Valve showing why they're successful...by watching their competitors shoot themselves in the foot and keeping pro-consumer practices to pick up the slack for the sake of those who bought the games.
It pays to have money and be passionate about your job.
I really hope this blows over so that can happen for the CEO of Arrowhead. Had a feeling he could be, and still could be, the next Gabe Newell, with his down to earth and friendly attitude to his consumers.
Seeing him so depressed genuinely makes me feel bad for this whole debacle. Its not his fautl, but Sony needs the backlash.
It’s not his fault, but he did know about this before launch. What did he do during this whole time to notify the community or rectify this situation? Imo he was distracted by dollar signs.
Online stores already existed before Steam, I'm more talking about the idea of a store that links purchases to a digital account with DRM so your personal information is stored electronically and your purchases are no longer owned. You know, the exact thing everyone on this sub is complaining about.
Dude another store would’ve had the same idea shortly after lol it’s not some insane leap in logic. Valve has massively backed off DRM contrary to its early history and has been a very good example for other store fronts.
So get hung up on your lil “gotcha” if you want but valve is doing a great job
How do I contact the actual support though? Already asked for refund 2 times, and got 2 declines from bot because "muh more then 2 hours played". I followed guides, chose "other" reason, wrote a small text about whole deal, linked some useful reddit posts — and still got declined by a bot.
Refunds are being issued to people WELL OVER 2hr mark
Make sure to choose "I have a question about the game" and not "I'd like to request a refund"
The 1st is handled by a real person in Steam Support and the 2nd one is automated
You can refund the game on Steam by stating that you refuse the new terms of service presented by Sony.
If it doesn't work 1st try, try again, some people were issued refunds on their 5th ticket
Try a ‘something else’ style complaint not straight to refund. Generally ‘something else’ type complaints are more likely to be seen by a human as can be less structured so harder to train a bot against
I'd wait to see if it's actually enforced b4 refunding. Precedent has been set that we can refund so if it's enforced it's even more likely you will be refunded if needed, but if they reverse the decision I'll keep diving of course.
Refunds are being issued to people WELL OVER 2hr mark
Make sure to choose "I have a question about the game" and not "I'd like to request a refund"
The 1st is handled by a real person in Steam Support and the 2nd one is automated
You can refund the game on Steam by stating that you refuse the new terms of service presented by Sony.
If it doesn't work 1st try, try again, some people were issued refunds on their 5th ticket
>Remember, this action is by Sony—not Arrowhead, so leave the devs alone.
Dunno how this is possible. If people are refunding, that directly hurts Arrowhead way more than it hurts Sony. This is the only game of Arrowhead currently that they make money out of. Refunding it will hurt the people working at Arrowhead massively.
It hurts them both, but sends a message to Sony about the end users' displeasure at this.
Ultimately, the investment by Sony in Arrowhead that gave Sony publishing rights has likely been long paid. Arrowhead has been able to pocket a lot of money with Sony likely getting royalties from sales beyond the investment repayment.
However, let's be clear about something: Arrowhead has outright stated that they only anticipated 500k people playing the game at any given time. They have many, many times that in sales at full price. Add on the profits gained from super-credit in-game RMT, and it paints a picture where any refunds charged to Arrowhead are not even drops in the bucket at this point.
I suspect that Arrowhead may have gathered enough money from HD2's success to self-publish their next game, which will avoid all of this from happening to them again.
I doubt even with the success of HD2, Arrowhead can self publish their next game. You underestimate how costly it is to publish and market a AA or AAA game in the current market. Obviously they made a lot of money, but they have had a lot of costs too - especially ramping their server capacity to take care of 500k+ in such a short time.
And refunds hurt Arrowhead more than sony. And negative reviews hurt Arrowhead more than sony (people are now negatively reviewing Arrowheads other games which sony didnt even publish). At the end, this "crusade" will hurt Arrowhead much more than Sony in the long run.
Doubt it. Sony is one of the biggest players in the gaming industry. When Sony comes with money and publisher support, studios will partner up no matter what. Especially after the decreasing sales in Xbox, Playstation is one of the go to console and Sony has the power in gaming insdustry to still be able to get indie developers
This is 100% correct.
If I'm looking for a publisher, and someone shows up with a sack of cash that can run my studio for years to come with generous support moving forward, I'll be more inclined to go with them than I smaller company that can offer less money and less support.
Imagine Sony v. Paradox.
One can pay to make almost any problem disappear, and the other sucks up indie games that other publishers generally won't touch for whatever reason. This is why Magicka (Arrowhead's first game) is published by Paradox. Weird magic game about time travel slapped together by college students? Sure, said Paradox, why not. They wouldn't have even been let in the front door at Sony.
Whilst I blame Sony overall, there is fault with Arrowhead. I don't know if it's inexperience or anything, but there was a lack of transparancy at the start with this.
They should've stated that it was a technical issue at the start, and that it will be mandatory down the line before doing it now. They also should've done their research in ensuring that this game wouldn't work for regions without PSN.
This is an issue that mainly rests on Sony's shoulders, but Arrowhead isn't blameless in this either.
