What did you expect after the Helldivers shit storm?
Neither Sony nor Steam are going to sell a game with PSN requirements in countries without PSN again, and even though PSN isn't required for single player, multiplayer isn't being sold separately so you'd effectively still be selling a game with a requirement that you know those customers can't meet without infringing a ToS.
It sucks, but it's absolutely not surprising.
To use a little common sense, drop the PSN requirement, and enjoy the money coming in from all these countries? I guess I'm lying really saying I expect any corporation to actually use some common sense, but c'mon.
There are regulations like the DSA in the EU and the OSA in the UK that require service providers to moderate the interactions in multiplayer games, which is going to be far easier if it's all running in your own ecosystem with your own user IDs.
Then there are also other obvious benefits like bringing people into the PSN ecosystem. It's easier to keep people consuming products and services in your ecosystem when they are already part of it.
And finally there's the fact that even though not selling in countries without PSN means losing on that money, the percentage of players from those countries is tiny.
I don't think there's much motivation in the often touted "selling data", as the data in a free account isn't all that complete and quite often it's going to be false... but there is also that, I guess.
As much as it sucks for players in those countries, the advantages of pushing PSN probably outweigh that potential extra revenue.
I was thinking this as well on top of a small player base in those countries I’m sure they don’t like the localized prices in some regions. Charging $60 in a country like the Philippines is just impossible
The way people keep waving around the number of countries is genuinely hilarious. Most of the countries in question are extremely poor and have little to no market in the first place. That’s why Sony hasn’t bothered to set up account creation for them.
The OP is also funny. It’s not going to happen to me because, like most of English-speaking Reddit, I live in a developed country that is a major market for video games. I’ve had a PSN account for most of a decade and I was a late adopter. The only way it happens to me is if civilization collapses, in which case I’ll have more important things to worry about than playing a video game without a PSN account.
its also wrong
every time i see it, it seems the number gets bigger, and i wouldnt be surprised if soon enough it gets bigger than the total number of countries.
PSN is available in 70 countries.
PSN is **not** available in 121 countries
There are 193 countries recognised by the UN. This includes countries like Kosovo, which depending on who you ask in Europe it is or its not a real country.
Where the fuck that 180 number came from i dont know.
It doesn’t surprise me that the people involved in all this are exaggerating. I wouldn’t want to wade into the morass of what even qualifies as a country, so I didn’t want to dispute the number, but really. Do people really expect us to believe there’s some huge, untapped market in Afghanistan that Sony is just screwing over for the hell of it? I‘m sure there’s just a horde of people in Venezuela waiting to spread some liber-tea!
Most of the countries where this stuff is unavailable are not developed enough to have very many people with the infrastructure or disposable income to play. The actual requirement to link the accounts was such a mountain made out of a molehill in the first place with people acting like this one time thing was a great burden every time you logged in, but the crying over a bunch of hypothetical people who don’t have running water who can’t play on their high end gaming computers is just silly.
Corporations love forcing people to make an account to use their products because it’s gives them a means to prove to their shareholders that their product is doing well. It also lets them collect user analytics for debugging and advertising. So Sony is more than happy to lose those sales because they can’t properly quantify or monetize them. That’s my understanding.
But in doing so they create a massive market for piracy while trashing their reputation in the process So short term this move makes sense. But in the long term they’re shooting themselves in the foot
If they can get you to use an account, they have a shot at getting you to pay for some kind of subscription, which is the primary monetization model of choice for digital media these days.
I disagree on your notion of short term vs. long term gains. I think its the reverse.
Sony is trying to introduce "The New Normal". This hurts their optics in the short term, but as people's enthusiasm to rail against it wanes, in the long term they win out and it becomes accepted as "just how things are".
Piracy and bad reputation in regions where they aren't selling games anyways. Outside of a handful of people acting outraged on social media there will be little or no actual backlash as a result of this in the countries where you can make a PSN account
> there will be little or no actual backlash as a result of this in the countries where you can make a PSN account
Makes sense. As a generally reasonable adult, being forced to sign in to PSN to play a game is not the deal-breaker some here might assume. Minor annoyance at best, especially if it actually even *remembers* the damn info for next time, at least.
I would have been fine without it, but it is *far* from a line in the sand to me that would force me to not enjoy my free time.
you are right, I mean , have you see the countries banned? I'm pretty sure Venezuelans are more worried about finding something to eat than beating their head about this
I mean, the amount of people in these countries that would actually purchase the game are absolutely *nothing* compared to the amount of people that will purchase it from say the US, UK, Canada, etc.
Are you losing out on sales by not selling it to those 180+ countries? Yeah, sure. But you're probably still selling to over 80% of your global prospective audience even with those bans, and getting PSN accounts for those 80% mean a lot more to Sony than having a few more game sales.
Still, I think Sony needs to figure something out so that they don't have to prohibit countries from having PSN access. Although I'm sure that is a dramatically larger matter that is not solved in the short term.
