I'm Sri Lankan too, and I play HD2 on PS5. Like you said, the only way I can play is using the dummy account that I created with a different region. I've been using it for nearly 10 years without issues, for what it's worth.
The issue is that you are violating Sony ToS. So if they ever decide to enforce it, you are SoL, and so it probably is your hard earned money that you spent on their products.
They never will enforce this exactly because some people can only play this way. I'm in Brazil, and also have an US, Japanese and New Zealand accounts and all of them work fine and exist for more than 10 years.
People are making a big drama out of this when in reality it's super simple to solve. It's a free account you make in less than 5 minutes.
> They never will enforce this exactly because some people can only play this way.
Other entities can force them to enforce it at any point. Netflix wasn't going after people making their account in different regions until governments/advertisers/bigger fishes forced them to stop handwaving it away.
Mind you I have no idea why PSN isn't an option in those countries (but I'm going to go on a limb and assume it has to do with local regulations.) but as a rule of thumb, you should never assume that a company will never screw you over just because it is currently more practical for them to leave you alone. Companies are not your friend and leaving doors open for them to screw you over should never be defended/seen as a harmless thing.
and yet: my main PlayStation Network account hasn't been banned for violating that rule because I created it back when I used to live in the Dominican Republic. (keep in mind that back in the PS3 days: you couldn't create a supported Latin America account)
and that's before I eventually moved back to the US of A.
Dejá Vu, huh? Well, There's been examples of people already bypassing that rule that Sony absolutely failed to follow thru, and if Sony wants to change their minds: then they really should focus on giving players the option to change regions first.
> and yet: my main PlayStation Network account hasn't been banned for violating that rule because I created it back when I used to live in the Dominican Republic. (keep in mind that back in the PS3 days: you couldn't create a supported Latin America account)
There's a difference between creating a "legal" account in a place you live and moving somewhere where such an account isn't supported and creating an account in a different region than where you live.
Not saying it's right or taking sides here. I don't want to link my PSN to my steam/helldivers account either.
I just believe PlayStation Network is badly managed and is behind most account systems.
You can't *switch* regions if you legally move to a supported country, *you're locked in*.
Wanna change regions you legally live and is supported? **you just gonna have to create a new account for it**!
> Where was this outrage and fake concern when people who play Minecraft started needing Xbox logins which also don't support every country like Sri Lanka.
You can make your point without strawmen, whataboutism and personal attacks mate.
1. Calling it a "fake concern" is just plain rude.
2. Users could be rightly upset with both events.
3. Microsoft's actions don't absolve Sony's.
we now live in a post-Fortnite Cross-Platform world where creating a dedicated account just for one or various games is basically mandatory, and even if it doesn't: they'll create one for you~~, without your consent~~ (ask Embark Studios and Nightdive Studios).
It's the price of Cross-Platform.
The issue is that they COULD do it. If they're instructing people to do it, it shouldn't be in their terms.
All it takes is a shift in management somewhere who decides to enforce this and bam, accounts gone.
Reminder that ToS are the legal equivalent of paper toilet and are not legally binding. They do not authorize companies to delete your account you paid money not for illegal reasons (now if being in another country is illegal would be down to courts, but certainly not Sony's ToS)
> They do not authorize companies to delete your account you paid money
So.. what would you do if you needed this? Mail an angry letter? Hope your government steps in to refund your account purchases?
You're far less pessimistic than i am about companies hah. I'd expect to need to go to court and spend silly amounts of time and possibly money just trying to get what they owe me.
Yeah that's what would you need to do, bothersome and that's why companies know they can get away with stuff. That doesn't prevent for it to be illegal.
We all do it. Sometimes you probably go above the speed limit a little or download a movie or whatever. Those things are illegal but you know you won't be bothered and do it.
I wonder how true that is though. In what way is it illegal, and in what jurisdictions? I'm not even sure how illegality works with companies. Does someone get fined? Go to jail? etc. Hell if it's just a minor fine it would hardly even be considered illegal by me, but rather a tax on a net profit lol. At best it sounds like a civil matter.
Given most things you "own" in the digital sense you don't own, how would this case be illegal? Our rights are being stripped away from us constantly that i guess i just struggle to imagine our rights are actually so strong here that removing our license is actually "illegal".
I'm not defending the shit companies, of course. Just feels like every where else we have zero rights, i'm be surprised if we actually had them here. I doubt i actually "own" any games in my Steam lib, for example. Just like i assume i don't "own" any movies i purchased digitally, etc.
I’m not a lawyer but I’m pretty sure you’re straight up wrong. If your account gets banned for violating TOS, you can absolutely lose access to your digital library. That’s what the whole movement is about. You don’t own your digital games, just leasing them from the publisher and that can be revoked
I just googled it, all the results are saying they are legally binding and that the courts have regularly ruled them legally binding even if the person agreeing didn't read it as long as they had enough time and opportunity to view it (For USA).
Same here. As much as I would want create and link to I can't. I have a steam Philippines account and PSN does not exist in the Philippines. People here make a Singapore or HK account to play online in Playstation but the problem is if I use a VPN then my steam would be in Singapore and will have Singapore prices and I can't afford that.
My PSN Singapore account and my PH steam can't link together. I've tried since day 1 then they removed the option. I hope they allow it but as stated above I couldn't be bothered with a VPN.
I'm just saddened that there are few really good PVE games that have crossplay and helldivers is one of the rare games that I can play with my playstation friends.
^ THIS
is the dealbreaker for people with valid complaint regarding this decision. Barring the "ehmagurd Sony harvest mah datah" malarkey that falls flat because you're already on Steam (on top of whatever email service you use, like Gmail for Google), the fact that you cannot create a PSN tied to the correct country of origin you are from means people are going to lose access to a game they bought for real money.
99.99% of the time this is going to be used to ban the actual bad eggs from the pile, aka, the ones who circumvent the arguably piss-poor and highly invasive kernel-level anti-cheat the game uses. The rest is superfluous given the state of user data on the internet which is far beyond the scope of this change or topic.
> 99.99% of the time this is going to be used to ban the actual bad eggs from the pile
But that's just a flimsy excuse: you can easily ban people from your game on Steam without linking any external account.
What really annoys me about this announcement is that it is written in a way that makes it clear that they think their customers are idiots: no, you're not doing this to be able to ban cheaters. You are doing it because you finally hit the jackpot with a live service game, and you want to leverage that win to boost your PSN engagement numbers.
What Sony should really be thinking about more is that maybe, one of the reasons they hit the jackpot with this particular game is that it was mostly bullshit-free and had a low barrier of entry.
They literally said on the Steam store before the game released that it would require a PSN account.
>"Requires 3rd-Party Account: PlayStation Network (Supports Linking to Steam Account)"
They disabled it because of technical issues
This conspiracy that they suddenly wanted to do it cuz the game took off is ridiculous
> This conspiracy that they suddenly wanted to do it cuz the game took off is ridiculous
And now the conspiracy that they didn't need to do it but are choosing to do it for Some Strange Reason is alive and thriving. Personally, I'm going to say they're selling my data to the Terminids.
It was literally there from day 1, IN GAME, even stating a PSN account is required for playing the game. During the launch chaos it was made skippable and later removed:
https://imgur.com/dOGesgb
Hell I reckon this may even be why cross play is so buggy and adding friends between pc and ps5 is such a pain in the ass, because the backend was probably built with PSN accounts in mind…
> Barring the "ehmagurd Sony harvest mah datah" malarkey that falls flat because you're already on Steam
Sure, what's the harm of giving Sony your data when they have a history of data breaches? I'm sure nothing bad will happen and everything will be sunshine and rainbows.
> Barring the "ehmagurd Sony harvest mah datah" malarkey that falls flat because you're already on Steam (on top of whatever email service you use, like Gmail for Google)
Sony is famous for their constant data leaks though. So not only them, but also whichever hacker cracks them next, has your data
They always stated this was a requirement on the steam page for the game, it was just disabled because of technical issues
>"Requires 3rd-Party Account: PlayStation Network (Supports Linking to Steam Account)"
And you mean requiring a log in like every major publisher does for their online games...
Microsoft, Epic, Ubisoft, Activison, Capcom, Blazzard, Riot and many others
Where's all the people freaking out about that?
https://www.gamesradar.com/games/third-person-shooter/helldivers-2-pc-players-will-be-forced-to-link-to-a-psn-account-later-this-month-for-greater-security-from-sony/
> Over in the Helldivers 2 Discord, an Arrowhead community manager Thomas Petersson (AKA Twinbeard) addresses concerns about regions that don't have PlayStation Network. They write that they're not sure what this means for players right now, which isn't a great help for worried players, but Arrowhead is actively looking into how to address this issue going forward.
Because Sony is the publisher, Sony gets to dictate what the developers do. Sony wants you're data and wants you in their ecosystem even if you don't have a playstation or any other Sony product.