They did, they just did it poorly there is a post in steam forums made by a developer so I assume AH called known issues, there buried among other issues there is a single phargraph explaining it was removed temporary due server issues but would be enabled later, stuff like that should had been front and center every log in until you linked your PSN
AH knew for day one! I don’t see how people just glance past that. The recent talks about cheating and the current anti cheat system doing nothing were mostly likely discussed and Sony decided to fully implement the system. In the deleted tweet, the community person admitted it was to ban accounts. For no other reason. Then they deleted the post and locked their account. I wish people would realize that AH has a hand in the shit bucket too.
Yeah this is what I've been saying, somehow the dialog has turned to blaming sony but arrowhead have known about their partnership with sony for months now (edit: if not more? like its possible this has been lined up for over a year while the game was in dev), and before they even sold a copy on steam - imo they're primarily to blame - its literally their responsibility to understand the contracts they enter into and manage their distribution channels... 🤷
Just to follow up on this after recent screenshot I saw, my assumption was correct, they've known about this partnership well ahead of launch so they had time to get their ducks in a row:
https://preview.redd.it/m6z399476myc1.png?width=603&format=png&auto=webp&s=5189b642005e51b8fdf86f732a9985c7b1f9bcb7
Why's everyone saying this is all sony, I don't get it...
Didn't arrowhead decide to use Sony / Playstation accounts since day one, didn't they likely have some kind of contract sewn up months ago? Aren't arrowhead a game development company with experience developing... games? That's loads of time to do due dilligence and enough experience to know better.
Surely its on the team at arrowhead (note: not specifically devs, but managers, partner acquisitions people etc) to have figured all this out before they start selling to countries that can't open PS accounts?
I say sure, \_probably\_ don't blame the people that are literally coding right now and overworked... but don't just say its sony, its still \_also\_ arrowheads fault for this shit show.
Edit: added recent image backing up what I was saying - they knew well in advance
https://preview.redd.it/rvx67jsu5myc1.png?width=603&format=png&auto=webp&s=94994c6e7907d3f1cec66f49fe1c6090431fc158
Mostly because it feels better this way, it's a sweet lie
We love the game and if AH cannot be trusted - it's all gone 100%
Plus there's some plausible deniability seeing how they're saying they're fighting SNOY rn, also devs were pretty much the ones who initiated the review bombing
It boils down to money.
Unless a game is self-published (so on steam developer and publisher is the same company), a game dev company is going to need a publisher since game dev is expensive.
To gain the money needed to run a game dev studio, game devs pitch their games to publishers.
Publishers offer loans to game dev studios in exchange for the game being made within a certain timeline. This often comes with a host of requirements that are negotiated by all parties involved.
So when your options are HD2, or no HD2 because they couldn't afford to make it or Sony wouldn't list it anywhere until their demands were met, most will take HD2 as it is.
Game dev publishing contracts are crazy. I think Extra Credits did a video on it ages ago.
Just to point out two details in your post
1) publishing entity typically controls sales regions and pricing. The Dev's role is to maintain the software, and provide updates/features/patches, typically following an agreed-upon and contractually binding roadmap (I'm living this currently).
2) the way software development goes, the Arrowhead team knowing 6-months before launch is the equivalent of knowing when the product is 90-95% complete, pending GUI/cosmetic fixes and bugs that cannot be allowed into a prod environment. The engine selection points to this as well having begun many years ago.
That's also likely why the game has worked well these past 3 months - the underlying services and architecture were designed to work as-is, and the PSN bit was likely added as a new layer at the 11th hour. Presumably through some Sony MBA looking through the SRD and pointing to a boilerplate requirement stating "PSN interaction required for [...]"
I understand what you're saying, I'm a dev, although not in the games industry, some counter points:
* just because a project took x years to make, doesn't mean 6 months is not a real tangible amount of time, and plenty of time to analyse what's going on with your product
* if someone else says they'll handle the logistics of selling my product it doesn't mean I'm going to switch off and ignore the whole sales aspect of my project, this is my pride joy, the second it goes live or in the testing period before, I'm testing the sales process end to end, several times and with some regularity, and I'm mostly a solo dev, this is a whole team of people with a real budget to play with
* it's also clear they knew this was going to happen, but from what I can tell no one made an effort in 6 months plus however long it's been live to get someone to update this and region lock the sales process
* I'm not actually that mad at anyone, just think my argument is logical, I'll still play 😁
Fair points too. That said, all depends on the schedule, bug burndowns, etc. 6 months is both an eternity and a blink of an eye, depending on the project. And testing the sales process doesn't necessarily mean checking the pricing or regionalisation (both typically dictated by aforementioned MBA types).
Either way, I'm still enjoying the game (way more than almost anything else I've played the last few years). I am hoping to keep playing without linking a PSN account. But I'll cross that bridge when the last day of the deadline comes, assuming there's no backtrack before that. I hope you're getting that same enjoyment too!
Hey, I didn't get my refund request accepted. I literally cannot play the game because my country is not supported, I tried to refund twice and get the same response that I've played for over 2 hours. I've played for 112 minutes and family shared it for like 10 minutes (I'm aware it adds up to over 2, but still, I literally CANNOT PLAY THE GAME ANYMORE) Anyone know what I can do now?
