Holy F, what a smooth brain move. They had an IP with incredible goodwill that would have been printing money forever (think about DLCs and merchandise, maybe even a TV series), and they chose to destroy all that to increase the active PSN account numbers by <1%. Which doesn’t even have a direct financial benefit, just something they can peacock in their quarterly reports, trying to boost the stock price.
Adding all those helldiver’s players into the “Sony account to PlayStation now subscription service” sales funnel is the financial goal here, likely along with selling any data they collect about you to any bidder.
This does make Sony money, but it likely doesn’t make them more than an indie becoming the 7th most successful game this year, but here we are anyway.
I understand that sales funnel logic, but I would still argue its actual financial impact would be marginal. It’s wishful thinking from Sony that just because you got your claws into a PC player by making a PSN account, they will start buying PS stuff. The data monetization is much more direct, but still, not much additional money to be made by a few (tens of / hundred) thousand extra registrations (especially as they had to be aware of refunds happening). These are definitely valid upsides, but I don’t think they are big/certain enough to make this call, and compensate for the negative consequences.
My gut / experience tells me this is mostly about the PSN account numbers, and some execs getting a gazillion dollar bonus if they can push it above certain target by the next report, even if they damage the revenues in the process.
My gut / experience tells me this is mostly about the PSN account numbers, and some execs getting a gazillion dollar bonus if they can push it above certain target by the next report, even if they damage the revenues in the process.
I’m inclined to suspect the same. A move like this does not happen without a project “champion” pushing through internal resistance.
I have seen exactly this kind of shortsighted min-maxing, where an exec will fixate on some metric or goal, and just wreck everything in their path.
I expect media companies to be greedy. What feels absurd is when they act out of blind, unmonetized efforts of control that seem to hurt their bottom line - like forcing employees to commute instead of work from home.
This one made me wonder if they don’t get telemetrics about how people are playing the game to improve the game (or build a new game) from without doing this. And if that same data would be valuable to data brokers in general or if it’s more valuable as an internal trade secret.
Yes, it would be just for Sony to get it; not meaning to say it isn’t collected at all by the developer. Before this, I would have thought they’d share that with the publisher (this case Sony) anyway.
In my experience with telemetry, it’s100% about understanding how the product is performing and being used, and 0% about monitoring individual users. Telemetry data has little to no value for anyone not directly supporting the product.
Honestly, I think Sony is going to be more stubborn than Valve. I saw in another thread where some people were getting approved for their Steam refunds even after passing the 2-hour refund window, so it looks like Valve may already be the first to cave.
Sony’s probably going to continue digging their heels in, though.
While 177 countries sounds like a lot, it’s not where the majority of players are. PSN operates in the top 15 countries by GDP and the top 4 by population.
Of course there’s still the question of why they work in so few countries when literally none of their competitors (that I know of) have those limitations.
This is accurate. I work at a international company. We will tell a bunch of countries to go fuck themselves since combined, they make like 1% of sales.
I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. I’m just saying it’s a thing many companies do.
I have knowledge on mobile gaming, they do this too.
It doesn’t pay to manage some shitty off brand Android phone’s compatibility issues when your whole country spends less in a month than a half dozen midwestern moms in an evening on the game.
PSN (PlayStation Network) is available in 73 countries.
It was PSNow (PlayStation Now, their game steaming service) that was only in 19 countries.
PSNow was merged into PlayStation Plus as the Premium level package, and is in 30 or so countries.
It’s because it’s a Japanese company. I’m not saying this out of racism but because they’re known for being archaic in how they do certain things. Like game modding and work schedules. Their public transit is top fucking notch though.
I’ve been to Japan a few times. Only Tokyo is super accurate with time. Go to any other Japanese city and it’s no different from any other city in the world. Late trains. Buses that are 10 mins late or not even showing.
Can we kill this narrative that Japan is hyper efficient with public transportation?
I think the mistake was ever thinking that one company is “good” while the other is “bad”. Companies are just different flavors of bad once they grow above a size of, well, once they are companies.
I thought you were being racist until you said that thing about public transit, so we’re good 👍
EDIT: I was making a dumb joke, y’all. I thought OP did not need to worry about sounding racist at all so I was trying ricochet off of that. Sorry, pretty clearly did not land right, I apologize.
That wasn’t in response to my racist comment but in response to the archaic comment. They’re as much archaic in procedure and bureaucracy as they are advanced in tech.
I didn’t buy it before because it had kernel level anticheat which is incredibly invasive and unnecessary for a PVE game, and now I’m really glad I didn’t buy it.
The actual answer is that everyone should play Earth Defence Force (they just announced EDF 6), which I feel was a big inspiration for helldivers 2 bugs.