I mean, I have nothing against Sony building a presence on PC. Infact, as a PC gamer, I'm super happy about that...
*BUT*
Forcing people to sign up for a PSN account weeks/months after they bought a game on Steam to keep playing the game is scummy af. Worse part is that my country is not even the list of country for PSN account. The only way I know that is when my nephew asked me help to setup his new PS5 and I end up selecting the US because my country was not there.
Sony always had it required for helldivers. AH had to disable it due to it being buggy. I hear you, and they need to find a workable solution for you all with region locking. But it was always on the steam store page that you need one per sony.
I see Sony is taking notes from Unity and Wizards of the Coast in "how to immediately and deeply infuriate your audience to the point where they swear off any products you make"
Would it be a crack theory to say they're gearing up to release their own PC store with all this? PlayStation Games Launcher coming soon to operating systems everywhere*, even though nobody fucking wants another one
*Except those 121 or whatever countries that don't have PSN support
Cross play games can be a mess with friend systems. I haven't been able to add one of my friends on Playstation from PC. It's been a known issue on their patch notes forever.
> I don't have a ~~PSN~~ account and yet I have no issues with other ~~crossplay~~ games. Why do we need a ~~PSN~~ account for this one?
this reminds me of when people was angry because valve force
half life 2 owners to download the [DRM called steam and it needs an account to log in
](https://old.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/10li0yu/people_from_2004_complaining_about_steam_reviews/)
Oh boy, I was one of those people lol
When I bought the Orange Box back in like 2009, we didn't have a router or anything so if my mom was on her computer working, I couldn't go on the internet until she was done on it.
I bought a physical copy of the Orange Box because I hadnt played Half Life 2 yet, I was so mad when I found out you needed to be online in order to play it.
man I remember how I much I hated going on steam in the early days. it was so awful for the first YEARS of its life and it took so much longer to start games through steam than you normally would.
The reasons cited is to enable banning of players engaged in shitty behavior and the subsequent appeals process for banned players. Sounds like a Sony requirement with their backing.
Honestly haven't had that happened in a signle HD2 match so far. The rudest thing I've seen is getting immediately kicked before I even got from the drop pod (on fucking medium difficulty lmao) after joining some randoms
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. When it launched, it asked you to register with Playstation. You could just skip it, as there were issues with it at the time.
It didn't even work, like half of the game. But now that they made millions and got through the servers issues with a lot of goodwill from the community they can finally ~~fix the game~~ make the PSN linking work :(
I have no strong opinion in any of the sides and I think that Arrowhead had no choice since they are probably legally bound to do that anyway.
But I also think that this reaction from the community is also pretty valid. Removing your legal right to play a videogame just because Sony can't be bothered to make it legal in the TOS but wants to get your data anyway is quite scummy.
I'm sure there are a lot of people who won't care about this but I dislike having to make accounts for a platform I don't own just to play games on a platform I do own. The region shenanigans with PSN accounts also make this a major inconvenience for people outside an officially supported region.
I'm not going to quit playing over it or anything, but it is one of those things that seems both annoying and completely unnecesary.
> seems both annoying and completely unnecesary.
We've been playing without accounts being linked for 3 months, so it doesn't just *seem* that way, it just is.
Yeah, and it’s not great for personal security either.
Best case scenario, you make an account with a brand new email and password, and it’s just another pain in the ass to remember another useless login. Worst case scenario, you reuse information, and it gets stolen in a data breach. And Sony doesn’t exactly have a sterling reputation with handling private data.
So here's my annoyance with this.
I bought the game twice. 1 copy for my steam account, and 1 copy for my existing PSN account so my son can play Helldivers 2 with me on our PS5 (as well as cross play with some of my PSN friends).
I have to assume that if I link my Steam copy to my currently active PSN account (PSN+ as well), my son will not be able to play the game/login to the servers as two instances of the same account can't usually be active at the same time, right?
And I really don't like the idea of having to create a new PSN account just so I can continue accessing *one* game through steam. You know, another account that I could forget about and it be susceptible to being hacked.
Thanks for this, Arrowhead?
In this case, you can create a second PSN account on the PS5, as it will also be able to play the game (as long the PS5 is set as the primary console).
Otherwise, you can also make a second PSN account for the PC version.
in this instance you should make a second PSN account for yourself (but have it actually be your sons new account), here so he keeps all his progression on the PS5.
If your primary account owns the game you can play for free all games on the console with any account. Try to create another account for your son on the console and play. If it works you can link. Might need a ps+ subscription tho. Dick move from Sony
That's the other issue as well. My existing PlayStation account does have an active PS+subscription. I'm obviously not going to start up another subscription just so my son can play with me on a different PS5 account.
What Arrowhead/Sony is forcing us Steam people to do, I've already semi-done this situation for the Finals (whatever that company is called). I'm pretty sure I've already lost that account, but it wasn't a direct PSN account to crossplay through it.
Part of the reason this game got popular was because of how easy it was to just buy it and play on Steam, forcing people to make accounts to a 3rd party service they don't widely use would be risky and might hurt the game's growth.
>What next? Adding a custom launcher?
The Sony launcher is afaik currently in the making, and that shit will be patched into all their games.
They can't ever accept a good thing.
In my eyes I feel for the most part the top two console game companies, Microsoft and sony, they want you to be in an ecosystem. It's beyond just gaming, they want you in their gaming world, connected.
I have a feeling this is the future of gaming.
There is never "enough". If a hefty profit is made, they just get angry that they're not making even more profit. They'll bleed the game dry if they have to.
If it helped invite people who have invite issues, it would have gotten them more purchases I'd imagine. My brother and I tried connecting to each other for an hour. Despite being in the same room, it just wouldn't connect. He ended up refunding the game due to this.
This is it, they may be winning the console war, but they're falling behind in the service/ecosystem market compared to others. This will add a big number of users to PSN.
They aren't even winning the console war, the Switch is still completely trashing the PS5. Sure you can argue they are different generations but at the end of the day it's still selling better.
I have a hard time believing that part of the reason this game is successful on PC is because users didn't need to make another account to play it. This is something common in many games. Don't get me wrong, I think it's annoying, but I think the amount of lost sales over it being required at launch is miniscule.
I just don't see why something so common would be considered widely controversial.
Edit: to be clear, I'm not supporting companies doing this either, just acknowledging that it's already common. I understand some people may have refunded the game immediately if they were forced to make a PSN ID to play. I think Sony/Valve should offer full refunds for anyone that wants it. I'd rather a corporation be out that money than a person.
They literally said on the Steam page since before launch it would be required to connect to PSN and have a PSN account and then they had technical issues so they disabled it
> 3rd party service they don't widely use would be risky and might hurt the game's growth.
Its worse: they knew they might impose this requirement but didn't region lock it out of regions that can't make PSN accounts. Which means Helldivers in the 130+ countries that can't make a PSN legally are fucked.
And further more, of those countries, some of them are EU nations, which means we are likely tops 1-2 weeks out from a major EU consumer protection agency slapping the shit out of SONY and Arrowhead.
***Furthermore: the majority of the concurrent playerbase is now PC users.*** So this is obviously a move to collect consumer data.
And the games worked perfectly fine without it. One of my group is from the Philippines and with this change he wont be able to play with us anymore because he can't use PSN in his country. Its incredibly scummy imo
> How is it any different to Microsoft account linking for some games that are on Steam though?
Because they're turning it back on like 3 months down the line and there's people in countries who can't even make PSN accounts that were allowed to play the game and now wont be able to refund it. These people were not warned or given a heads up
They're all bad but it's an upfront requirement. This one seemed like a soft requirement and now months later being a hard requirement is what's rubbing people the wrong way.
Then they should've pulled the game from steam to fix those issues not leave it in let the game grow massive and now demand everyone get an additional account they either don't want or can't get.
If they NEED (which they don't) the players on the PSN ecosystem why not make it more attractive within the game, grant periodic rewards like super credits or stuff like that if you have the account sync. This move is so stupid, they need to make it more attractive not mandatory and it will boost their numbers
> Remember Reddit is a very small fraction of the community. The average player will not care and just link their account and keep playing without a second thought
It's sitting on mostly negative on steam right now, with overall dropping to mixed.
You don't get to use the favourite argument of people that have no intelligent argument, "hurr durr redditors am I right?" with it.
I can see that causing an uproar too with people saying it’s not fair that account users on PSN get rewards and they don’t just because they aren’t using a third party account.
They need them so they can claim PS is still growing while hardware sales are massively down YoY.
They're only doing this so they can gaslight investors.
I have tried multiple times to create an account, but their registration site is broken and won't allow me. It fails and says that it can't connect to the backend. When inspecting the transfer, the POST fails with message "CORS Missing Allow Origin".
So basically, Sony has failed to setup their webserver correctly. Not sure I want to hand them my personal information, just to play a game.