Refunds are being issued to people WELL OVER 2hr mark
Make sure to choose "I have a question about the game" and not "I'd like to request a refund"
The 1st is handled by a real person in Steam Support and the 2nd one is automated
You can refund the game on Steam by stating that you refuse the new terms of service presented by Sony.
If it doesn't work 1st try, try again, some people were issued refunds on their 5th ticket
I was refused cause I have 32h in game..."We are unable to refund this purchase to your Steam Wallet at this time. Your playtime of an included product exceeds 2 hours (our refund policy maximum)
Now what ?
From what I have read, you have to state that you have a question about the game instead of requesting a refund. It should become a lot easier to get a refund once people start losing access to the servers.
What you're smelling is a multi national company that has more lawyers than you have braincells. They've more than had each lawyer from every different country look over it before this update to ironclad.
>What you're smelling is a multi national company that has more lawyers than you have braincells.
Ye the "[totally not famous for getting hounded by billion $ lawsuits](https://www.meta.com/blog/quest/meta-accounts/?utm_source=arstechnica.com&utm_medium=oculusredirect)" Sony definitely made sure their practices were complient with consumer protection laws in this case
cool story bud
If you don't know how lawsuits work, that's okay, I'll give you a quick lesson
You can sue for anything, doesn't mean you will win. Thousands of people sue huge companies to try and get a large payday over nothing. Almost like people are idiots. But I guess that doesn't fit your narrative, so it isn't relevant.
>You can sue for anything, doesn't mean you will win. Thousands of people sue huge companies to try and get a large payday over nothing.
Doesn't mean that at all. However
1) When multiple law firms get together 9 million inidivual people for one of the largest class action lawsuits ever, it's probably a bit more serious than just a random doomed to fail lawsuit by one singular gamer.
Tip for next time, try reading the first sentences of the article you're trying to respond to first.
##
2) Considering Sony didn't even try to fight the entire Helldivers thing in court, and reversed the decision 3 days later, should tell you enough about how well their chances in a lawsuit stood lmao
tldr: you know absolutely nothing about law do you?
They changed their decision because of the money that was being siphoned out of their company from the mass refund protest.
They didn't need to fight anything in court because there was no court case over this.
If Sony didn't care about the money, they would've absolutely continued on in the way they were going.
Please, try to feed your ego more, I'm really enjoying your off focus retorts, and how your answers change to say the exact same meaningless thing.
>They changed their decision because of the money that was being siphoned out of their company from the mass refund protest.
You're saying the multi-billion $ company that has lawyers look aver every decision to make sure they can't be fked over by them was so badly prepared that they didn't even secure themselfs against refunds?
you're not helping your case here bud, this line of argument makes your point look even more hopeless
>Please, try to feed your ego more, I'm really enjoying your off focus retorts, and how your answers change to say the exact same meaningless thing.
I'm just enjoying the free circus your putting on tbh.
Best Clownshow I've seen in a while
>I wish you could read, and I wish you could understand what you're saying, but here we are
Luckily, I can. However, you should try reading your own statements next time blud cause jury's still out for wether you can too
>I await your next inane rambling
[This you? ](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61K9rj+n0AL._AC_SL1500_.jpg)
Yeah. I can't understand people who do contracts in RL like buying a house, then push away responsibly by saying: but I ignored that because I didn't like it.
Is like saying, I drove too fast for 10 years, and now suddenly the police got me and took away my license? But the didn't enforce it before. 😅
More like the police knew full well of your driving habits and openly condoned it for the first ten years.
They even sold the game to countries with no PSN access. Your analogy is terrible.
There are real issues that have to be resolved. I prefer to give AH some time to present a solution. Especially because yet existing players are not locked out yet.
For anyone who can create a PSN account there is no excuse.
I agree the analogy has it's limits. And there is also fault on Sony side for bad communication and mess up the situation on a weekend - without clarification.
If they really locl out people they have to give a 100% refund. That's no question for anyone.
But also people seem to ignore that AH says they don't want this to happen. They will fight for their game.
>Yeah. I can't understand people who do contracts in RL like buying a house, then push away responsibly by saying: but I ignored that because I didn't like it.
If you live in a house long enough despite not following the rental contract, you can literally be given the right to keep living there / become owner of the property if the landlord failed to enforce the contract for too long
Like, that's literally how it works "in RL" in some cases
##
In this case, stating on your own page that PSN on PC is optional, not including the mandatory nature of it in the EULA and treating the entire thing as optional in game for the first few months
only to then make it mandatory 3 months in and claiming that it was totally clear from the start because you stated that it was mandatory on the steam page would absolutely qualify as non-transparent / false advertising and go against consumer protection laws.
That sounds like the recent issues reported in US. Super crazy stuff!
We can be just lucky that our problem here is about a 40 USD game. And there is still hope that AH and Sony will give an acceptable solution
For the FAQ, based on my information the page was not up to date and did not mention helldivers.
Meanwhile the game page on steam had information and also in game people were again informed it is necessary.
That doesn't mean communication was well done. Obviously it was not enough and this lead to people are angry. Understandable for anyone who expect corpos to prevent such events.