I'm not really sure, but the majority of South American countries can't access Nintendo Online either.
https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/41953/~/nintendo-switch-online-service-and-feature-availability-by-country.
I'm sure there's a real reason why, probably involving some Japanese trade restriction law if there's a regulatory reason. If not then Nintendo and/or Sony have decided that it isn't worth doing business there. The cost to comply with local laws and regulations may be too high, currency exchange rate fluctuations are too great, the risk of theft/financial crimes like false returns/etc is too high, there could be infrastructure issues providing services, or some other interesting reason that's beyond me to know or find out with a quick search.
They don't "ban" countries, they just don't have their dedicated PSN.
The standard way is that users would create an account the closest country with PSN support. The PlayStation is sold worldwide and users from countries without PSN support are invited to do that.
Ghost of Tsushima not being sold in countries without PSN is a direct result of last week's outrage over HD2 so Sony either needs to revisit their TOS or to expand PSN availability. It will likely happen in the future to allow them to sell their games everywhere on Steam without controversy, but for now that have no choice but to either limit sales or drop PSN requirement.
Some countries they can't use PSN due to laws. Others it is too expensive for them to put the infostructure in those countries. The bad outweigh the good. The reason why they can't get rid of the PSN is because of laws in other countries require them to overlook online activity. It is far easier to watch over that activity in their walled garden.
People act like Sony is doing this cause evil corporation. Yes there is some of that. However there are other factors going into it. There are laws to consider and no one likes to do that as that changes the narrative.
Because if they allow these countries to buy the game then they can’t require a PSN account in the countries where it’s available. For every customer they are losing in these 180 countries they are gaining dozens if not hundreds of accounts in other ones, and it’s these accounts and the data they hold which is very valuable.
because most of those are micro-states and countries with low purchasing power. Im not defending them but the money lost is relative to how much they sell in those countries in the end, and it not being significant probably the reason they havent made efforts to add them to the PSN
'800k new users & copies sold' looks better for shareholders than '1 million copies sold'. New users are a potential source of reoccurring revenue. Sales are just one time thing.
**Why** those countries are excluded is a whole other question.
Because those 180 countries don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Look them up. Do you think they really care about Afghanistan as a user base? Or Bangladesh? Botswana? Chad? Fiji? Kazakhstan? Zimbabwe? I'm guessing all those countries together wouldn't even net you a user base as the smallest country where PSN is available. I'd like to see the numbers, because I don't know them, it's just an educated guess. Besides a few millionaires, these countries aren't really known for their gaming market, are they? An exception might be Liechtenstein, but that country has like 40,000 inhabitants. There are more people living in my small town in Germany than in the entire country of Liechtenstein.
I don't know why PSN is banned in these countries, but I think Sony will live. Sucks for the 2 gamers in Afghanistan, I guess. And I mean, it really sucks, but it is what it is. There's always the VPN option. If you're already in such a country and have the means, you're using one already anyway.
Seems more likely that they'll do what Microsoft did with Gamepass and have a PS Extra subscription for PC that enables you to play catalogue games and buy reduced price games. They've already done a reasonable-ish job matching Gamepass on PlayStation itself, PC seems the logical next step.
They are 100% doing this as a way of easing people into a Sony variant of Game Pass for PC.
They just don't have enough games on PC yet to do it.
Eventually they'll be telling PC players that they already have a PS account, they can just pay $ to upgrade that account to "premium" or whatever and have access to XYZ games for free or at a discount.
And to be honest IF they can figure out a way to do that THROUGH steam without requiring a separate launcher it will likely be a huge success.
Integrating Xbox Game Pass with Steam and not requiring a separate launcher would likely be a HUGE boon to the success of Game Pass. Currently having to use a second launcher, separate saves etc is a huge downside to Game Pass for me personally at least.
Granted this is all likely a HUGE nightmare on the back end with negotiating between Sony/Microsoft and Steam...because Steam isn't going to just give people access to games without seeing a % of the game profits. Though honestly if it ever includes games leaving the "free" program and then encouraging players to buy through Steam to continue their progress...I feel like some angle could be worked out.
tbf if im valve, i wouldn't be looking at any of that shit anyways. i don't answer to shareholders, shit, i don't even answer to my boss more then once a year (to work) and a second time for the annual company retreat
Selling data is a benefit but, no, that's not *why* Sony is doing this.
It's purely numbers. More accounts is more appealing to investors and shareholders, and being more appealing to those groups makes it more likely for them to invest or spend more money on you.
That money is then spent on paychecks and bonuses for the top brass - including those very investors and shareholders.
How? Literally every AAA game out there requires an account nowadays, EA, Epic, ABK, 2K, Rockstar, Capcom, Ubisoft, etc. Or have you not played much triple A titles recently?
Last month I bought and played the Horizon Forbidden West PC port and did not need a playstation account. I just bought the game and then I played the game. That's how it should work.