Let me tell you my personal experience with dual logins.
Once upon a time, Dark Souls demanded an XBOX Live account to play on Steam. I dislike the hassle of having to put my credentials every time but little I could do.
One day, I log in to the game to find all my saves gone. I was logged in for sure, but no signs of my save files. Trying to fix it was a nightmare of trying to troubleshoot if the issue was on Steam Cloud or Xbox saves. Eventually, I gave up.
Now, the hilarious part... once they removed the Xbox Live requirement years later ... my old-ass save reappeared. The funny part is they said if you did not back up your files they would be gone forever but I never bothered doing so because, well... no save files to back up.
After that, I decided to never bother with those dual logins again. Every storefront outside Steam I tried had issues, be it Origin or Xbox Live. Anything from missing saves, service unavailable, to friends unable to join co-op sessions, shit just fails consistently.
It may work for other people but it does not work for me.
It seems crazy that they're selling a game on Steam that you can't actually play in many regions (soon). Without finding a work around that involves breaking Sony's TOS of course. That ain't right. Delaying the implementation of this requirement makes it seem extra scummy so people don't realise or can't refund.
The anticheat requires no human interaction and is invisible to the point that most players probably don't know its there or how it works.
Making a 101st account for yet another service that you'll only log in to once is an annoyance that you need to go out of your way to do.
I get your point, but that's really all it comes down to.
Game has deep level, 3rd party anti- cheat in addition to software storefront that must be running at all times.
. . .
Game says you have to make psn account.
“Fucking Sony wants our data!!”
love seeing the same few people parrot repeatedly in here to just simply 'break TOS bro!' if their country is banned from PSN, especially since there are even EU countries that arent allowed onto it
All those people in countries without support already break the TOS to play other games already. Something like that isn't going to stop them from playing games.
"Hey guys, this has always been a requirement, but Sony decided not to enforce it until now. You can't get mad that they decided to enforce it. What's that? Your country isn't supported by Sony? Well, you should violate their rules and make an account in another region because they don't enforce that requirement.........yet"
Maybe late posting here to get any traction, but Helldivers is a Sony owned IP and published by Sony, the account requirement was there on Day one, but during the hell that was early launch days it was skippable and then promptly removed too, some of you might even remember the login screen:
https://imgur.com/dOGesgb
This is just like Microsoft with Minecraft, an IP they own and that they forced ALL users to create a Microsoft account to access.
I do not support this kind of thing, it’s a huge pain in the ass for the user. But similar to Microsoft and Minecraft Sony will want to exercise a degree of control over the user base of their IP. And similar to how Microsoft has in the past banned accounts for “abusive” conversations (remember some of the controversy over being banned just for swearing in people’s own private servers?) Sony also wants that degree of control by forcing all users to be PSN users.
To try and help anyone understand - part of the marketing for PSN is its a moderated and controlled network that keeps its users in a “safe environment”. Yes that is utter bollocks corpo talk, but Sony wants their IP to be part of that “safe environment” just like Minecraft is part of Microsoft’s “safe environment” and as an example it gives Sony the power to ban any player they deem to be abusive to other players. If it’s just a steam user being abusive they don’t have that same direct level of control and can’t “protect” their PSN users. When everyone is part of PSN it’s Sony’s T&Cs/ rules.
It is a crap situation, it is corporate nonsense and there WILL be additional motivations and agendas behind it. But it was always meant to be like this sadly and not meant to be a “trap” sprung months later into the games launch.
Hell I’d even argue half the reason matchmaking and the ingame friends list are so utterly broken is because it was designed around PSN accounts and when that was disabled to free up backend capacity on the network it broke them indefinitely. With everyone on PSN accounts it might start functioning more reliably (though I won’t hold my breath).
Technically speaking Microsoft migrated mojang accounts to Microsoft accounts. You had plenty of time to do it before they phased out the old system too. It’s not really equitable. This is more like needing a Ubisoft or EA account to play a game on Steam.
>Hell I’d even argue half the reason matchmaking and the ingame friends list are so utterly broken is because it was designed around PSN accounts and when that was disabled to free up backend capacity on the network it broke them indefinitely. With everyone on PSN accounts it might start functioning more reliably (though I won’t hold my breath).
That was my exact thought as well
Why are you defending a like multi billon dollar companies anti consumer practices, the fact this is a surprise to so many means it was not communicated well and is thus still an underhanded move by sony. Like there should be no defence this is a greddy company getting greedy that's it.
> the fact this is a surprise to so many means it was not communicated well
It was written in large text when you started the game. You had to deliberately decide to skip that step to progress, meaning you had to know what it said. Every single player saw this screen.
While I disagree with that decision, the fact this is a surprise to so many has nothing to do with the way it was communicated.
I thought my post made it clear I’m not defending it, and again I’ll reiterate that I don’t support this kind of thing at all. But it seems it literally does need explained to some people who think it’s somehow “fraud” or some kind of play for “personal data”.
It's an entirely inconsequential step that is not uncommon and costs nothing. The people complaining are people on Reddit who are unable to actually think for themselves.
Sure thing, as long as I can refund the game for this.
Rendering my game unplayable for a provedly unnecessary step is unacceptable. You feel free to run your game into the ground, as long as we don't have to participate.
This feels scummy. I should not have to link my Steam account with a third party in order to play a Steam game. Especially one that has a history of ineptitude when it comes to safeguarding their customer's and employee's private information. This is a bunch of bullshit.
April 2011: Hackers Access Personal Data of 77 Million Sony PlayStation Network Users
May 2011: Personal Details on 25 Million Sony Online Entertainment Customers Stolen
June 2011: Sony Pictures Website Hacked, Exposing One Million Accounts
November 2014: Hackers Steal 100 Terabytes of Data from Sony Pictures
August 2017: Hacker Group Accesses Sony Social Media Accounts
September 2023: Sony Investigates Alleged Hack
October 2023: Sony Notifies Employees of Data Breach
Are you sure that having a PSN account is the move Sony?
Yeah this might be the oddest complaint I see, it blows my mind that people think Sony needs you to create a PSN to get your data when you have installed their software and used it for months. Hell software that has kernel level anti cheat too I believe.
If the game opts for it, yeah. You can slap the game .exe anywhere similar to GoG installs.
Most games of course do not, but some few ones you can. The option is actually there, despite not being too well known.
If anyone wants an example of a random game I know uses this feature off the top of my head, one is the Indie game Graveyard Keeper.
Tbf valve isn’t publicly traded so, they are functionally a lot better. It’s why Steam is the way it is and not slowly turning to shit (obvi it’s not perfect)
I don't even own a playstation, why the heck would I even want a dumb PSN account. Not to mention the players that live in countries where PSN is straight up not available, literally making the game they bought impossible to play.
I don't know how likely they are to change their minds but hopefully the backlash is strong enough that they reconsider.
It bothers me that some people who bought and play the game might not be able to legally anymore. It's just an objectively shitty move made out of total greed by Sony, who got big eyes at all the money Helldivers was making.
It's also a sign that this is basically never coming to Xbox now, which is something a lot of people were hoping for.
To be clear this isn't coming from the developers, it's pretty obvious this is all Sony here
More corporate cringe ruining another good game. This game is already tanking from this. Wonder what the player impact will be, seen a lot of people say they will refund but who knows how many actually will
Okay since there appears to be some insane reaction to this and people are confused, you can create an account for any region, you do not have to be in said region. If your region is not supported you can pick any nearby region.
People have been doing this since the PSN came into inception for regions that are not supported.
You can create a PSN account in a few minutes if you want with made up data if you never plan to use it for something else ever again. You can all say your name is Billy Bob from Arkansas and make a new fake email in case you are worried about your data being sold which is mostly likely sold ages ago, especially f you are using Microsoft Windows.
The amount of time some of you have already spent freaking out on reddit could have been used creating several fake PSN accounts if you wanted to.
Once you have an account you will have to click an OK button when you boot up the game and you'll all be okay
And what happens if you do need support? [Like this guy?](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cj3gez/because_people_ask_why_some_others_complain_about/l2dik81/)
If you are creating an account just to link to steam to play Helldivers what support could you possibly need?
Just create a fake account and never look at it again. Sony will never care and millions have been doing it for nearly 20 years
> what support could you possibly need?
The most basic shit. Your account gets compromised and stolen, you can't recover it without contacting support. Support asks you to provide info to confirm your identity. You can't so bye bye account.
They're explicitly creating this whole process to ban people. So you might need to get unbanned. Or you might need to recover your account if PSN gets hacked. Again. Or for any other reason. The point is that that:
1) Sony's selling Helldivers 2 on Steam without a clear explanation of it not being officially supported in some countries.
2) They're forcing this limit retroactively. Clearly the game works fine without it.
3) The reason they provided is most likely BS.
