted in Steam stepping up for gamers and issuing a refund for Helldivers 2, as PSN account linking was optional upon release. Gamers have shown their collective power, and Sony has managed to reverse its decision so that no further harm is done.
Source: Sony
Add your own comment

54 Comments on Sony Reverses Decision of Mandatory PSN Account for Helldivers 2 After Negative Feedback

#51
Merluz
AdmiralThrawnI have a bit of a doomer take on this. I don't think Sony learned anything from this and I don't think it will change anything in gaming. People can make a big fuss about the game all they want, and talk about how horrible Sony is. When the next Spider-Man game comes out. They will all be preordering it. All Sony did to appease players was rollback a horrible decision. That is not enough for them to gain my trust. Sony did not make any promises about future games, or even apologize directly for it.
there are a lot of gamers that only cares about good games (or just games that they like) and doesn't follow any of the news about corporations making bad decisions and so on, expecially if those bad decisions are about a game that they don't even play.
most of the times people will drop a "series" of games after one bad experience (or not so good one), but ignoring the eventually bad corps that are behing the game itself.
Posted on Reply
#52
Chomiq

Based.

Note: not actual ingame item, just concept from reddit.
Posted on Reply
#53
chrcoluk
Solaris17I think it’s already dead. Too many people take steam reviews as the gospel (they review bombed it because of policy not gameplay)

It’s not like those 200k people will delete their reviews. It would also be up to steam to retro actively re add the game to the 170 countries it delisted from ( I wouldn’t given this amount of drama)

It wouldn’t surprise me if this was a sacrifice as is. It will never get the attention it properly deserves from anyone that didn’t follow the story because now it just looks like another bad game.

Shit I did and I don’t know anything about this series but I’ll never buy it; I don’t like the drama or the twitter play by plays by the studio it’s too much.
This game wasnt the first to do this nonsense, it just looks like the tipping point got reached and it took the brunt of the push back. People are sick of having to sign/link up here there and everywhere to use a product/service.

Every time now when I get asked to buy something from some unknown online retailer, there is of course no guest checkout, and by default I am on some kind of mailing list, even when I click opt out. Same type of thing.
Posted on Reply
#54
FreedomEclipse
~Technological Technocrat~
Had it just been people screaming. I'm sure sony would have just ignored and carried on, but when Steam started issuing refunds they could no longer carry on laughing their way to the bank.

The fact that it took them this long to reverse it says it all really. They'll probably mandate a PSN account for their games moving forward so you'll get to choose if you want to buy the game or not rather than buying it and them changing the ToS after the sale
Posted on Reply
Add your own comment
Dec 18th, 2024 10:07 EST change timezone

New Forum Posts

Popular Reviews

Controversial News Posts