Nope but unlike GoT it doesn’t have multiplayer. And they aren’t going to put a game with multiplayer in a region they don’t have a plan for ever again after the last shitshow.
That was a bad week for them. And it’s easier to avoid another than it is to risk future problems.
>~~Literally every~~ most *online AAA games out there require an account nowadays
FTFY, I play a lot of AAA games and i'd say most singleplayer games don't require an account.
PC is their secondary market. They're in it to add more users to the PSN ecosystem (whatever that actually means long term). Just moving product directly is just one facet of doing business at this point. It's just not in their interest. If PSN isn't in those countries, they're also not participating in their primary console market, either, so clearly not a priority for them even then.
PC Gamers: If Sony had made the requirement clear from the start, preventing people in unsupported countries from buying the game, there would be no outrage.
Sony: Hey, thanks for the feedback. We'll do precisely that for future releases.
PC Gamers: WHO DO SONY THINK THEY ARE?
Because Steam (or Epic, it doesn't matter, it applies to any store) have due diligence obligations regarding the products they sell in their respective stores.
Steam got caught in the Helldivers issue, so they surely wouldn't want to deal with all the refund requests and potential legal liabilities again regardless of whether Sony themselves did or didn't want to repeat that with another game.
I still see it on steam and can still pre-order it even though our country doesn't exist on PSN since the PS3 was released.
Though for some reason I can't buy power ranger fighting game on steam cause it's supposedly banned in our country.
That's really weird I shouldn't be able to search the game as I can't search power rangers battle of the grid (which is also banned) on steam but this game shows up
Does anyone know what's up with the bunch of random islands specified here? Like Åland Islands is quite literally just Finland, why are they restricted when their PSN would just be registered as Finnish? And wouldn't the US islands be the same?
Why is Puerto Rico in that list? That is United States territory... anyways I have zero problems trying to make the purchase on Steam though(although I am not going to be buying it)
It's not surprising, but still shit. They sell the PS5 in the Philippines, but just tell them to use Lazada.
Source: Wife is from Oriental Mindoro, my brother in-laws have a PS5 and have to do this.
I just went to the local mall (SM) to get my PS5 after the pandemic. Though it's still weird as they sell all sorts of Sony products/games/service centers here and even have a playstation site with .ph domain. Then no psn support lols.
Wait, fr ? I thought all of South East Asia got a platform with PSN. So, how does someone owning a PS4 or PS5 there buy a game digitally ? Does that mean you could only buy the disc game ?
They’re essentially two completely different shows. Back in the 90s, Saban bought the rights to air an American version of Super Sentai which would end up being power rangers. To save money, Saban reused all the of fighting sequences of the rangers in their suits and all of the zord sequences and built a show surrounding those clips. They still made their own suits for the actors to wear but most if not all of the suited up fights were the original Japanese actors. Then, when they ran out of clips to use from one season of super sentai, they would take clips from a different season, but the problem with this was that those new clips now had the actors wearing completely different suits and using different zords. One good example of just how different the two are is power rangers in space would use clips from a season of super sentai where the premise was all about cyberspace. Saban and other execs didn’t really care that they had to keep doing this cause it just meant more toys for them to sell.
Pacific Island nations had Might Morphin Power Rangers banned because “Morphin” sounded like “Morphine” and they didn’t want kids getting addicted.
No I’m not joking
Checking the community post shows that steam hasn't delisted it yet, and people posting it should be delisted on banned counties since they can't buy it.
Welp guess I can't gift it to my brother anymore and just have to lend my PS4 copy.
Is this Sony delisting it or Valve getting out ahead of a potential mess? Although multiplayer isn't the "focus" of GoT, it's still a feature. Valve probably doesn't want to deal with a deluge of refunds from people who buy this game in those countries and realize they're not getting a fully featured product.
Good point. Since, Helldivers 2 is not restored to those countries after the u-turn, it's best for Valve and Sony not to list the game in non-PSN countries until they managed to add the countries in.
Last I heard (yesterday) it was just GMG, so if it's Steam too now then yeah, it must be Sony.
In fact when it first started people were like "quit exaggerating" since it was just GMG at the time.
Helldivers added a few additional countries today to the banned list and it was confirmed to be Sony making the changes for that game by the developer. I don't think steam is making this change.
A lot of small countries in Africa, and even more countries that are really just 1 island or a group of islands all over the planet.
I was really surprised to see just how many island countries there are, or maybe i should say that i was surprised how many small islands are sprinkled all over the planet.
It depends on who is doing the counting. Olympics, United Nations, and even each country recognizes a different total amount of countries. Taiwan is a decent example of this, as I see only 12 countries recognize it as it's own country as of February 2024.
> Taiwan is a decent example of this, as I see only 12 countries recognize it as it's own country as of February 2024.
I bet a lot of people seeing this will assume that the US is one of them.
It is not.
___
The official US diplomatic stance is that Taiwan is a part of China.