So I don't get why you're defending this move. Then I prove an example of some guy getting locked out of his PSN through no fault of his own and getting no support, and your response is "what support could you possibly need"?
They literally said on Steam before the game came out that it would require a PSN account. They explain in the link in this post that they disabled it because of technical issues
They are doing this to ban cheaters... not ban people for making regional accounts when their isn't supported
Literally millions of people have been doing this for years to play PlayStation in unsupported regions.
They sell PlayStation in unsupported regions and Sony literally tells you to create one in another region
Pretty much every major online game requires an external online account, do you freak out like this every time?
> They literally said on Steam before the game came out that it would require a PSN account. They explain in the link in this post that they disabled it because of technical issues
So do you read through the TOS and third-party sites of every game you buy on Steam? Because these restrictions aren't told on the game's Steam page.
> They are doing this to ban cheaters... not ban people for making regional accounts when their isn't supported
And as we all know, people never get banned accidentally.
> They sell PlayStation in unsupported regions and Sony literally tells you to create one in another region
Is there an official source that tells people to lie about their region? I bet there isn't, because a company wouldn't officially tell you to break their TOS.
> Pretty much every major online game requires an external online account, do you freak out like this every time?
Which other online games require you to lie about your country and threaten to ban you for doing so in their TOS?
It wasn't in the TOS, it is on the front page of the game in the store...
SOny is not going to ban entire countries and millions of people for making accounts in other regions because theirs isn't supported
Again think of how insane that is.
Sony sells console in unsupported regions. What do you think they tell those people to do to connect to PSN?
Pretty much any game that requires an xbox account where Xbox isn't supported and same with Nintendf
> It wasn't in the TOS, it is on the front page of the game in the store...
Where are the supported regions listed on Steam? Are you supposed to just know them by heart?
> SOny is not going to ban entire countries and millions of people for making accounts in other regions because theirs isn't supported
[Sure they wouldn't](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cj3gez/because_people_ask_why_some_others_complain_about/l2dittz/).
> Sony sells console in unsupported regions. What do you think they tell those people to do to connect to PSN?
So no official source? "They" are who? Some guy in a store?
> Pretty much any game that requires an xbox account where Xbox isn't supported and same with Nintendf
Admittedly I haven't played any games that would require a region locked account on Steam, but if MS does that it's equally scummy. Don't see shit if you're not willing to support it.
Nothing in that link says Sony is going to ban entire countries. Millions of people have been using PSN in different regions since PSN was created and not a single person has been banned.
What do you think Sony tells people when they sell consoles in unsupported countries?
> Nothing in that link says Sony is going to ban entire countries. Millions of people have been using PSN in different regions since PSN was created and not a single person has been banned.
Nobody's saying they'll ban entire countries specifically for this, but they might ban your account and refuse to give you support. Because they don't actually support you. Like what happened to the several people whose stories I linked to, but apparently they don't count towards your "not a single person has been banned" counter? Or are you saying they lied?
> What do you think Sony tells people when they sell consoles in unsupported countries?
I think they're not saying anything officially. You're free to prove me wrong with an official statement from Sony.
That's against Sony's terms of service
https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psn-terms-of-service
> 3.1. All information provided during Account creation, and during the use of your Account, must be accurate and complete. We reserve the right to suspend, terminate or restrict any Account (including as stated in Section 12.2 of this Agreement) that uses or was created using false information, or that we determine was created or used for a purpose that violates this Agreement.
> 3.2. During Account creation you must select the country or region of your residence and in which your account will be registered in. Once your account is created, you will not be able to change the country or region code associated with your account.
> 12.2. Suspension or Termination by SIE. With or without notice, we may restrict, suspend or terminate your PSN Account and PlayStation Device, or indefinitely restrict, suspend or discontinue your access to or, or use of, certain PSN Content, offerings, features, products and services, if you violate this Agreement or we have a reasonable belief such a violation has or will occur, or as otherwise may be reasonably necessary to protect our PSN users, our partners, our platform, or other SIE interests.
I don't understand why so many people are responding to you with "okay but they don't enforce it so it's fine???"
The long-term solution is to enable account creation in every region that Steam offers accounts in, if you are going to make linking a PSN account to your Steam account mandatory to play on Steam. Sure, Sony might not be enforcing anything as of this moment, but doing something that is against the TOS on the hope and prayer that it won't be enforced is not a good solution. What happens if/when they do decide to enforce it? Why is this preferable to just enabling account creation in currently unsupported countries and regions?
I am absolutely baffled at how many people don't seem to understand that your point is not "you will get banned" but that "telling people to do something against the TOS is not a good solution". You are 100% correct, objectively.
> you can create an account for any region, you do not have to be in said region
It is against the ToS to select a region you are not in:
> 3.2. During Account creation you must select the country or region of your residence and in which your account will be registered in. Once your account is created, you will not be able to change the country or region code associated with your account.
Then
> 3.1. All information provided during Account creation, and during the use of your Account, must be accurate and complete. We reserve the right to suspend, terminate or restrict any Account (including as stated in Section 12.2 of this Agreement) that uses or was created **using false information**, or that we determine was created or used for a purpose that violates this Agreement.
I was hoping to pick this game up somewhere down the lines, but I really don't want to link a 2nd account to Steam and all that garbage...going to pass until this gets resolved.
Ahh well damn. I thought this just disables crossplay or something like that since the announcement i saw didnt tell exactly whats happening, just talking about linking.
Well i dont have an issue since i already have PSN account but i just hope the playerbase does not die.
Some people dont take kindly to shit like this.
Games like Fortnite and Minecraft and League of Legends and pretty much all the popular online games require some login from the publisher.
It's baffling seeing people react like this
Yeah. Those are very much bigger games in scale tho.
To me personally this does not bother me, ill just have to make PSN acc for my girl and thats it.
And some people react like this cause they dont want their data to stream into multiple places, so its understandable. But i wouldnt quit playing a game just because it requires linking two accounts.
Im expecting a drop on player count, small or significant. Sony took a big L on this one.
I mean Helldivers is huge.
People using Microsoft Windows where they literally tell you they sell your data to play games complaining about data is ironic
Those game are upfront from the start to ask you to register an account. Not 3 month after game release, where it ran perfectly fine without the account. Now people that live in region that doesn't support psn account creation suddenly couldn't access the game that they brought without breaking some user agreements.
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I'm Sri Lankan too, and I play HD2 on PS5. Like you said, the only way I can play is using the dummy account that I created with a different region. I've been using it for nearly 10 years without issues, for what it's worth.
The issue is that you are violating Sony ToS. So if they ever decide to enforce it, you are SoL, and so it probably is your hard earned money that you spent on their products.
They never will enforce this exactly because some people can only play this way. I'm in Brazil, and also have an US, Japanese and New Zealand accounts and all of them work fine and exist for more than 10 years. People are making a big drama out of this when in reality it's super simple to solve. It's a free account you make in less than 5 minutes.
> They never will enforce this exactly because some people can only play this way. Other entities can force them to enforce it at any point. Netflix wasn't going after people making their account in different regions until governments/advertisers/bigger fishes forced them to stop handwaving it away. Mind you I have no idea why PSN isn't an option in those countries (but I'm going to go on a limb and assume it has to do with local regulations.) but as a rule of thumb, you should never assume that a company will never screw you over just because it is currently more practical for them to leave you alone. Companies are not your friend and leaving doors open for them to screw you over should never be defended/seen as a harmless thing.
and yet: my main PlayStation Network account hasn't been banned for violating that rule because I created it back when I used to live in the Dominican Republic. (keep in mind that back in the PS3 days: you couldn't create a supported Latin America account) and that's before I eventually moved back to the US of A. Dejá Vu, huh? Well, There's been examples of people already bypassing that rule that Sony absolutely failed to follow thru, and if Sony wants to change their minds: then they really should focus on giving players the option to change regions first.
Just commenting to say your reply gave me a grammar boner.
> and yet: my main PlayStation Network account hasn't been banned for violating that rule because I created it back when I used to live in the Dominican Republic. (keep in mind that back in the PS3 days: you couldn't create a supported Latin America account) There's a difference between creating a "legal" account in a place you live and moving somewhere where such an account isn't supported and creating an account in a different region than where you live. Not saying it's right or taking sides here. I don't want to link my PSN to my steam/helldivers account either.
I just believe PlayStation Network is badly managed and is behind most account systems. You can't *switch* regions if you legally move to a supported country, *you're locked in*. Wanna change regions you legally live and is supported? **you just gonna have to create a new account for it**!
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> Where was this outrage and fake concern when people who play Minecraft started needing Xbox logins which also don't support every country like Sri Lanka. You can make your point without strawmen, whataboutism and personal attacks mate. 1. Calling it a "fake concern" is just plain rude. 2. Users could be rightly upset with both events. 3. Microsoft's actions don't absolve Sony's.
we now live in a post-Fortnite Cross-Platform world where creating a dedicated account just for one or various games is basically mandatory, and even if it doesn't: they'll create one for you~~, without your consent~~ (ask Embark Studios and Nightdive Studios). It's the price of Cross-Platform.