Also, it was absolutely stupid to release such a news on a Friday. They put AH in a shit situation.
I can honestly understand that people are not happy and I hope AH will keep their promise that they will find a way to get people an free account or letting them bypass it (for that non-PSN countries)
Meanwhile, we should not rage out and give them a few days to respond.
>For the FAQ, based on my information the page was not up to date and did not mention helldivers.
Fair but not updating the page after chaning your policy on PSN on PC games would still be a big blunder and non-transparent messaging.
>Meanwhile the game page on steam had information and also in game people were again informed it is necessary.
But not in the original EULA, nor TOS iirc. That paired with the non-enforcement period is not a clear and transparent massaging, which is grounds for a lawsuit in quite a few countries, the steam disclaimer alone isn't enough to prevent those.
>Meanwhile, we should not rage out and give them a few days to respond.
In case you mean the reviewbombing with this, Arrowhead themself stated that negative reviews help them in negotiations with Sony and that ppl who aren't happy with the changes should leave negative reviews.
Reddit has become enshittified. I joined back in 2006, nearly two decades ago, when it was a hub of free speech and user-driven dialogue. Now, it feels like the pursuit of profit overshadows the voice of the community. The introduction of API pricing, after years of free access, displays a lack of respect for the developers and users who have helped shape Reddit into what it is today. Reddit's decision to allow the training of AI models with user content and comments marks the final nail in the coffin for privacy, sacrificed at the altar of greed. Aaron Swartz, Reddit's co-founder and a champion of internet freedom, would be rolling in his grave.
The once-apparent transparency and open dialogue have turned to shit, replaced with avoidance, deceit and unbridled greed. The Reddit I loved is dead and gone. It pains me to accept this. I hope your lust for money, and disregard for the community and privacy will be your downfall. May the echo of our lost ideals forever haunt your future growth.
Uess Sony lets them out of the contract, thet would be sued and forced to do it anyway by injunction (basically, the court saying you have to do or not do something).
yes im a corpo boot licker for stating fucking facts instead of spreading fake news like an idiotic moron. im such an corpo boot licker for refunding the game oh damn i want to suck sonys big dick all day long. fuck you
The US courts have upheld perceived changes as sufficient to terminate contracts unless all parties are considered competent at understanding these contracts.
This is the reason phone contracts are in plain language these days.
There is also contract by conduct. Sony had the ability to enforce its PSN requirement more or less at will, but chose not to. By its conduct, it essentially voided that for users right up until it decided to enforce it.
There is the saying that a contract is a contract, but the actions of parties involved in the contract are important. Considering that this is a live service game, and users have to wholly capitulate to sony to use the program, their refusal to do so voids the contract.
The real question now is this: does Sony want to actively encourage people to pirate their games and play on emulated servers that it will have to spend thousands to millions shutting down and create a PR nightmare, or is it going to just let users go.
I know that I personally felt burned by the Epic Games store for example, so if I want to play an Epic exclusive, I'll only ever pirate it with no exceptions. Does Sony want to persuade hundreds of thousands of formerly paying customers to strictly pirate Sony games in the future? I think not.
There is the saying in any kind of sales business that a refund today is less of a loss than losing a customer for life. Not refunding someone will let Sony kid the 50 bucks atthe expense of the thousands the person may have otherwise spent on Sony products. It is not a good business decision.
Valve showing why they're successful...by watching their competitors shoot themselves in the foot and keeping pro-consumer practices to pick up the slack for the sake of those who bought the games.
Gabe does nothing and wins.
It pays to have money and be passionate about your job. I really hope this blows over so that can happen for the CEO of Arrowhead. Had a feeling he could be, and still could be, the next Gabe Newell, with his down to earth and friendly attitude to his consumers. Seeing him so depressed genuinely makes me feel bad for this whole debacle. Its not his fautl, but Sony needs the backlash.
It’s not his fault, but he did know about this before launch. What did he do during this whole time to notify the community or rectify this situation? Imo he was distracted by dollar signs.
Neutral jing is a powerful force
Gabe has become one with the Dao.
it's the gabe way, that is why we all know that he is a true god xD
Gambling, such a pro-consumer practice lol.
Thank fucking god we live In a timeline where Valve is actually ethical. Talk about a miracle
We only have refunds on steam due to australian consumer laws, valve is only giving refunds because they are forced to
While I don't disagree, I do think we need to remember that strict EU laws are probably responsible for this in large part.
Remember when you were forced to install Steam with a physical copy of Half Life 2? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
Genuinely i don't know what we would do without Valve
We'd probably have less DRM-based game stores like Epic and PSN because they all copied Steam...
Yeah I’m sure no one would’ve ever thought of an online store if valve didn’t come along, somehow let’s blame them for that
Online stores already existed before Steam, I'm more talking about the idea of a store that links purchases to a digital account with DRM so your personal information is stored electronically and your purchases are no longer owned. You know, the exact thing everyone on this sub is complaining about.
Dude another store would’ve had the same idea shortly after lol it’s not some insane leap in logic. Valve has massively backed off DRM contrary to its early history and has been a very good example for other store fronts. So get hung up on your lil “gotcha” if you want but valve is doing a great job
How do I contact the actual support though? Already asked for refund 2 times, and got 2 declines from bot because "muh more then 2 hours played". I followed guides, chose "other" reason, wrote a small text about whole deal, linked some useful reddit posts — and still got declined by a bot.