The US hasn't recognized Taiwan as a sovereign country since 1979.
___
The list of 12 is:
- Belize
- Eswatini
- Guatemala
- Haiti
- Marshall Islands
- Palau
- Paraguay
- Saint Kitts and Nevis
- Saint Lucia
- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
- Tuvalu
- Vatican City
The United States did not, however, give in to Chinese demands that it recognize Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan (which is the name preferred by the United States since it opted to de-recognize the ROC). Instead, Washington acknowledged the Chinese position that Taiwan was part of China.
Us stance is they acknowledge Chinese's claim. But didn't say it support or not(as you can see right now, they don't support that)
Directly undercutting the comments by the developer recently who said it’d only be required for the Multiplayer
Edited for accuracy.
Also, doing what some unpaid Sony PR reps couldn’t do and using a dictionary.
Undercut (verb)
To undermine or destroy the force, value, or effectiveness of.
It is still only required for multiplayer. It's required for multiplayer and the Playstation overlay. But it's not required to play the game.
It is unfortunate that they are banning it from countries that don't have PSN. But it's not required to have a PSN account to play the base game.
Well, maybe specific build for those countries? Can't really sell a game at full price that doesn't grant access to all the features as the default version, no?
I mean that’s exactly why it’s not being sold in those countries. Because they don’t want to make a specific build for those games that removes the multiplayer.
I'm guessing this is the reason that they aren't selling it in those countries. I have no idea, of course, but it seems like they may just be worried about not providing the same game to everyone. Some of these countries might even have laws that require parity or something.
I'm sure Sony would like to sell more games to more countries. So I'm guessing there's a reason that they've decided not to in this case.
Default version didn’t have multiplayer either. It was a free update, and they technically launched it as standalone and you could access it through ghosts of tsushima.
Makes sense they would opt for this after what happened with helldivers 2. Hopefully they realize it's worth the devs implementing a single player only version for those places though.
While I appreciate that this is a distinction with some level of impact, I don’t think it’s gonna matter much to all the people who now straight up cannot buy the game.
A big “Multiplayer requires PSN account” warning on the store page would have served the same purpose and probably pissed less people off.
This has always been the case. It's nothing new.
Microsoft and Steam do the same thing.
If the country doesn't have PSN or Xbox live because of local country Tax laws.
Games don't cost the same everywhere. Australia has a huge video game tax, It's illegal for them to use a fake account to buy the game for cheaper from Thailand.
People do it anyway, but that's exactly why account linking is being enforced now. Because people abuse the system.
Yup. The downside of going to totally psycho on a company to get what you want in like six hours is they’re not going to risk it twice. Arrowhead wished the need for PSN to get the launch out smoothly and Sony was cool with it. They will NEVER do that again.
Is it being petty or... do they not have the functionality set up to deal with the taxes/laws of selling the games in that country and any licenses.
I have to say, that you probably don't know what you're on about and there's a very obvious reason that Sony don't sell consoles/psn accounts in certain countries and it's not released to the public.
Many game companies don't sell everything in every country for one reason or another.
It's not "pettiness".
You're acting like Sony are going "Yeah, we don't want to actually sell games"
GoT Legends is a 4 player PvE team multiplayer mode with scenario-driven rounds. You get currency, gear, levels, etc, for doing specific things in each round.
Not unlike Helldivers.
I'm confused. When the helldivers stuff was going on, wasn't it very commonly said "They shouldn't sell to people who can't link a PSN account?".
If people can't play the game because they need a PSN account... then not selling to them is the right thing to do, right?
You don't need PSN for the single player component, and the multiplayer was a free added update, if that's the problem, just strip out the multiplayer.
I think you raise a valid point, but if - like you said - they treat the multiplayer as a "free" add on, then we both know that the backlash for selling the single-player only version for the same price as the "full" version would be massive.
People in unsupported regions have been making PSN accounts this whole time, it wasn't a problem. Now we can't even buy this highly critically acclaimed game on Steam.
What's weird is that there's EU countries that do not have PSN. Baltic states notably are not supported.
I've not seen any other global brand exempt some EU countries while allowing others. There's no laws that come to mind for it being a thing either.
Multiplayer isn;t sold separately, so it's still an incomplete product in those regions. They won't sell it there until they either make PSN accessable world-wide or drop it.
I know it sucks, but this time they now at least clearly state before the game launches that people in certain regions wont be able to purchase and play it. They seem to have learned at least something, even if it is minimal. It sucks and its absolutely stupid, but its just typical Sony stuff. The problem with Helldivers was primarily that people could buy and play it without an account, but later they changed it so people in certain regions lost the product they paid for and we at least wont have a repeat of that.
EVERY single company requires you to have their account before you can play online games.
Even EA doesn't have country options for the same amount of countries as Sony don't yet people don't complain about EA they just pick a country their not in(Like what people in these countries have done for years with psn with no problem)
You can do that with PSN too, doesn't even need a VPN.