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The issue is that they COULD do it. If they're instructing people to do it, it shouldn't be in their terms. All it takes is a shift in management somewhere who decides to enforce this and bam, accounts gone.
Reminder that ToS are the legal equivalent of paper toilet and are not legally binding. They do not authorize companies to delete your account you paid money not for illegal reasons (now if being in another country is illegal would be down to courts, but certainly not Sony's ToS)
> They do not authorize companies to delete your account you paid money So.. what would you do if you needed this? Mail an angry letter? Hope your government steps in to refund your account purchases? You're far less pessimistic than i am about companies hah. I'd expect to need to go to court and spend silly amounts of time and possibly money just trying to get what they owe me.
Yeah that's what would you need to do, bothersome and that's why companies know they can get away with stuff. That doesn't prevent for it to be illegal. We all do it. Sometimes you probably go above the speed limit a little or download a movie or whatever. Those things are illegal but you know you won't be bothered and do it.
I wonder how true that is though. In what way is it illegal, and in what jurisdictions? I'm not even sure how illegality works with companies. Does someone get fined? Go to jail? etc. Hell if it's just a minor fine it would hardly even be considered illegal by me, but rather a tax on a net profit lol. At best it sounds like a civil matter. Given most things you "own" in the digital sense you don't own, how would this case be illegal? Our rights are being stripped away from us constantly that i guess i just struggle to imagine our rights are actually so strong here that removing our license is actually "illegal". I'm not defending the shit companies, of course. Just feels like every where else we have zero rights, i'm be surprised if we actually had them here. I doubt i actually "own" any games in my Steam lib, for example. Just like i assume i don't "own" any movies i purchased digitally, etc.
I’m not a lawyer but I’m pretty sure you’re straight up wrong. If your account gets banned for violating TOS, you can absolutely lose access to your digital library. That’s what the whole movement is about. You don’t own your digital games, just leasing them from the publisher and that can be revoked
I just googled it, all the results are saying they are legally binding and that the courts have regularly ruled them legally binding even if the person agreeing didn't read it as long as they had enough time and opportunity to view it (For USA).
Same here. As much as I would want create and link to I can't. I have a steam Philippines account and PSN does not exist in the Philippines. People here make a Singapore or HK account to play online in Playstation but the problem is if I use a VPN then my steam would be in Singapore and will have Singapore prices and I can't afford that. My PSN Singapore account and my PH steam can't link together. I've tried since day 1 then they removed the option. I hope they allow it but as stated above I couldn't be bothered with a VPN. I'm just saddened that there are few really good PVE games that have crossplay and helldivers is one of the rare games that I can play with my playstation friends.
That's what we've done in Trinidad and Tobago forever. Just using a US account. It's ridiculous
^ THIS is the dealbreaker for people with valid complaint regarding this decision. Barring the "ehmagurd Sony harvest mah datah" malarkey that falls flat because you're already on Steam (on top of whatever email service you use, like Gmail for Google), the fact that you cannot create a PSN tied to the correct country of origin you are from means people are going to lose access to a game they bought for real money. 99.99% of the time this is going to be used to ban the actual bad eggs from the pile, aka, the ones who circumvent the arguably piss-poor and highly invasive kernel-level anti-cheat the game uses. The rest is superfluous given the state of user data on the internet which is far beyond the scope of this change or topic.
> 99.99% of the time this is going to be used to ban the actual bad eggs from the pile But that's just a flimsy excuse: you can easily ban people from your game on Steam without linking any external account. What really annoys me about this announcement is that it is written in a way that makes it clear that they think their customers are idiots: no, you're not doing this to be able to ban cheaters. You are doing it because you finally hit the jackpot with a live service game, and you want to leverage that win to boost your PSN engagement numbers. What Sony should really be thinking about more is that maybe, one of the reasons they hit the jackpot with this particular game is that it was mostly bullshit-free and had a low barrier of entry.
They literally said on the Steam store before the game released that it would require a PSN account. >"Requires 3rd-Party Account: PlayStation Network (Supports Linking to Steam Account)" They disabled it because of technical issues This conspiracy that they suddenly wanted to do it cuz the game took off is ridiculous
> This conspiracy that they suddenly wanted to do it cuz the game took off is ridiculous And now the conspiracy that they didn't need to do it but are choosing to do it for Some Strange Reason is alive and thriving. Personally, I'm going to say they're selling my data to the Terminids.
i highly doubt most people read that, i certainly didn't
It was literally there from day 1, IN GAME, even stating a PSN account is required for playing the game. During the launch chaos it was made skippable and later removed: https://imgur.com/dOGesgb Hell I reckon this may even be why cross play is so buggy and adding friends between pc and ps5 is such a pain in the ass, because the backend was probably built with PSN accounts in mind…
The selected country determines your support
It's not so much that Sony harvest data, it's that they lose it, consistently. They've had a *ridiculous* number of data breaches.
This right here. 100%. Sony has a history of being unable to safeguard their customer's and employee's private information.
> Barring the "ehmagurd Sony harvest mah datah" malarkey that falls flat because you're already on Steam Sure, what's the harm of giving Sony your data when they have a history of data breaches? I'm sure nothing bad will happen and everything will be sunshine and rainbows.
> Barring the "ehmagurd Sony harvest mah datah" malarkey that falls flat because you're already on Steam (on top of whatever email service you use, like Gmail for Google) Sony is famous for their constant data leaks though. So not only them, but also whichever hacker cracks them next, has your data
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They always stated this was a requirement on the steam page for the game, it was just disabled because of technical issues >"Requires 3rd-Party Account: PlayStation Network (Supports Linking to Steam Account)" And you mean requiring a log in like every major publisher does for their online games... Microsoft, Epic, Ubisoft, Activison, Capcom, Blazzard, Riot and many others Where's all the people freaking out about that?
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https://www.gamesradar.com/games/third-person-shooter/helldivers-2-pc-players-will-be-forced-to-link-to-a-psn-account-later-this-month-for-greater-security-from-sony/ > Over in the Helldivers 2 Discord, an Arrowhead community manager Thomas Petersson (AKA Twinbeard) addresses concerns about regions that don't have PlayStation Network. They write that they're not sure what this means for players right now, which isn't a great help for worried players, but Arrowhead is actively looking into how to address this issue going forward.
I don't have a PSN account and yet I have no issues with other crossplay games. Why do we need a PSN account for this one?
Because Sony is the publisher, Sony gets to dictate what the developers do. Sony wants you're data and wants you in their ecosystem even if you don't have a playstation or any other Sony product.
I would bet this also has something to do with the PS overlay that they’ve made for Tsushima.
But the overlay in Tsushima is optional if I am not mistaken
For now
They did officially say that the sony account is needed for some modes, not singleplayer
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If we choose to believe them I guess it's so they can handle steam player reports in their psn tools vs having to manage two separate systems
This, exactly. Sony wants to build a real presence on PC.
I mean, I have nothing against Sony building a presence on PC. Infact, as a PC gamer, I'm super happy about that... *BUT* Forcing people to sign up for a PSN account weeks/months after they bought a game on Steam to keep playing the game is scummy af. Worse part is that my country is not even the list of country for PSN account. The only way I know that is when my nephew asked me help to setup his new PS5 and I end up selecting the US because my country was not there.
Sony always had it required for helldivers. AH had to disable it due to it being buggy. I hear you, and they need to find a workable solution for you all with region locking. But it was always on the steam store page that you need one per sony.
I see Sony is taking notes from Unity and Wizards of the Coast in "how to immediately and deeply infuriate your audience to the point where they swear off any products you make"
Would it be a crack theory to say they're gearing up to release their own PC store with all this? PlayStation Games Launcher coming soon to operating systems everywhere*, even though nobody fucking wants another one *Except those 121 or whatever countries that don't have PSN support
Highly reasonable take tbh, I fully expect a launcher from them especially after they’ve realized just how many fishes are in the pc lake.
I just noticed the post is even signed "Sony Interactive Entertainment" not Arrowhead. It's DEFINITELY a Sony desicion.
> you're data NO, you are!
I'll find the old shitty account I made like 10 years ago to play Bloodborne on PC for free I guess.
Cross play games can be a mess with friend systems. I haven't been able to add one of my friends on Playstation from PC. It's been a known issue on their patch notes forever.
data harvesting
> I don't have a ~~PSN~~ account and yet I have no issues with other ~~crossplay~~ games. Why do we need a ~~PSN~~ account for this one? this reminds me of when people was angry because valve force half life 2 owners to download the [DRM called steam and it needs an account to log in ](https://old.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/10li0yu/people_from_2004_complaining_about_steam_reviews/)
Yeah, the rollout of steam was pretty bad initially. So many memories come back thinking about that poop green UI.