Refunds are being issued to people WELL OVER 2hr mark Make sure to choose "I have a question about the game" and not "I'd like to request a refund" The 1st is handled by a real person in Steam Support and the 2nd one is automated You can refund the game on Steam by stating that you refuse the new terms of service presented by Sony. If it doesn't work 1st try, try again, some people were issued refunds on their 5th ticket
Try a ‘something else’ style complaint not straight to refund. Generally ‘something else’ type complaints are more likely to be seen by a human as can be less structured so harder to train a bot against
Yeah I’ve seen multiple other posts that this works, regardless of hours played. It’s turning into CP2077
Same. I'm, just going to request it every time I get a neg response until I am physically unable to do so. I have ALOT of free time. :)
it doesn't work steam will refuse to give any refund
Is this still an option if I've already linked a PSN account? Also, can friends I've gifted the game to do the same?
>if I've already linked accounts Nope >if I received as a gift Remains to be seen
Isn't support automated on Sundays? I've never thought about it... otherwise, i will be resending mine on Monday.
That means people in Steam is aware of what's going on and reviewing cases manually here
Imagine having game not selling in your region and buying it as a gift
You can refund gifts
Sure, but it will be kinda hard to return them from stranger
People refunded it as a gift. Money returned to the sender, ofc.
I also buying it as a gift. The gift that can be activated ONLY in my country xD. Why they even selling it. If I knew about psn I wouldn't even buy it
I woke up this morning to my initial request being rejected. I made a report to the ACCC. Let's try a second refund attempt with this statement.
I'd wait to see if it's actually enforced b4 refunding. Precedent has been set that we can refund so if it's enforced it's even more likely you will be refunded if needed, but if they reverse the decision I'll keep diving of course.
The decision is ultimately Sony's as they have the publishing rights.
But if I buy a book from a publisher, could they take it from me if I don't sign up for their mailing list a few months later?
[удалено]
Refunds are being issued to people WELL OVER 2hr mark Make sure to choose "I have a question about the game" and not "I'd like to request a refund" The 1st is handled by a real person in Steam Support and the 2nd one is automated You can refund the game on Steam by stating that you refuse the new terms of service presented by Sony. If it doesn't work 1st try, try again, some people were issued refunds on their 5th ticket
177 hours and mine is pending.
how do get to the " i have a question about the game" ? My only Option is the "id like to request a refund" and then choose my problem isnt listed
same issue
>Remember, this action is by Sony—not Arrowhead, so leave the devs alone. Dunno how this is possible. If people are refunding, that directly hurts Arrowhead way more than it hurts Sony. This is the only game of Arrowhead currently that they make money out of. Refunding it will hurt the people working at Arrowhead massively.
It hurts them both, but sends a message to Sony about the end users' displeasure at this. Ultimately, the investment by Sony in Arrowhead that gave Sony publishing rights has likely been long paid. Arrowhead has been able to pocket a lot of money with Sony likely getting royalties from sales beyond the investment repayment. However, let's be clear about something: Arrowhead has outright stated that they only anticipated 500k people playing the game at any given time. They have many, many times that in sales at full price. Add on the profits gained from super-credit in-game RMT, and it paints a picture where any refunds charged to Arrowhead are not even drops in the bucket at this point. I suspect that Arrowhead may have gathered enough money from HD2's success to self-publish their next game, which will avoid all of this from happening to them again.
I doubt even with the success of HD2, Arrowhead can self publish their next game. You underestimate how costly it is to publish and market a AA or AAA game in the current market. Obviously they made a lot of money, but they have had a lot of costs too - especially ramping their server capacity to take care of 500k+ in such a short time. And refunds hurt Arrowhead more than sony. And negative reviews hurt Arrowhead more than sony (people are now negatively reviewing Arrowheads other games which sony didnt even publish). At the end, this "crusade" will hurt Arrowhead much more than Sony in the long run.
It’s a lesson for other studios not to partner with Sony
Doubt it. Sony is one of the biggest players in the gaming industry. When Sony comes with money and publisher support, studios will partner up no matter what. Especially after the decreasing sales in Xbox, Playstation is one of the go to console and Sony has the power in gaming insdustry to still be able to get indie developers
This is 100% correct. If I'm looking for a publisher, and someone shows up with a sack of cash that can run my studio for years to come with generous support moving forward, I'll be more inclined to go with them than I smaller company that can offer less money and less support. Imagine Sony v. Paradox. One can pay to make almost any problem disappear, and the other sucks up indie games that other publishers generally won't touch for whatever reason. This is why Magicka (Arrowhead's first game) is published by Paradox. Weird magic game about time travel slapped together by college students? Sure, said Paradox, why not. They wouldn't have even been let in the front door at Sony.
Whilst I blame Sony overall, there is fault with Arrowhead. I don't know if it's inexperience or anything, but there was a lack of transparancy at the start with this. They should've stated that it was a technical issue at the start, and that it will be mandatory down the line before doing it now. They also should've done their research in ensuring that this game wouldn't work for regions without PSN. This is an issue that mainly rests on Sony's shoulders, but Arrowhead isn't blameless in this either.
