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Helldivers 2 Removed from Purchase on Steam in over 150 Countries

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Re: Helldivers 2 Removed from Purchase on Steam in over 150 Countries

#151

I've always found it ridiculous that Sony is allowed to sell their consoles and games in my county without allowing me to create a PSN account. They even sell the digital PS5, which REQUIRES a PSN account to get any games. And then, even if you break their TOS and create an account in another country, you're still constantly inconvenienced - you can't pay for games using your local payment method, for example, and a…

A game is just a game. There is nothing vital to it. It's the easiest thing in the world to boycott. And yet, players consistently fail to make the editors pay for their bad behaviors. EA is still craping on their clients. Blizzards fails forward. Loot boxes, DRM, crippling anti-cheat mechanisms, buggy games with expensive DLC and micro payments are everywhere. Sony even infected their customers with a rootkit once.…

That's not how this market works. There is no homogenous group of gamers that can act together. Each year there is a new cohort of 11 years old that knows nothing of past publisher behaviour and wants the latest EA game for their birthday. For FIFA with the lootboxes etc there is the added factor that people buying those are for a big part a distinct group to other gamers, there are many guys that only play FIFA or their favorite sport game and nothing else. So bad behaviour in that area does not affect other game sales as much as it should.

Re: Helldivers 2 Removed from Purchase on Steam in over 150 Countries

#152

This was known right from the launch. no surprises here. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/553850/view/41968685... Attention Helldivers, Due to technical issues at the launch of HELLDIVERS™ 2, we allowed the linking requirements for Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network account to be temporarily optional. That grace period will now expire. See details below in this post. Account linking plays a critical role…

Sounds like It's not that they can't ban players without a PSN account, but the punishment of being banned from playing any of your PS games online is real motivator. I thought we realized eons ago that forced puritanism is the antithesis of humanity.

Re: Helldivers 2 Removed from Purchase on Steam in over 150 Countries

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no business reason to cut down your own market unless it comes with additional expenses due to technical reasons. I'm pretty sure someone weighed these numbers again after the game's huge upgrades in infrastructure due to its unexpected success and decided differently this time.

Come on, they want this to be a PlayStation exclusive because it boosts ps5 sales and everyone wants to have the “hits” only on their platform. they just can’t easily get away with it. Suuurrree, there are rumours about Xbox ( https://insider-gaming.com/sony-helldivers-2-on-xbox/ ) but I’m gonna go out a limb here and say there’s sweet duck all chance in hell of that happening now.

If they wanted it to be a PlayStation exclusive they never would have launched it on PC to begin with.

Re: Helldivers 2 Removed from Purchase on Steam in over 150 Countries

#154
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A game is just a game. There is nothing vital to it. It's the easiest thing in the world to boycott. And yet, players consistently fail to make the editors pay for their bad behaviors. EA is still craping on their clients. Blizzards fails forward. Loot boxes, DRM, crippling anti-cheat mechanisms, buggy games with expensive DLC and micro payments are everywhere. Sony even infected their customers with a rootkit once.…

That's not how this market works. There is no homogenous group of gamers that can act together. Each year there is a new cohort of 11 years old that knows nothing of past publisher behaviour and wants the latest EA game for their birthday. For FIFA with the lootboxes etc there is the added factor that people buying those are for a big part a distinct group to other gamers, there are many guys that only play FIFA or t…

This makes me so mad. Every time I have to show my nieces or nephews how to play a game, and I have to show them all the fake buttons they have to avoid to manage to play it through the dark patterns. Even Windows, the OS, is full of traps now. You can't buy any software and have it pretend to be yours anymore.

Used to be the case for free mobile games at first, now it's everywhere.

Re: Helldivers 2 Removed from Purchase on Steam in over 150 Countries

#155

On Steam: If there's little yellow boxes in the right hand column, someone somewhere is reserving the right to ruin your day in some way. Helldivers 2 has three of them: DRM, Third party account, and third party EULA. Best avoid games with little yellow boxes, especially if you prefer just playing games vs legal drama. (And of course gog.com doesn't have any little yellow boxes)

If Helldivers 2 was on GOG it would still require a PSN account.

If it were on GOG, there would be no DRM or third party accounts required. With potential exception for online play. But most GOG games are single player offline games. Even online games would be more of the type where you run local server and connect with you friends by sharing IP:port combo.

Re: Helldivers 2 Removed from Purchase on Steam in over 150 Countries

#156
post #51

I wonder if it breached the contract/TOS between the game company and valve. I guess lawyers at valve had to work extra to come up with a decision, because they're probably going to court over this.

Valve is already fully covered, they will honor refunds to the game and any loss they make will be taken out of future sales. Of course it's possible that future sales won't make up for the loss in this case, but Valve is still very unlikely to make a loss overall.

Re: Helldivers 2 Removed from Purchase on Steam in over 150 Countries

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And not just that. They required PSN accounts on countries where PSN is not available (and using a VPN to create it goes against the ToS, and people get banned). So in those countries they have effectively banned you from playing the game you purchased weeks ago.

You took my money but refuse to provide the service. This borders on fraud This sounds like a very simple class action

Valve is offering full refunds, in practice very few people would bother going through any legal mess when they can just get their money back.

Re: Helldivers 2 Removed from Purchase on Steam in over 150 Countries

#158
If you live in a country where you can't create a PSN account, just create one for another country. You can trivially find addresses to use online. To make digital purchases, you can import gift cards from the same region as your account. I believe Play-Asia sells those. If you buy games from multiple regions, you need an account for each region so you can access their DLCs.

For many years, I wouldn't connect an actual payment to my account due to security concerns and would just go to the store to buy a gift card whenever I wanted to make a digital purchase. There's no reason why you can't import the gift cards.

Basically, the whole "create an account in a different country" thing is an IQ test like the "enter an age of 13 or older to create an account" IQ test that was forced onto the internet by a stupid law the US government passed in the late 90s. Just use the obvious workaround to protect the company from legal liability over stupid laws like a normal person would.

Re: Helldivers 2 Removed from Purchase on Steam in over 150 Countries

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And not just that. They required PSN accounts on countries where PSN is not available (and using a VPN to create it goes against the ToS, and people get banned). So in those countries they have effectively banned you from playing the game you purchased weeks ago.

You took my money but refuse to provide the service. This borders on fraud This sounds like a very simple class action

Class action, as in you get a check for $5 3 years from now? How does that help with the $40 game they stole from you?

Also this is happening in other countries, not USA.

Re: Helldivers 2 Removed from Purchase on Steam in over 150 Countries

#160

If you live in a country where you can't create a PSN account, just create one for another country. You can trivially find addresses to use online. To make digital purchases, you can import gift cards from the same region as your account. I believe Play-Asia sells those. If you buy games from multiple regions, you need an account for each region so you can access their DLCs. For many years, I wouldn't connect an actu…

This is against Sony's TOS and can result in a ban. In fact, this is exactly what happened to a Chinese user who tried to do that.
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