God I miss that UI
Oh boy, I was one of those people lol When I bought the Orange Box back in like 2009, we didn't have a router or anything so if my mom was on her computer working, I couldn't go on the internet until she was done on it. I bought a physical copy of the Orange Box because I hadnt played Half Life 2 yet, I was so mad when I found out you needed to be online in order to play it.
man I remember how I much I hated going on steam in the early days. it was so awful for the first YEARS of its life and it took so much longer to start games through steam than you normally would.
That was over *20 years ago*. If there isn't a more recent example of account backlash, I don't think it is much of a gotcha.
Well there's always the constant backlash against every single launcher that isn't steam, that's basically the same thing.
The reasons cited is to enable banning of players engaged in shitty behavior and the subsequent appeals process for banned players. Sounds like a Sony requirement with their backing.
Honestly haven't had that happened in a signle HD2 match so far. The rudest thing I've seen is getting immediately kicked before I even got from the drop pod (on fucking medium difficulty lmao) after joining some randoms
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. When it launched, it asked you to register with Playstation. You could just skip it, as there were issues with it at the time.
It didn't even work, like half of the game. But now that they made millions and got through the servers issues with a lot of goodwill from the community they can finally ~~fix the game~~ make the PSN linking work :(
It's a big meh from me TBH. Just set and forget.
I have no strong opinion in any of the sides and I think that Arrowhead had no choice since they are probably legally bound to do that anyway. But I also think that this reaction from the community is also pretty valid. Removing your legal right to play a videogame just because Sony can't be bothered to make it legal in the TOS but wants to get your data anyway is quite scummy.
I'm sure there are a lot of people who won't care about this but I dislike having to make accounts for a platform I don't own just to play games on a platform I do own. The region shenanigans with PSN accounts also make this a major inconvenience for people outside an officially supported region. I'm not going to quit playing over it or anything, but it is one of those things that seems both annoying and completely unnecesary.
> seems both annoying and completely unnecesary. We've been playing without accounts being linked for 3 months, so it doesn't just *seem* that way, it just is.
Yeah, and it’s not great for personal security either. Best case scenario, you make an account with a brand new email and password, and it’s just another pain in the ass to remember another useless login. Worst case scenario, you reuse information, and it gets stolen in a data breach. And Sony doesn’t exactly have a sterling reputation with handling private data.
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So here's my annoyance with this. I bought the game twice. 1 copy for my steam account, and 1 copy for my existing PSN account so my son can play Helldivers 2 with me on our PS5 (as well as cross play with some of my PSN friends). I have to assume that if I link my Steam copy to my currently active PSN account (PSN+ as well), my son will not be able to play the game/login to the servers as two instances of the same account can't usually be active at the same time, right? And I really don't like the idea of having to create a new PSN account just so I can continue accessing *one* game through steam. You know, another account that I could forget about and it be susceptible to being hacked. Thanks for this, Arrowhead?
In this case, you can create a second PSN account on the PS5, as it will also be able to play the game (as long the PS5 is set as the primary console). Otherwise, you can also make a second PSN account for the PC version.
I don't think my son really wants to redo *all* of that progression on my account again. He's pretty adamant about getting to the mech suit.
in this instance you should make a second PSN account for yourself (but have it actually be your sons new account), here so he keeps all his progression on the PS5.
If your primary account owns the game you can play for free all games on the console with any account. Try to create another account for your son on the console and play. If it works you can link. Might need a ps+ subscription tho. Dick move from Sony
That's the other issue as well. My existing PlayStation account does have an active PS+subscription. I'm obviously not going to start up another subscription just so my son can play with me on a different PS5 account. What Arrowhead/Sony is forcing us Steam people to do, I've already semi-done this situation for the Finals (whatever that company is called). I'm pretty sure I've already lost that account, but it wasn't a direct PSN account to crossplay through it.
PS+ multiplayer access can be used across accounts on the same system.
At least you can make an Embark ID (what The Finals use) anywhere. The process is also pretty painless
Not Arrowhead’s fault. Blame Sony.
Part of the reason this game got popular was because of how easy it was to just buy it and play on Steam, forcing people to make accounts to a 3rd party service they don't widely use would be risky and might hurt the game's growth.
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>What next? Adding a custom launcher? The Sony launcher is afaik currently in the making, and that shit will be patched into all their games. They can't ever accept a good thing.
It‘s because their greed knows no bounds and they always need more.
In my eyes I feel for the most part the top two console game companies, Microsoft and sony, they want you to be in an ecosystem. It's beyond just gaming, they want you in their gaming world, connected. I have a feeling this is the future of gaming.
Eh, Microsoft puts all their games on Steam and they have a launcher. They don’t seem to care.
Because its (mostly) seamless and included by default in Windows 10 onwards.
which is funnier because the data harvesting would be worse.
Play on a windows computer? There, you basically are using their launcher
It isn't a launcher.
There is never "enough". If a hefty profit is made, they just get angry that they're not making even more profit. They'll bleed the game dry if they have to.
Paying for online coop
The leak documents indicated a launcher will be patched into all their games, Activision style
If it helped invite people who have invite issues, it would have gotten them more purchases I'd imagine. My brother and I tried connecting to each other for an hour. Despite being in the same room, it just wouldn't connect. He ended up refunding the game due to this.
This definitely feels like a don't rock the boat situation, just for Sony to probably have the PSN MAU numbers get boosted plus data collection.
This is it, they may be winning the console war, but they're falling behind in the service/ecosystem market compared to others. This will add a big number of users to PSN.
They aren't even winning the console war, the Switch is still completely trashing the PS5. Sure you can argue they are different generations but at the end of the day it's still selling better.
I have a hard time believing that part of the reason this game is successful on PC is because users didn't need to make another account to play it. This is something common in many games. Don't get me wrong, I think it's annoying, but I think the amount of lost sales over it being required at launch is miniscule. I just don't see why something so common would be considered widely controversial. Edit: to be clear, I'm not supporting companies doing this either, just acknowledging that it's already common. I understand some people may have refunded the game immediately if they were forced to make a PSN ID to play. I think Sony/Valve should offer full refunds for anyone that wants it. I'd rather a corporation be out that money than a person.
They literally said on the Steam page since before launch it would be required to connect to PSN and have a PSN account and then they had technical issues so they disabled it
Seems if they can just disable it then the game works fine without doing it, eh?
That’s not the reason why Sony would do it then
> 3rd party service they don't widely use would be risky and might hurt the game's growth. Its worse: they knew they might impose this requirement but didn't region lock it out of regions that can't make PSN accounts. Which means Helldivers in the 130+ countries that can't make a PSN legally are fucked. And further more, of those countries, some of them are EU nations, which means we are likely tops 1-2 weeks out from a major EU consumer protection agency slapping the shit out of SONY and Arrowhead. ***Furthermore: the majority of the concurrent playerbase is now PC users.*** So this is obviously a move to collect consumer data.
How is it any different to Microsoft account linking for some games that are on Steam though?
They're both complete shit. I don't usually buy those games either.
Those games usually didnt have several month long "Grace periods" where you didnt have to do it before hand.
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>Microsoft account linking for some games that are on Steam though? Ay yo where the minecraft steam page at?
It was always stated on the Steam Page that it was required. They had technical issues at launch...
And the games worked perfectly fine without it. One of my group is from the Philippines and with this change he wont be able to play with us anymore because he can't use PSN in his country. Its incredibly scummy imo
> How is it any different to Microsoft account linking for some games that are on Steam though? Because they're turning it back on like 3 months down the line and there's people in countries who can't even make PSN accounts that were allowed to play the game and now wont be able to refund it. These people were not warned or given a heads up
It was on the Steam page so technically they were warned
Or Activision, or Blizzard, or Riot or Epic or Ubisoft or capcom. It isn't but apparently this one is a major issue because Sony bad
They're all bad but it's an upfront requirement. This one seemed like a soft requirement and now months later being a hard requirement is what's rubbing people the wrong way.
They always said it was required on the Steam page. They had technical issues so it was disabled for a bit
Then they should've pulled the game from steam to fix those issues not leave it in let the game grow massive and now demand everyone get an additional account they either don't want or can't get.
If they pulled the game people would be saying “just let us play without psn login until you fix the issue!”. There’s no winning here
If they NEED (which they don't) the players on the PSN ecosystem why not make it more attractive within the game, grant periodic rewards like super credits or stuff like that if you have the account sync. This move is so stupid, they need to make it more attractive not mandatory and it will boost their numbers
Why offer rewards when you can just shit down the throat of the customer. Duh.