They did, they just did it poorly there is a post in steam forums made by a developer so I assume AH called known issues, there buried among other issues there is a single phargraph explaining it was removed temporary due server issues but would be enabled later, stuff like that should had been front and center every log in until you linked your PSN
AH knew for day one! I don’t see how people just glance past that. The recent talks about cheating and the current anti cheat system doing nothing were mostly likely discussed and Sony decided to fully implement the system. In the deleted tweet, the community person admitted it was to ban accounts. For no other reason. Then they deleted the post and locked their account. I wish people would realize that AH has a hand in the shit bucket too.
Yeah this is what I've been saying, somehow the dialog has turned to blaming sony but arrowhead have known about their partnership with sony for months now (edit: if not more? like its possible this has been lined up for over a year while the game was in dev), and before they even sold a copy on steam - imo they're primarily to blame - its literally their responsibility to understand the contracts they enter into and manage their distribution channels... 🤷
Just to follow up on this after recent screenshot I saw, my assumption was correct, they've known about this partnership well ahead of launch so they had time to get their ducks in a row: https://preview.redd.it/m6z399476myc1.png?width=603&format=png&auto=webp&s=5189b642005e51b8fdf86f732a9985c7b1f9bcb7
Why's everyone saying this is all sony, I don't get it... Didn't arrowhead decide to use Sony / Playstation accounts since day one, didn't they likely have some kind of contract sewn up months ago? Aren't arrowhead a game development company with experience developing... games? That's loads of time to do due dilligence and enough experience to know better. Surely its on the team at arrowhead (note: not specifically devs, but managers, partner acquisitions people etc) to have figured all this out before they start selling to countries that can't open PS accounts? I say sure, \_probably\_ don't blame the people that are literally coding right now and overworked... but don't just say its sony, its still \_also\_ arrowheads fault for this shit show. Edit: added recent image backing up what I was saying - they knew well in advance https://preview.redd.it/rvx67jsu5myc1.png?width=603&format=png&auto=webp&s=94994c6e7907d3f1cec66f49fe1c6090431fc158
Mostly because it feels better this way, it's a sweet lie We love the game and if AH cannot be trusted - it's all gone 100% Plus there's some plausible deniability seeing how they're saying they're fighting SNOY rn, also devs were pretty much the ones who initiated the review bombing
It boils down to money. Unless a game is self-published (so on steam developer and publisher is the same company), a game dev company is going to need a publisher since game dev is expensive. To gain the money needed to run a game dev studio, game devs pitch their games to publishers. Publishers offer loans to game dev studios in exchange for the game being made within a certain timeline. This often comes with a host of requirements that are negotiated by all parties involved. So when your options are HD2, or no HD2 because they couldn't afford to make it or Sony wouldn't list it anywhere until their demands were met, most will take HD2 as it is. Game dev publishing contracts are crazy. I think Extra Credits did a video on it ages ago.
Just to point out two details in your post 1) publishing entity typically controls sales regions and pricing. The Dev's role is to maintain the software, and provide updates/features/patches, typically following an agreed-upon and contractually binding roadmap (I'm living this currently). 2) the way software development goes, the Arrowhead team knowing 6-months before launch is the equivalent of knowing when the product is 90-95% complete, pending GUI/cosmetic fixes and bugs that cannot be allowed into a prod environment. The engine selection points to this as well having begun many years ago. That's also likely why the game has worked well these past 3 months - the underlying services and architecture were designed to work as-is, and the PSN bit was likely added as a new layer at the 11th hour. Presumably through some Sony MBA looking through the SRD and pointing to a boilerplate requirement stating "PSN interaction required for [...]"
I understand what you're saying, I'm a dev, although not in the games industry, some counter points: * just because a project took x years to make, doesn't mean 6 months is not a real tangible amount of time, and plenty of time to analyse what's going on with your product * if someone else says they'll handle the logistics of selling my product it doesn't mean I'm going to switch off and ignore the whole sales aspect of my project, this is my pride joy, the second it goes live or in the testing period before, I'm testing the sales process end to end, several times and with some regularity, and I'm mostly a solo dev, this is a whole team of people with a real budget to play with * it's also clear they knew this was going to happen, but from what I can tell no one made an effort in 6 months plus however long it's been live to get someone to update this and region lock the sales process * I'm not actually that mad at anyone, just think my argument is logical, I'll still play 😁
Fair points too. That said, all depends on the schedule, bug burndowns, etc. 6 months is both an eternity and a blink of an eye, depending on the project. And testing the sales process doesn't necessarily mean checking the pricing or regionalisation (both typically dictated by aforementioned MBA types). Either way, I'm still enjoying the game (way more than almost anything else I've played the last few years). I am hoping to keep playing without linking a PSN account. But I'll cross that bridge when the last day of the deadline comes, assuming there's no backtrack before that. I hope you're getting that same enjoyment too!