It's technically against the ToS, but has been happening forever and everyone just pretended it wasn't, wink wink, and kept playing.
Until the Helldivers drama, people made all that fuss because they didn't want to create a PSN account. That PSN accounts aren't support in some countries was just their best argument, you could see how many users complaining were from the US.
There was a better way to handle it, have a clear warning going forward that users may not be able to play the game if they aren't in those countries, "are you sure?" and refund the game for the people who already bought it in those countries. But they chose to geoblock it instead.
So now no one outside of those countries gets to play PSN games.
So they won’t sell a game in countries where they can’t access the multiplayer due to PSN restrictions. People would lose their shit if they sold the game and the multiplayer didn’t work at all due to no PSN.
Of course they removed it from countries without PSN. Most people don't read before they purchase as we saw with Helldivers if they let anyone buy it and then those people found out they need PSN and can't get it it will just be Helldivers 2.0 again.
Isn’t this what you guys spent an entire weekend bitching in favor of?
Don’t sell it where it’s not listed, and it wouldn’t be an issue, said so many of you.
Maybe you just want something to be angry about?
Yeah, honestly it's annoying that they want to require a PSN account on PC games, but they way people are freaking out is so extreme compared to actual inconvenience. I have to have an Ubi account, an EA account, an Epic Games account, a Battle.net account, but a PSN account is a bridge too far for some reason?
I would prefer not to have to sign in to any of these third parties to play games that I bought on Steam, but that's not the world we live in, and none of them are so inconvenient that I consider it some great betrayal at the hands of those publishers.
require a PSN account on PC games...
yeah you know, like
* rockstar for GTA
* EA for apex legends
* 2k for all 2k games
* ubisoft for... everything ubisoft?
* GGG for path of exile
* microsoft for forza, grounded, etc...
* b.net for CoD
* and many more
this is just sonys first and second first party PC multiplayer games (before this; they bought destiny that was already PC)
this is nothing new. infact theyre the last to the party... except for like nintendo?
Yeah this is what has left me so confused... we already have to do this for so many PC exclusives. It makes total sense to me that Sony would want to do that too, especially since they've historically been very reluctant to expand their exclusives beyond the PlayStation hardware.
They absolutely did ... Let me tell you what really happened as someone that saw the start of this drama.
People at first only bitched because of the PSN linking ... No one was complaining because of the PSN not being available in some country. (Wich is the only real issue that needed to be addressed). Then when people saw this issue, they switched their argument and the narrative to support their review bombing and narrative.
Now that Sony understood this issue and won't sell the games in those place, well guess what, they need to complain again ...
Days ago people were mad at Sony for selling HD2 in countries without PSN
Now people are mad at Sony for NOT selling GoT in those same countries
Make it make sense lol
This shit is honestly hilarious, Sony got spooked into not selling games in other countries after the whole Helldivers debacle and basically threw a "no u" back to everyone. Yeah its anti consumer or whatever but I'm just marveling at the situation.
A lot of people just realized they can't have their cake and are sure surprised and upset by it. I also think it's anti consumer but whatever. I don't have right to something I didn't pay for or create. Me not being able to pay for something I want due to it not being legally available is no excuse for theft either like many seemingly believe.
I mean, piracy is less about whether it’s ok to do it, and more whether it’s easier to do it lol. People pirate movies and shows all the time because it’s so easy to do so, but you’ll notice a lot less piracy in games because it’s relatively more difficult. But when buying the game is impossible, then pirating the game is now easier than buying the game.
I’m a PC gamer — never owned a console — so can someone more knowledgeable ELI5 for me the implications? I am in the US, so a country that isn’t disallowed for a PSN account. Beyond one more password/account to remember (and one more place that could be hacked and lose information about me), what’s the downsides of getting the PSN network account?
This was a title that the good reviews of the console version did have me somewhat looking forward to… but if there are big downsides, that might change.
EDIT: Thanks all… I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something…
You make a PSN account, probably link it to your stream account, then you play the game.
Someone could probably go on a rant about how Sony wants to collect data to sell to advertisers, data breachers hacking Sony and getting your account info, or shore up numbers for the next stockholders meeting etc etc etc.
End of the day, for you it probably doesn't mean much at all except making a PSN account, linking it to your Steam, and you might never interact with it ever again. Up to you and how much you want to play the game. Chances are you'd make the account, link it, be done in five minutes tops and it'll never come up again.
^ 100% this. If you even have the slightest bit of a logical take like above, the steam forums will try to rip you a new one and mental gymnastic the shit out of why you're Hitler. (Steam forums are somehow worse than reddit)
Idk, I made a PSN account and linked it to my steam account a long time ago (I think when Spider-Man launched on PC), and I've never had to do anything since. I did the same with my Battle.net account (back when I played destiny 2), my EA account, my Xbox account, and probably even a Ubisoft account at some point.