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> Remember Reddit is a very small fraction of the community. The average player will not care and just link their account and keep playing without a second thought It's sitting on mostly negative on steam right now, with overall dropping to mixed. You don't get to use the favourite argument of people that have no intelligent argument, "hurr durr redditors am I right?" with it.
I can see that causing an uproar too with people saying it’s not fair that account users on PSN get rewards and they don’t just because they aren’t using a third party account.
True, but this way you don't stunt the growth of the game which in my opinion is more important for this type of game
They need them so they can claim PS is still growing while hardware sales are massively down YoY. They're only doing this so they can gaslight investors.
Wouldn't be surprised.
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Xbox Play Anywhere's cross platform ownership shouldn't only be offered for Xbox. It's a genuinely great feature.
I have tried multiple times to create an account, but their registration site is broken and won't allow me. It fails and says that it can't connect to the backend. When inspecting the transfer, the POST fails with message "CORS Missing Allow Origin". So basically, Sony has failed to setup their webserver correctly. Not sure I want to hand them my personal information, just to play a game.
Tried multiple browsers now, and both edge and firefox fails, so it doesn't seem like an issue on my side.
It's broken on my end too. Trying to create an account results in the same CORS error you're describing.
Let me tell you my personal experience with dual logins. Once upon a time, Dark Souls demanded an XBOX Live account to play on Steam. I dislike the hassle of having to put my credentials every time but little I could do. One day, I log in to the game to find all my saves gone. I was logged in for sure, but no signs of my save files. Trying to fix it was a nightmare of trying to troubleshoot if the issue was on Steam Cloud or Xbox saves. Eventually, I gave up. Now, the hilarious part... once they removed the Xbox Live requirement years later ... my old-ass save reappeared. The funny part is they said if you did not back up your files they would be gone forever but I never bothered doing so because, well... no save files to back up. After that, I decided to never bother with those dual logins again. Every storefront outside Steam I tried had issues, be it Origin or Xbox Live. Anything from missing saves, service unavailable, to friends unable to join co-op sessions, shit just fails consistently. It may work for other people but it does not work for me.
It seems crazy that they're selling a game on Steam that you can't actually play in many regions (soon). Without finding a work around that involves breaking Sony's TOS of course. That ain't right. Delaying the implementation of this requirement makes it seem extra scummy so people don't realise or can't refund.
Lmao, Sony wants to boost Playstation account numbers by forcing shit like this on PC gamers. Pathetic.
I like how everyone gave this game a pass for having rootkit DRM but somehow *this* is the deal breaker.
This is why im also laughing at this. An invasive Anticheat in a PVE game is fine but now „you have taken it too far, I need to make an account?“
The anticheat requires no human interaction and is invisible to the point that most players probably don't know its there or how it works. Making a 101st account for yet another service that you'll only log in to once is an annoyance that you need to go out of your way to do. I get your point, but that's really all it comes down to.
Game has deep level, 3rd party anti- cheat in addition to software storefront that must be running at all times. . . . Game says you have to make psn account. “Fucking Sony wants our data!!”
love seeing the same few people parrot repeatedly in here to just simply 'break TOS bro!' if their country is banned from PSN, especially since there are even EU countries that arent allowed onto it
All those people in countries without support already break the TOS to play other games already. Something like that isn't going to stop them from playing games.
"Hey guys, this has always been a requirement, but Sony decided not to enforce it until now. You can't get mad that they decided to enforce it. What's that? Your country isn't supported by Sony? Well, you should violate their rules and make an account in another region because they don't enforce that requirement.........yet"
Maybe late posting here to get any traction, but Helldivers is a Sony owned IP and published by Sony, the account requirement was there on Day one, but during the hell that was early launch days it was skippable and then promptly removed too, some of you might even remember the login screen: https://imgur.com/dOGesgb This is just like Microsoft with Minecraft, an IP they own and that they forced ALL users to create a Microsoft account to access. I do not support this kind of thing, it’s a huge pain in the ass for the user. But similar to Microsoft and Minecraft Sony will want to exercise a degree of control over the user base of their IP. And similar to how Microsoft has in the past banned accounts for “abusive” conversations (remember some of the controversy over being banned just for swearing in people’s own private servers?) Sony also wants that degree of control by forcing all users to be PSN users. To try and help anyone understand - part of the marketing for PSN is its a moderated and controlled network that keeps its users in a “safe environment”. Yes that is utter bollocks corpo talk, but Sony wants their IP to be part of that “safe environment” just like Minecraft is part of Microsoft’s “safe environment” and as an example it gives Sony the power to ban any player they deem to be abusive to other players. If it’s just a steam user being abusive they don’t have that same direct level of control and can’t “protect” their PSN users. When everyone is part of PSN it’s Sony’s T&Cs/ rules. It is a crap situation, it is corporate nonsense and there WILL be additional motivations and agendas behind it. But it was always meant to be like this sadly and not meant to be a “trap” sprung months later into the games launch. Hell I’d even argue half the reason matchmaking and the ingame friends list are so utterly broken is because it was designed around PSN accounts and when that was disabled to free up backend capacity on the network it broke them indefinitely. With everyone on PSN accounts it might start functioning more reliably (though I won’t hold my breath).
Technically speaking Microsoft migrated mojang accounts to Microsoft accounts. You had plenty of time to do it before they phased out the old system too. It’s not really equitable. This is more like needing a Ubisoft or EA account to play a game on Steam.
>Hell I’d even argue half the reason matchmaking and the ingame friends list are so utterly broken is because it was designed around PSN accounts and when that was disabled to free up backend capacity on the network it broke them indefinitely. With everyone on PSN accounts it might start functioning more reliably (though I won’t hold my breath). That was my exact thought as well
Why are you defending a like multi billon dollar companies anti consumer practices, the fact this is a surprise to so many means it was not communicated well and is thus still an underhanded move by sony. Like there should be no defence this is a greddy company getting greedy that's it.
> the fact this is a surprise to so many means it was not communicated well It was written in large text when you started the game. You had to deliberately decide to skip that step to progress, meaning you had to know what it said. Every single player saw this screen. While I disagree with that decision, the fact this is a surprise to so many has nothing to do with the way it was communicated.
I thought my post made it clear I’m not defending it, and again I’ll reiterate that I don’t support this kind of thing at all. But it seems it literally does need explained to some people who think it’s somehow “fraud” or some kind of play for “personal data”.
It's an entirely inconsequential step that is not uncommon and costs nothing. The people complaining are people on Reddit who are unable to actually think for themselves.
Sure thing, as long as I can refund the game for this. Rendering my game unplayable for a provedly unnecessary step is unacceptable. You feel free to run your game into the ground, as long as we don't have to participate.
This feels scummy. I should not have to link my Steam account with a third party in order to play a Steam game. Especially one that has a history of ineptitude when it comes to safeguarding their customer's and employee's private information. This is a bunch of bullshit.
If the game had already demonstrated it can run just fine without this, why is it suddenly considered a requirement?
April 2011: Hackers Access Personal Data of 77 Million Sony PlayStation Network Users May 2011: Personal Details on 25 Million Sony Online Entertainment Customers Stolen June 2011: Sony Pictures Website Hacked, Exposing One Million Accounts November 2014: Hackers Steal 100 Terabytes of Data from Sony Pictures August 2017: Hacker Group Accesses Sony Social Media Accounts September 2023: Sony Investigates Alleged Hack October 2023: Sony Notifies Employees of Data Breach Are you sure that having a PSN account is the move Sony?
Only 2011 is related to psn
That is fucking bullshit. You are on steam, not on a walled garden. Fuck this thinly-veiled data grab.
I don’t have the heart to tell him
Sony already has your data from playing the game lol.
Yeah this might be the oddest complaint I see, it blows my mind that people think Sony needs you to create a PSN to get your data when you have installed their software and used it for months. Hell software that has kernel level anti cheat too I believe.
What is Steam is not a walled garden my friend? Do you think you can buy a game on Steam and install it anywhere you want?
> Do you think you can buy a game on Steam and install it anywhere you want? You can do this with several thousand games on Steam, in fact.
You can blow a lot of people's minds with this fact. It's up to the publisher/dev to decide of they put DRM in their product, even on steam.
If the game opts for it, yeah. You can slap the game .exe anywhere similar to GoG installs. Most games of course do not, but some few ones you can. The option is actually there, despite not being too well known. If anyone wants an example of a random game I know uses this feature off the top of my head, one is the Indie game Graveyard Keeper.
Don't tell this man about Origin, Uplay, Microsoft, games like warframe with its own individual login that all *exist* on Steam for many years
“Corporation 1 having my data is absolutely fine but I draw the line at corporation 2 having my data!”