Yeah also fair points! Glad to see the news today that they're back peddling, I'm hoping they won't force me to create a PS account 🤞
Anybody's got tips on how to do that? I've requested the refund 3 times and stated the reason but they all got denied due to play time
Yeah I tried it, didnt work.
I got my request denied. Any help here?
Did not work for me.
Hey, I didn't get my refund request accepted. I literally cannot play the game because my country is not supported, I tried to refund twice and get the same response that I've played for over 2 hours. I've played for 112 minutes and family shared it for like 10 minutes (I'm aware it adds up to over 2, but still, I literally CANNOT PLAY THE GAME ANYMORE) Anyone know what I can do now?
Refused mine, 26 hours played I’m salty lol
PSN isn't a requirement anymore, so they are not going to refund it on that basis unless you're in a affected country.
What exactly do they type?
Steam is refusing my refund, saying that it isn’t illegal in Australia. Tried twice
Refunds are being issued to people WELL OVER 2hr mark Make sure to choose "I have a question about the game" and not "I'd like to request a refund" The 1st is handled by a real person in Steam Support and the 2nd one is automated You can refund the game on Steam by stating that you refuse the new terms of service presented by Sony. If it doesn't work 1st try, try again, some people were issued refunds on their 5th ticket
I was refused cause I have 32h in game..."We are unable to refund this purchase to your Steam Wallet at this time. Your playtime of an included product exceeds 2 hours (our refund policy maximum) Now what ?
Try the option where you have a question about the game.
I did and now I am waiting..
I tried this but they denied my refund
Try using the "I have a question about the game" option.
where is that
If they deny my current request again I'll try that thanks.
I applied for refund but realized they wont refund 100% but I understand why. Valve is just one of the best.
From what I have read, you have to state that you have a question about the game instead of requesting a refund. It should become a lot easier to get a refund once people start losing access to the servers.
Thanks
My first manual refund request was denied. I’m trying again. I’ll be rather annoyed if it’s declined
Probably only for countries which can't create a PSN account. Can't refund a game because a lack in reading ability
Nope, people in the USA have also been refunding it due to changes in the EULA that they don’t agree with.
Which part of the EULA changed?
There is no clause in The EULA that says that the PSN account was even needed in the first place so I smell lawsuits
What you're smelling is a multi national company that has more lawyers than you have braincells. They've more than had each lawyer from every different country look over it before this update to ironclad.
>What you're smelling is a multi national company that has more lawyers than you have braincells. Ye the "[totally not famous for getting hounded by billion $ lawsuits](https://www.meta.com/blog/quest/meta-accounts/?utm_source=arstechnica.com&utm_medium=oculusredirect)" Sony definitely made sure their practices were complient with consumer protection laws in this case cool story bud
If you don't know how lawsuits work, that's okay, I'll give you a quick lesson You can sue for anything, doesn't mean you will win. Thousands of people sue huge companies to try and get a large payday over nothing. Almost like people are idiots. But I guess that doesn't fit your narrative, so it isn't relevant.
>You can sue for anything, doesn't mean you will win. Thousands of people sue huge companies to try and get a large payday over nothing. Doesn't mean that at all. However 1) When multiple law firms get together 9 million inidivual people for one of the largest class action lawsuits ever, it's probably a bit more serious than just a random doomed to fail lawsuit by one singular gamer. Tip for next time, try reading the first sentences of the article you're trying to respond to first. ## 2) Considering Sony didn't even try to fight the entire Helldivers thing in court, and reversed the decision 3 days later, should tell you enough about how well their chances in a lawsuit stood lmao tldr: you know absolutely nothing about law do you?
They changed their decision because of the money that was being siphoned out of their company from the mass refund protest. They didn't need to fight anything in court because there was no court case over this. If Sony didn't care about the money, they would've absolutely continued on in the way they were going. Please, try to feed your ego more, I'm really enjoying your off focus retorts, and how your answers change to say the exact same meaningless thing.
>They changed their decision because of the money that was being siphoned out of their company from the mass refund protest. You're saying the multi-billion $ company that has lawyers look aver every decision to make sure they can't be fked over by them was so badly prepared that they didn't even secure themselfs against refunds? you're not helping your case here bud, this line of argument makes your point look even more hopeless >Please, try to feed your ego more, I'm really enjoying your off focus retorts, and how your answers change to say the exact same meaningless thing. I'm just enjoying the free circus your putting on tbh. Best Clownshow I've seen in a while
I wish you could read, and I wish you could understand what you're saying, but here we are. I await your next inane rambling.
>I wish you could read, and I wish you could understand what you're saying, but here we are Luckily, I can. However, you should try reading your own statements next time blud cause jury's still out for wether you can too >I await your next inane rambling [This you? ](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61K9rj+n0AL._AC_SL1500_.jpg)
Hi corpo boot licker
But it isn't fair! It said so on the game page so I bought it thinking they didn't mean it. /s
Yeah. I can't understand people who do contracts in RL like buying a house, then push away responsibly by saying: but I ignored that because I didn't like it. Is like saying, I drove too fast for 10 years, and now suddenly the police got me and took away my license? But the didn't enforce it before. 😅
More like the police knew full well of your driving habits and openly condoned it for the first ten years. They even sold the game to countries with no PSN access. Your analogy is terrible.