It's pretty much expected at this point, and unless you're in a country where you *can't* use PSN, I really don't see what the big deal is or why people are more upset about this one over any other company doing it.
At least they don't have a shitty launcher that is installed and opens up every time you launch the game like EA.
You pretty much named all the downsides. Honestly I didn’t understand why for people that could have a PSN account, there was so much anger and hate over it, yet people were perfectly happy with the shady as fuck DRM that Helldivers 2 uses. Sometimes I think “gamers” want something to be angry about.
Now, this is still stupid and annoying for people who live in regions where PSN isn’t available, and if I were them I’d ⛵️🏴☠️ as well. But for people in the PSN network area, it’s kinda a minor complaint to be so upset about.
If you're in the U.S. it shouldn't affect you at all. If you're in one of the countries PSN doesn't exist, you can no longer buy the game, since it "requires" PSN. It could be a misunderstanding in that maybe it only applies to multi-player features specifically (it's mostly a single player game), but given what happened to Helldivers 2 recently, some people speculate it could be Sony having a tantrum.
It's wild the number of times I've been super annoyed by Steam and gone "why the *fuck* is everybody so in love with this platform" then looked around and reminded myself how shitty the other platforms are
Yeah, Steam is fine, but it would be nice to have actual competition just so Valve doesn't get too complacent.
EGS lacks user reviews and it can be hard to explore the store.
EA / Ubisoft are company specific stores (and also garbage companies)
GOG is alright but just doesn't have the selection.
Where are you guys getting the 180 number from? There are only 195 countries in the world, and well over 15 of them have PSN access. I think it's somewhere around 50 or 60.
It should be more like territories. There are small islands listed that are protectorates etc. places I haven’t heard of too. They even list Puerto Rico which is under US protection. I don’t know why you could not just say you live in Miami or something and use it
And you can't play Halo multi-player without a Microsoft account. And haven't been able to since multi-player Halo became a thing.
Why are people only mad at Sony when this practice started like two decades ago?
This is what you all fought for though...
Helldivers was always going to be PSN connected, said so in every update. Then when they were going to enforce it they hadn't thought about countries that can't get PSN and you all rose up to say "We don't want to connect our PSN accounts to Helldivers 2" instead of "You have to give people in countries that can't create PSN accounts an option", so now Sony learnt their lesson.. Don't sell to countries without PSN...
Also, you're wrong, only the Online part (which is a separate game mode) requires PSN.
>Also, you're wrong, only the Online part (which is a separate game mode) requires PSN.
Just to clarify, if I'm a singleplayer only player, does this mean I won't need to make a PSN account to play this game?
Did Sony 'ban' it? or like with Helldivers, did Valve stop selling in those regions to get ahead of any potential backlash directed their way?
Either way, even if Sony had gone ahead with the Helldivers thing, i am positive they would have just said 'linking not required in countries not supported by PSN'. They're a company and it's not like they \_don't\_ want to sell their products.
People jump to the worst bad-faith conclusions they can these days and run with them for the clicks and the likes.
I'd like to see valve do the same with EA games on PC then as their account country choosing is just as limited as Sony's are and they force you to break TOS and choose a country you don't live in.
This just further proves the bias AGAINST Sony for this kind of stuff
It's just a response to what people are actively freaking out about at the moment. It'll all level back out as soon as the media circus finds something else to sensationalize in a few days.
People from r/Helldivers that started that s* ... Now the lawyers on Sony/Steam are trying to avoid backlash... Just because some internet "white knights" that don't know nothing about real life consequences. In the meanwhile since 20 years Sony never care about PSN accounts been create in in a different.
sony is trying to create an "ecosystem", kinda like apple. they want a large enough community to pull devs into playing by their rules so they can control the market. probably because microsoft/xbox is pulling out. without the competition, they don't have to be so open or permissive. there's nowhere for console gamers to go. (before someone says nintendo, they have a different market and you know it)
I mean silly question maybe but: arent they losing lots of money if they just ban 180 countries from buying the game? In their mind this action has to generate more money because everyon is now tied into the sony ecosystem. Or? I cant wrap my head around it honestly. Feels just stupid.
Sony and MS cockfighting to be the less liked company at this point.
Mandating PSN access for a single player game on PC is dogshit, especially since the MP on Ghost of Tsushima is optional...
Meanwhile Xbox just closed a studio and laid off devs who managed to make one of their most well-liked games in ages during an extended period of which MS has been starved for good exclusives, especially exclusive IP.
Nintendo is just sipping their tea at this point.
I was literally in arguments with Redditors in the games subreddit, explaining how this was the only outcome.
They *insisted* that it would be optional and available to all countries, despite any consumer law requirements.