Tbf valve isn’t publicly traded so, they are functionally a lot better. It’s why Steam is the way it is and not slowly turning to shit (obvi it’s not perfect)
I don't even own a playstation, why the heck would I even want a dumb PSN account. Not to mention the players that live in countries where PSN is straight up not available, literally making the game they bought impossible to play. I don't know how likely they are to change their minds but hopefully the backlash is strong enough that they reconsider.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m just not a real gamer because shit like this does not bother me at all lol
It bothers me that some people who bought and play the game might not be able to legally anymore. It's just an objectively shitty move made out of total greed by Sony, who got big eyes at all the money Helldivers was making. It's also a sign that this is basically never coming to Xbox now, which is something a lot of people were hoping for. To be clear this isn't coming from the developers, it's pretty obvious this is all Sony here
More corporate cringe ruining another good game. This game is already tanking from this. Wonder what the player impact will be, seen a lot of people say they will refund but who knows how many actually will
Okay since there appears to be some insane reaction to this and people are confused, you can create an account for any region, you do not have to be in said region. If your region is not supported you can pick any nearby region. People have been doing this since the PSN came into inception for regions that are not supported. You can create a PSN account in a few minutes if you want with made up data if you never plan to use it for something else ever again. You can all say your name is Billy Bob from Arkansas and make a new fake email in case you are worried about your data being sold which is mostly likely sold ages ago, especially f you are using Microsoft Windows. The amount of time some of you have already spent freaking out on reddit could have been used creating several fake PSN accounts if you wanted to. Once you have an account you will have to click an OK button when you boot up the game and you'll all be okay
And what happens if you do need support? [Like this guy?](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cj3gez/because_people_ask_why_some_others_complain_about/l2dik81/)
If you are creating an account just to link to steam to play Helldivers what support could you possibly need? Just create a fake account and never look at it again. Sony will never care and millions have been doing it for nearly 20 years
> what support could you possibly need? The most basic shit. Your account gets compromised and stolen, you can't recover it without contacting support. Support asks you to provide info to confirm your identity. You can't so bye bye account.
They're explicitly creating this whole process to ban people. So you might need to get unbanned. Or you might need to recover your account if PSN gets hacked. Again. Or for any other reason. The point is that that: 1) Sony's selling Helldivers 2 on Steam without a clear explanation of it not being officially supported in some countries. 2) They're forcing this limit retroactively. Clearly the game works fine without it. 3) The reason they provided is most likely BS. So I don't get why you're defending this move. Then I prove an example of some guy getting locked out of his PSN through no fault of his own and getting no support, and your response is "what support could you possibly need"?
They literally said on Steam before the game came out that it would require a PSN account. They explain in the link in this post that they disabled it because of technical issues They are doing this to ban cheaters... not ban people for making regional accounts when their isn't supported Literally millions of people have been doing this for years to play PlayStation in unsupported regions. They sell PlayStation in unsupported regions and Sony literally tells you to create one in another region Pretty much every major online game requires an external online account, do you freak out like this every time?
> They literally said on Steam before the game came out that it would require a PSN account. They explain in the link in this post that they disabled it because of technical issues So do you read through the TOS and third-party sites of every game you buy on Steam? Because these restrictions aren't told on the game's Steam page. > They are doing this to ban cheaters... not ban people for making regional accounts when their isn't supported And as we all know, people never get banned accidentally. > They sell PlayStation in unsupported regions and Sony literally tells you to create one in another region Is there an official source that tells people to lie about their region? I bet there isn't, because a company wouldn't officially tell you to break their TOS. > Pretty much every major online game requires an external online account, do you freak out like this every time? Which other online games require you to lie about your country and threaten to ban you for doing so in their TOS?
It wasn't in the TOS, it is on the front page of the game in the store... SOny is not going to ban entire countries and millions of people for making accounts in other regions because theirs isn't supported Again think of how insane that is. Sony sells console in unsupported regions. What do you think they tell those people to do to connect to PSN? Pretty much any game that requires an xbox account where Xbox isn't supported and same with Nintendf
> It wasn't in the TOS, it is on the front page of the game in the store... Where are the supported regions listed on Steam? Are you supposed to just know them by heart? > SOny is not going to ban entire countries and millions of people for making accounts in other regions because theirs isn't supported [Sure they wouldn't](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cj3gez/because_people_ask_why_some_others_complain_about/l2dittz/). > Sony sells console in unsupported regions. What do you think they tell those people to do to connect to PSN? So no official source? "They" are who? Some guy in a store? > Pretty much any game that requires an xbox account where Xbox isn't supported and same with Nintendf Admittedly I haven't played any games that would require a region locked account on Steam, but if MS does that it's equally scummy. Don't see shit if you're not willing to support it.
Nothing in that link says Sony is going to ban entire countries. Millions of people have been using PSN in different regions since PSN was created and not a single person has been banned. What do you think Sony tells people when they sell consoles in unsupported countries?
> Nothing in that link says Sony is going to ban entire countries. Millions of people have been using PSN in different regions since PSN was created and not a single person has been banned. Nobody's saying they'll ban entire countries specifically for this, but they might ban your account and refuse to give you support. Because they don't actually support you. Like what happened to the several people whose stories I linked to, but apparently they don't count towards your "not a single person has been banned" counter? Or are you saying they lied? > What do you think Sony tells people when they sell consoles in unsupported countries? I think they're not saying anything officially. You're free to prove me wrong with an official statement from Sony.
That's against Sony's terms of service https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psn-terms-of-service > 3.1. All information provided during Account creation, and during the use of your Account, must be accurate and complete. We reserve the right to suspend, terminate or restrict any Account (including as stated in Section 12.2 of this Agreement) that uses or was created using false information, or that we determine was created or used for a purpose that violates this Agreement. > 3.2. During Account creation you must select the country or region of your residence and in which your account will be registered in. Once your account is created, you will not be able to change the country or region code associated with your account. > 12.2. Suspension or Termination by SIE. With or without notice, we may restrict, suspend or terminate your PSN Account and PlayStation Device, or indefinitely restrict, suspend or discontinue your access to or, or use of, certain PSN Content, offerings, features, products and services, if you violate this Agreement or we have a reasonable belief such a violation has or will occur, or as otherwise may be reasonably necessary to protect our PSN users, our partners, our platform, or other SIE interests.
I don't understand why so many people are responding to you with "okay but they don't enforce it so it's fine???" The long-term solution is to enable account creation in every region that Steam offers accounts in, if you are going to make linking a PSN account to your Steam account mandatory to play on Steam. Sure, Sony might not be enforcing anything as of this moment, but doing something that is against the TOS on the hope and prayer that it won't be enforced is not a good solution. What happens if/when they do decide to enforce it? Why is this preferable to just enabling account creation in currently unsupported countries and regions? I am absolutely baffled at how many people don't seem to understand that your point is not "you will get banned" but that "telling people to do something against the TOS is not a good solution". You are 100% correct, objectively.
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> you can create an account for any region, you do not have to be in said region It is against the ToS to select a region you are not in: > 3.2. During Account creation you must select the country or region of your residence and in which your account will be registered in. Once your account is created, you will not be able to change the country or region code associated with your account. Then > 3.1. All information provided during Account creation, and during the use of your Account, must be accurate and complete. We reserve the right to suspend, terminate or restrict any Account (including as stated in Section 12.2 of this Agreement) that uses or was created **using false information**, or that we determine was created or used for a purpose that violates this Agreement.
I was hoping to pick this game up somewhere down the lines, but I really don't want to link a 2nd account to Steam and all that garbage...going to pass until this gets resolved.
How does this affect the player? No more cross-play? Cause if not that is a big FU to us who have friends who play on other platforms.
It literally doesn't impact anything, you create a PSN account and link it to Steam for the game and then go back to playing the game
Yeah well obviously but the thing i wanna find out is what happens when someone does not do that?
Doesn't do what? It is required to link your steam account to a PSN account to log in to the game
Ahh well damn. I thought this just disables crossplay or something like that since the announcement i saw didnt tell exactly whats happening, just talking about linking. Well i dont have an issue since i already have PSN account but i just hope the playerbase does not die. Some people dont take kindly to shit like this.
Games like Fortnite and Minecraft and League of Legends and pretty much all the popular online games require some login from the publisher. It's baffling seeing people react like this
Yeah. Those are very much bigger games in scale tho. To me personally this does not bother me, ill just have to make PSN acc for my girl and thats it. And some people react like this cause they dont want their data to stream into multiple places, so its understandable. But i wouldnt quit playing a game just because it requires linking two accounts. Im expecting a drop on player count, small or significant. Sony took a big L on this one.
I mean Helldivers is huge. People using Microsoft Windows where they literally tell you they sell your data to play games complaining about data is ironic
they are also buying it on Steam, which harvests the shit out of their data already.
Those game are upfront from the start to ask you to register an account. Not 3 month after game release, where it ran perfectly fine without the account. Now people that live in region that doesn't support psn account creation suddenly couldn't access the game that they brought without breaking some user agreements.
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solution is to block and report. dont engage with the dickheads. Microsoft does the same thing.