Oh yeah definitely, Starship troopers is a huge influence to both, I don’t disagree at all, the Starship troopers games seem to be a bit more serious and gritty in comparison to edf though. I’d say the gameplay in helldivers is very EDF also with the huge big swarms and over the top weapons.
I much prefer the extremely deliberate aiming and the heavily physics influenced combat of Helldivers. Just makes it feel a lot deeper than EDF that sort of makes up for that granular detail by instead being extremely arcadey and over the top in its weapons and class abilities.
They play quite differently even though they have some surface similarities, but EDF is indeed also awesome and I wish it was more popular.
I wonder how many times I will have to see a publisher significantly harm their reputation in the PC market in a yolo bet to set up their own ecosystem and store.
I thought Sony had been conservative and decided against it when their first steam releases hit but with this move it seems possible that a Sony PC ecosystem was always in the works and it just wasn’t ready for those original releases. Oh well.
Its also wild how much Stockholm syndrome console players have for their corporate overlords, where they think that having a purchasing decision affecting level change forced on them after purchase is an ok move to make, just because the possibility of it was nestled in the fine print
Yeah same, bunch of my friends had been playing it for a week or two, but between the in game story, the season passes and the utterly intrusive DRM, I figured I’ll wait for a good sale at least. Well, guess I’ll be saving 100% on this, now!
To be fair there is a lot of speculation that the delisting is actually entirely from steam’s side not sony or arrowhead. Nothing is confirmed of course but the thought is that steam is throwing the kill switch on selling in these countries right now because obviously the publisher hadn’t thought this out and just straight up doesn’t have a plan for it. Valve may be doing this to put extra pressure on the situation drying up sales a little prematurely and more importantly to protect Valve from legal repercussions. Again this is entirely speculation but it makes a lot of sense, Arrowhead and Sony have been pretty quiet.
Same old shit with everything. A company makes a move that users don’t like. The company just ignores all the flak they are getting online. The uproar calms down and then things continue.
We’re seeing this more and more. Windows with ads, Amazon adding ads to their prime video account holders. Spotify moving lyrics to their premium subscription. The past couple of years are shit and companies continue to do whatever the fuck they want.
The cm’s have literally said it’s Sony. Why would there be speculation that it’s steam?
Edit: I misunderstood. I meant that the whole initiative was from Sony. Kroxx was talking about the delisting in specific. I don’t have any info on that.
Yeah I’ve not seen them address the delisting anywhere yet, if you have a link or anything please add it I’m trying to stay as updated as possible on this.
Edit: I also edited the first line, I had written “this” originally and I replaced it with “the delisting” because I can see how it was a little ambiguous before.
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Holy F, what a smooth brain move. They had an IP with incredible goodwill that would have been printing money forever (think about DLCs and merchandise, maybe even a TV series), and they chose to destroy all that to increase the active PSN account numbers by <1%. Which doesn’t even have a direct financial benefit, just something they can peacock in their quarterly reports, trying to boost the stock price.
A boasted stock price is a financial benefit?
Adding all those helldiver’s players into the “Sony account to PlayStation now subscription service” sales funnel is the financial goal here, likely along with selling any data they collect about you to any bidder.
This does make Sony money, but it likely doesn’t make them more than an indie becoming the 7th most successful game this year, but here we are anyway.
I understand that sales funnel logic, but I would still argue its actual financial impact would be marginal. It’s wishful thinking from Sony that just because you got your claws into a PC player by making a PSN account, they will start buying PS stuff. The data monetization is much more direct, but still, not much additional money to be made by a few (tens of / hundred) thousand extra registrations (especially as they had to be aware of refunds happening). These are definitely valid upsides, but I don’t think they are big/certain enough to make this call, and compensate for the negative consequences.
My gut / experience tells me this is mostly about the PSN account numbers, and some execs getting a gazillion dollar bonus if they can push it above certain target by the next report, even if they damage the revenues in the process.
I’m inclined to suspect the same. A move like this does not happen without a project “champion” pushing through internal resistance.
I have seen exactly this kind of shortsighted min-maxing, where an exec will fixate on some metric or goal, and just wreck everything in their path.
Will…that was fun.
RIP Helldivers 2.
What a disaster this is for absolutely no reason.
Just corporate greed for more of you data to sell.
I expect media companies to be greedy. What feels absurd is when they act out of blind, unmonetized efforts of control that seem to hurt their bottom line - like forcing employees to commute instead of work from home.
This one made me wonder if they don’t get telemetrics about how people are playing the game to improve the game (or build a new game) from without doing this. And if that same data would be valuable to data brokers in general or if it’s more valuable as an internal trade secret.