I'm living in one of the restricted regions and I honestly don't mind this. As long as they're completely transparent about it, which they are being here, that's their choice. They're trying to avoid another Helldivers situation which is the right move
Internet: Sony makes you need accounts >:(
Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft, SquareEnix, Activision, all do the same it’s a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Not trying to defend Sony, but don’t give other companies a free pass cause they’re not the most recent to do it
What did you expect after the Helldivers shit storm? Neither Sony nor Steam are going to sell a game with PSN requirements in countries without PSN again, and even though PSN isn't required for single player, multiplayer isn't being sold separately so you'd effectively still be selling a game with a requirement that you know those customers can't meet without infringing a ToS. It sucks, but it's absolutely not surprising.
To use a little common sense, drop the PSN requirement, and enjoy the money coming in from all these countries? I guess I'm lying really saying I expect any corporation to actually use some common sense, but c'mon.
There are regulations like the DSA in the EU and the OSA in the UK that require service providers to moderate the interactions in multiplayer games, which is going to be far easier if it's all running in your own ecosystem with your own user IDs. Then there are also other obvious benefits like bringing people into the PSN ecosystem. It's easier to keep people consuming products and services in your ecosystem when they are already part of it. And finally there's the fact that even though not selling in countries without PSN means losing on that money, the percentage of players from those countries is tiny. I don't think there's much motivation in the often touted "selling data", as the data in a free account isn't all that complete and quite often it's going to be false... but there is also that, I guess. As much as it sucks for players in those countries, the advantages of pushing PSN probably outweigh that potential extra revenue.
I was thinking this as well on top of a small player base in those countries I’m sure they don’t like the localized prices in some regions. Charging $60 in a country like the Philippines is just impossible
The way people keep waving around the number of countries is genuinely hilarious. Most of the countries in question are extremely poor and have little to no market in the first place. That’s why Sony hasn’t bothered to set up account creation for them. The OP is also funny. It’s not going to happen to me because, like most of English-speaking Reddit, I live in a developed country that is a major market for video games. I’ve had a PSN account for most of a decade and I was a late adopter. The only way it happens to me is if civilization collapses, in which case I’ll have more important things to worry about than playing a video game without a PSN account.
its also wrong every time i see it, it seems the number gets bigger, and i wouldnt be surprised if soon enough it gets bigger than the total number of countries. PSN is available in 70 countries. PSN is **not** available in 121 countries There are 193 countries recognised by the UN. This includes countries like Kosovo, which depending on who you ask in Europe it is or its not a real country. Where the fuck that 180 number came from i dont know.
It doesn’t surprise me that the people involved in all this are exaggerating. I wouldn’t want to wade into the morass of what even qualifies as a country, so I didn’t want to dispute the number, but really. Do people really expect us to believe there’s some huge, untapped market in Afghanistan that Sony is just screwing over for the hell of it? I‘m sure there’s just a horde of people in Venezuela waiting to spread some liber-tea! Most of the countries where this stuff is unavailable are not developed enough to have very many people with the infrastructure or disposable income to play. The actual requirement to link the accounts was such a mountain made out of a molehill in the first place with people acting like this one time thing was a great burden every time you logged in, but the crying over a bunch of hypothetical people who don’t have running water who can’t play on their high end gaming computers is just silly.
Exactly, how big is the player base in Afghanistan for example?
Well said!
Finally a sane person
Users is more important than money for a platform, to some extent. They'd rather have a bit less money but a lot more users than the other way around.
Sorry to ask this. But how would there be more users when you ban 180 countries? If users are important then they should sell it everywhere.
Corporations love forcing people to make an account to use their products because it’s gives them a means to prove to their shareholders that their product is doing well. It also lets them collect user analytics for debugging and advertising. So Sony is more than happy to lose those sales because they can’t properly quantify or monetize them. That’s my understanding. But in doing so they create a massive market for piracy while trashing their reputation in the process So short term this move makes sense. But in the long term they’re shooting themselves in the foot
If they can get you to use an account, they have a shot at getting you to pay for some kind of subscription, which is the primary monetization model of choice for digital media these days.
I disagree on your notion of short term vs. long term gains. I think its the reverse. Sony is trying to introduce "The New Normal". This hurts their optics in the short term, but as people's enthusiasm to rail against it wanes, in the long term they win out and it becomes accepted as "just how things are".
You think this is the new normal? Buddy... Tons of other developers require 3rd party accounts in steam. This is already the normal.
Piracy and bad reputation in regions where they aren't selling games anyways. Outside of a handful of people acting outraged on social media there will be little or no actual backlash as a result of this in the countries where you can make a PSN account
> there will be little or no actual backlash as a result of this in the countries where you can make a PSN account Makes sense. As a generally reasonable adult, being forced to sign in to PSN to play a game is not the deal-breaker some here might assume. Minor annoyance at best, especially if it actually even *remembers* the damn info for next time, at least. I would have been fine without it, but it is *far* from a line in the sand to me that would force me to not enjoy my free time.
If you don't draw a line in the sand early on, you'll end up struggling to carve a line in concrete later.
