Helldivers: We are talking solutions with PlayStation, especially for non-PSN countries. I am doing everything I can to speak for the community - but I don't have the final say.
yeah, the more that comes out, the more it seems that this was a hard requirement by Sony that they ignored. Ballsy by Arrowhead, and I get why they wanted to, but I'm guessing Sony is pissed at Arrowhead for doing this, and they're pissed that their name is getting dragged for it. They're not the good guys, but I'm guessing there are a lot of super fun conversations being had
They didn't ignore it. They shut it off after the first week because Sony's servers were so clogged up, people weren't able to set up their accounts. Plus, they were dealing with all the other server issues. It was only a matter of time before they were going to have to turn it back on.
Not only has the "requires linking a PlayStation Network account" advisory been on the Steam page from the start, but anyone that picked up the game at launch is already linked.
I'm not a fan of the linking; but since I don't own a Sony console, it's just yet another account that serves no purpose to me other than letting me play a couple of games I own on PC.
Yeah the only actual issue here as far as I'm concerned is that it shouldn't have ever been sold in countries without PSN. And I'm pretty sure it's the publisher (Sony) that handles... Publishing.
The requirement has been there since day one. It was on the steam page where it always is for every game. There were technical issues that meant enforcement was shut off temporarily.
Sony dropped the ball by letting it be sold in countries it shouldn't have been. Sony dropped the ball by having their support pages having incorrect wording about whether linking is required. They clearly changed their own policies at some point and never updated the PSN linking support pages. How long ago they changed the linking requirement, that's debatable.
Yes, Arrowhead dropped the ball with communication here, but that's par for the course with their Community Managers from everything I've seen since launch. The difference here is that they aren't the ones that have the final decision here, Sony does. Arrowhead is stuck with a situation that wouldn't have existed if Sony's servers weren't total shit and causing issues at launch. Since at launch the PSN linking was enforced and causing some of the server issues the game had.
If you and I negotiated a software project, and I failed in one of the requirements for the project, causing third parties to lose money because of that. I'm definitely at fault. The third parties are not privy to our conversation, and therefore are not responsible for any obligations I might have to the first party.
I believe publishers are responsible for sales, including what countries it's for sale in. It's not really up to the devs. Not in the games industry though, so could be wrong.
Require a PSN login from day one. So the people who cannot or would not make one simply could refund directly from steam within that 2-hour window.
If the PSN servers were down, they could have fallen back to setting a flag on the client computer to say they've logged in at least once. That would reduce their PSN load to only new logins. But would prevent anybody from starting the game without logging into PSN.
I'm glad PlayStation has capitulated on their PSN requirement today. But Arrowhead leadership failed their customers. To put us all in this situation to live through this drama
It's also posts possible that they intentionally sabotaged the PSN rollout early on, knowing this shit show would ensure and force Sony to reconsider a dumb decision.