They already have this data to improve the game. They basically have a DM watching everything and managing play. This is just for Sony.
Yes, it would be just for Sony to get it; not meaning to say it isn’t collected at all by the developer. Before this, I would have thought they’d share that with the publisher (this case Sony) anyway.
I’m sure they do. I mean this is for Sony to pad their numbers for active paying accounts.
In my experience with telemetry, it’s100% about understanding how the product is performing and being used, and 0% about monitoring individual users. Telemetry data has little to no value for anyone not directly supporting the product.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/24/researchers-spotlight-the-lie-of-anonymous-data/
(Telemetry / tracking / meta) data absolutely has value outside of people directly supporting a product (any product, not just a game).
Well now it seems they’ve become the dog with two bones
Wym no reason? Exec bonuses will be great this quarter
They should start working on a helldivers 3 and self publish it, barely change anything. (assuming they own the ip ofc)
I’m sure they don’t.
DellHivers
DillPicklers2
Div3rz of Hell
Screw it, go make the actual Starship Troopers game not suck. That thing is in dire need of help.
The accounts are so important that you’re willing to lose sales in that many countries?!
To be fair, the game wasn’t supposed to be sold in those countries to begin with. Sony and Valve screwed up the region settings.
But it was, so who is going to take responsibility for it? Is Sony going to back down from the requirement? Is Valve going to refund all those users?
From what I’ve heard Valve is already refunding most everyone who asks for a refund given this controversy.
Honestly, I think Sony is going to be more stubborn than Valve. I saw in another thread where some people were getting approved for their Steam refunds even after passing the 2-hour refund window, so it looks like Valve may already be the first to cave.
Sony’s probably going to continue digging their heels in, though.
Can confirm, saw one approved refund with 97 hours on the clock.
Sometimes (almost always) I wish that the refunded money wouldn’t come out of Steams/Valves pocket…
While 177 countries sounds like a lot, it’s not where the majority of players are. PSN operates in the top 15 countries by GDP and the top 4 by population.
Of course there’s still the question of why they work in so few countries when literally none of their competitors (that I know of) have those limitations.
This is accurate. I work at a international company. We will tell a bunch of countries to go fuck themselves since combined, they make like 1% of sales.
I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. I’m just saying it’s a thing many companies do.
I have knowledge on mobile gaming, they do this too.
It doesn’t pay to manage some shitty off brand Android phone’s compatibility issues when your whole country spends less in a month than a half dozen midwestern moms in an evening on the game.
PSN (PlayStation Network) is available in 73 countries.
It was PSNow (PlayStation Now, their game steaming service) that was only in 19 countries. PSNow was merged into PlayStation Plus as the Premium level package, and is in 30 or so countries.
Strange then that they are now only listed in 18 countries.
Strange then that they are now only listed in 18 countries.
That is definitely strange, but might be an overreaction by Valve and not done by Arrowhead.
Edit: Seems it was indeed done by Valve.
I don’t doubt what you’re saying, but you have to admit that this is terrible PR for them.
If the past thirty years of Sony history has anything to say… I’m sure they’re doing this right now:
some huge countries on that list, philippines, pakistan, nigeria, egypt
pretty embarassing
Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia too. Not exactly developing countries.
They are also EU countries. I am not even sure it’s perfectly legal to sell stuff in the EU and not sell to residents of specific countries.
No harm no foul until somebody makes a report I guess.
It’s because it’s a Japanese company. I’m not saying this out of racism but because they’re known for being archaic in how they do certain things. Like game modding and work schedules. Their public transit is top fucking notch though.
I’ve been to Japan a few times. Only Tokyo is super accurate with time. Go to any other Japanese city and it’s no different from any other city in the world. Late trains. Buses that are 10 mins late or not even showing.
Can we kill this narrative that Japan is hyper efficient with public transportation?
…
Only because we didn’t know better when we were kids.
I think the mistake was ever thinking that one company is “good” while the other is “bad”. Companies are just different flavors of bad once they grow above a size of, well, once they are companies.
I thought you were being racist until you said that thing about public transit, so we’re good 👍
EDIT: I was making a dumb joke, y’all. I thought OP did not need to worry about sounding racist at all so I was trying ricochet off of that. Sorry, pretty clearly did not land right, I apologize.
That wasn’t in response to my racist comment but in response to the archaic comment. They’re as much archaic in procedure and bureaucracy as they are advanced in tech.
I heard Hitler invented the Volkswagen boat
deleted by creator
Lmao, this was such a panic reaction by sony that they’ve banned all US territories as well multiple countries where PSN is active.