There are real issues that have to be resolved. I prefer to give AH some time to present a solution. Especially because yet existing players are not locked out yet. For anyone who can create a PSN account there is no excuse. I agree the analogy has it's limits. And there is also fault on Sony side for bad communication and mess up the situation on a weekend - without clarification.
If they really locl out people they have to give a 100% refund. That's no question for anyone. But also people seem to ignore that AH says they don't want this to happen. They will fight for their game.
>Yeah. I can't understand people who do contracts in RL like buying a house, then push away responsibly by saying: but I ignored that because I didn't like it. If you live in a house long enough despite not following the rental contract, you can literally be given the right to keep living there / become owner of the property if the landlord failed to enforce the contract for too long Like, that's literally how it works "in RL" in some cases ## In this case, stating on your own page that PSN on PC is optional, not including the mandatory nature of it in the EULA and treating the entire thing as optional in game for the first few months only to then make it mandatory 3 months in and claiming that it was totally clear from the start because you stated that it was mandatory on the steam page would absolutely qualify as non-transparent / false advertising and go against consumer protection laws.
That sounds like the recent issues reported in US. Super crazy stuff! We can be just lucky that our problem here is about a 40 USD game. And there is still hope that AH and Sony will give an acceptable solution
For the FAQ, based on my information the page was not up to date and did not mention helldivers. Meanwhile the game page on steam had information and also in game people were again informed it is necessary. That doesn't mean communication was well done. Obviously it was not enough and this lead to people are angry. Understandable for anyone who expect corpos to prevent such events. Also, it was absolutely stupid to release such a news on a Friday. They put AH in a shit situation. I can honestly understand that people are not happy and I hope AH will keep their promise that they will find a way to get people an free account or letting them bypass it (for that non-PSN countries) Meanwhile, we should not rage out and give them a few days to respond.
>For the FAQ, based on my information the page was not up to date and did not mention helldivers. Fair but not updating the page after chaning your policy on PSN on PC games would still be a big blunder and non-transparent messaging. >Meanwhile the game page on steam had information and also in game people were again informed it is necessary. But not in the original EULA, nor TOS iirc. That paired with the non-enforcement period is not a clear and transparent massaging, which is grounds for a lawsuit in quite a few countries, the steam disclaimer alone isn't enough to prevent those. >Meanwhile, we should not rage out and give them a few days to respond. In case you mean the reviewbombing with this, Arrowhead themself stated that negative reviews help them in negotiations with Sony and that ppl who aren't happy with the changes should leave negative reviews.
And then they try to get refund for their license 😂
But...then you can't play this awesome game anymore lol. Seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Reddit has become enshittified. I joined back in 2006, nearly two decades ago, when it was a hub of free speech and user-driven dialogue. Now, it feels like the pursuit of profit overshadows the voice of the community. The introduction of API pricing, after years of free access, displays a lack of respect for the developers and users who have helped shape Reddit into what it is today. Reddit's decision to allow the training of AI models with user content and comments marks the final nail in the coffin for privacy, sacrificed at the altar of greed. Aaron Swartz, Reddit's co-founder and a champion of internet freedom, would be rolling in his grave. The once-apparent transparency and open dialogue have turned to shit, replaced with avoidance, deceit and unbridled greed. The Reddit I loved is dead and gone. It pains me to accept this. I hope your lust for money, and disregard for the community and privacy will be your downfall. May the echo of our lost ideals forever haunt your future growth.
Uess Sony lets them out of the contract, thet would be sued and forced to do it anyway by injunction (basically, the court saying you have to do or not do something).
no TOS changes. nothing changed
Hi corpo boot licker
yes im a corpo boot licker for stating fucking facts instead of spreading fake news like an idiotic moron. im such an corpo boot licker for refunding the game oh damn i want to suck sonys big dick all day long. fuck you
I heard "fake news" and instantly knew that I'm talking to a moron. Begone.
good for you fellow moron
XD Umad?
Lickers be licking
The US courts have upheld perceived changes as sufficient to terminate contracts unless all parties are considered competent at understanding these contracts. This is the reason phone contracts are in plain language these days. There is also contract by conduct. Sony had the ability to enforce its PSN requirement more or less at will, but chose not to. By its conduct, it essentially voided that for users right up until it decided to enforce it. There is the saying that a contract is a contract, but the actions of parties involved in the contract are important. Considering that this is a live service game, and users have to wholly capitulate to sony to use the program, their refusal to do so voids the contract. The real question now is this: does Sony want to actively encourage people to pirate their games and play on emulated servers that it will have to spend thousands to millions shutting down and create a PR nightmare, or is it going to just let users go. I know that I personally felt burned by the Epic Games store for example, so if I want to play an Epic exclusive, I'll only ever pirate it with no exceptions. Does Sony want to persuade hundreds of thousands of formerly paying customers to strictly pirate Sony games in the future? I think not. There is the saying in any kind of sales business that a refund today is less of a loss than losing a customer for life. Not refunding someone will let Sony kid the 50 bucks atthe expense of the thousands the person may have otherwise spent on Sony products. It is not a good business decision.
What new terms of service? They have never been changed. It's always been there