They are so cooked that this isn’t even funny.
The more confusing thing is a change on February 8th, where they add a Russian edition to their game if I interpret it correctly.
I didn’t buy it before because it had kernel level anticheat which is incredibly invasive and unnecessary for a PVE game, and now I’m really glad I didn’t buy it.
You dodged a fuckin missile man.
Like a hunter dodging an EAT.
Imagine if palworld devs create a copy of this one among all the ruckus
I dunno, I don’t think the game would benefit from flat combat and meanigless crafting grinds.
I’d be down to give Hellpals a try.
Paldivers?
Heckjumpers
Managed DemocracyWholesome Anarchy
Isn’t that just Deep Rock Galactic?
The actual answer is that everyone should play Earth Defence Force (they just announced EDF 6), which I feel was a big inspiration for helldivers 2 bugs.
You don’t think Starship Troopers may have had an influence on either of those games?
Because there’s actually a couple Starship Troopers games now.
Oh yeah definitely, Starship troopers is a huge influence to both, I don’t disagree at all, the Starship troopers games seem to be a bit more serious and gritty in comparison to edf though. I’d say the gameplay in helldivers is very EDF also with the huge big swarms and over the top weapons.
I much prefer the extremely deliberate aiming and the heavily physics influenced combat of Helldivers. Just makes it feel a lot deeper than EDF that sort of makes up for that granular detail by instead being extremely arcadey and over the top in its weapons and class abilities.
They play quite differently even though they have some surface similarities, but EDF is indeed also awesome and I wish it was more popular.
The RTS is awful though.
I wonder how many times I will have to see a publisher significantly harm their reputation in the PC market in a yolo bet to set up their own ecosystem and store.
I thought Sony had been conservative and decided against it when their first steam releases hit but with this move it seems possible that a Sony PC ecosystem was always in the works and it just wasn’t ready for those original releases. Oh well.
Its also wild how much Stockholm syndrome console players have for their corporate overlords, where they think that having a purchasing decision affecting level change forced on them after purchase is an ok move to make, just because the possibility of it was nestled in the fine print
Wonder how we should interpret the country “XD” being on the list. As far as I can tell its never been used for any real country.
XD is Dubai (separate from the United Arab Emirates).
Delisted in Puerto Rico, part of the US. Amazing.
Also delisted in parts of loads of EU countries like the Netherlands and France.
Yeah french people are down voting it in mass. I asked for a refund in my steam wallet coin too. I don’t want to hurt steam, only psn
First their drm is based around the assumption that you’re a criminal, and now this. I’m kinda glad I didn’t buy it.
Yeah same, bunch of my friends had been playing it for a week or two, but between the in game story, the season passes and the utterly intrusive DRM, I figured I’ll wait for a good sale at least. Well, guess I’ll be saving 100% on this, now!
To be fair there is a lot of speculation that the delisting is actually entirely from steam’s side not sony or arrowhead. Nothing is confirmed of course but the thought is that steam is throwing the kill switch on selling in these countries right now because obviously the publisher hadn’t thought this out and just straight up doesn’t have a plan for it. Valve may be doing this to put extra pressure on the situation drying up sales a little prematurely and more importantly to protect Valve from legal repercussions. Again this is entirely speculation but it makes a lot of sense, Arrowhead and Sony have been pretty quiet.
Same old shit with everything. A company makes a move that users don’t like. The company just ignores all the flak they are getting online. The uproar calms down and then things continue.
We’re seeing this more and more. Windows with ads, Amazon adding ads to their prime video account holders. Spotify moving lyrics to their premium subscription. The past couple of years are shit and companies continue to do whatever the fuck they want.
The cm’s have literally said it’s Sony. Why would there be speculation that it’s steam?Edit: I misunderstood. I meant that the whole initiative was from Sony. Kroxx was talking about the delisting in specific. I don’t have any info on that.
Yeah I’ve not seen them address the delisting anywhere yet, if you have a link or anything please add it I’m trying to stay as updated as possible on this.
Edit: I also edited the first line, I had written “this” originally and I replaced it with “the delisting” because I can see how it was a little ambiguous before.
Oh, that the delisting is Steam side? I thought you meant in general. My bad. I’ll edit that.
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Did they say it is specifically Sony that delisted it in those countries? Where did they say that?
A community manager in HD2 Discord has said that the mandatory account linking is a Sony directive.
It appears that Steam had delisted the game in countries that PSN is not available in.
I misunderstood. I meant that the whole initiative was from Sony. Kroxx was talking about the delisting in specific. I don’t have any info on that.
If Valve did it, which I would expect, that’s a smart move.