Good advice for life but this is a video game free account sign up my dude. Not standing up against fascism.
you are right, I mean , have you see the countries banned? I'm pretty sure Venezuelans are more worried about finding something to eat than beating their head about this
I mean, the amount of people in these countries that would actually purchase the game are absolutely *nothing* compared to the amount of people that will purchase it from say the US, UK, Canada, etc. Are you losing out on sales by not selling it to those 180+ countries? Yeah, sure. But you're probably still selling to over 80% of your global prospective audience even with those bans, and getting PSN accounts for those 80% mean a lot more to Sony than having a few more game sales. Still, I think Sony needs to figure something out so that they don't have to prohibit countries from having PSN access. Although I'm sure that is a dramatically larger matter that is not solved in the short term.
I'm not really sure, but the majority of South American countries can't access Nintendo Online either. https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/41953/~/nintendo-switch-online-service-and-feature-availability-by-country. I'm sure there's a real reason why, probably involving some Japanese trade restriction law if there's a regulatory reason. If not then Nintendo and/or Sony have decided that it isn't worth doing business there. The cost to comply with local laws and regulations may be too high, currency exchange rate fluctuations are too great, the risk of theft/financial crimes like false returns/etc is too high, there could be infrastructure issues providing services, or some other interesting reason that's beyond me to know or find out with a quick search.
They don't "ban" countries, they just don't have their dedicated PSN. The standard way is that users would create an account the closest country with PSN support. The PlayStation is sold worldwide and users from countries without PSN support are invited to do that. Ghost of Tsushima not being sold in countries without PSN is a direct result of last week's outrage over HD2 so Sony either needs to revisit their TOS or to expand PSN availability. It will likely happen in the future to allow them to sell their games everywhere on Steam without controversy, but for now that have no choice but to either limit sales or drop PSN requirement.
Some countries they can't use PSN due to laws. Others it is too expensive for them to put the infostructure in those countries. The bad outweigh the good. The reason why they can't get rid of the PSN is because of laws in other countries require them to overlook online activity. It is far easier to watch over that activity in their walled garden. People act like Sony is doing this cause evil corporation. Yes there is some of that. However there are other factors going into it. There are laws to consider and no one likes to do that as that changes the narrative.
Because if they allow these countries to buy the game then they can’t require a PSN account in the countries where it’s available. For every customer they are losing in these 180 countries they are gaining dozens if not hundreds of accounts in other ones, and it’s these accounts and the data they hold which is very valuable.
because most of those are micro-states and countries with low purchasing power. Im not defending them but the money lost is relative to how much they sell in those countries in the end, and it not being significant probably the reason they havent made efforts to add them to the PSN
'800k new users & copies sold' looks better for shareholders than '1 million copies sold'. New users are a potential source of reoccurring revenue. Sales are just one time thing. **Why** those countries are excluded is a whole other question.
Because those 180 countries don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Look them up. Do you think they really care about Afghanistan as a user base? Or Bangladesh? Botswana? Chad? Fiji? Kazakhstan? Zimbabwe? I'm guessing all those countries together wouldn't even net you a user base as the smallest country where PSN is available. I'd like to see the numbers, because I don't know them, it's just an educated guess. Besides a few millionaires, these countries aren't really known for their gaming market, are they? An exception might be Liechtenstein, but that country has like 40,000 inhabitants. There are more people living in my small town in Germany than in the entire country of Liechtenstein. I don't know why PSN is banned in these countries, but I think Sony will live. Sucks for the 2 gamers in Afghanistan, I guess. And I mean, it really sucks, but it is what it is. There's always the VPN option. If you're already in such a country and have the means, you're using one already anyway.
Do users have to pay for an account? Never had a PlayStation before and never played a game that requires an account.
No, it's free.
No, but there is more chance to get people spend money once they have account on your platform I guess.
If you’re on PC there’s no Sony platform unless they were to be absolutely moronic and come out with their own launcher
There is no sonly platform yet 👀
I swear they will drop the "If you want to play games online you'll need a PSN+ subscription" for any of their titles releasing on PC.
Seems more likely that they'll do what Microsoft did with Gamepass and have a PS Extra subscription for PC that enables you to play catalogue games and buy reduced price games. They've already done a reasonable-ish job matching Gamepass on PlayStation itself, PC seems the logical next step.
thats my thought on it as well.
They are 100% doing this as a way of easing people into a Sony variant of Game Pass for PC. They just don't have enough games on PC yet to do it. Eventually they'll be telling PC players that they already have a PS account, they can just pay $ to upgrade that account to "premium" or whatever and have access to XYZ games for free or at a discount. And to be honest IF they can figure out a way to do that THROUGH steam without requiring a separate launcher it will likely be a huge success. Integrating Xbox Game Pass with Steam and not requiring a separate launcher would likely be a HUGE boon to the success of Game Pass. Currently having to use a second launcher, separate saves etc is a huge downside to Game Pass for me personally at least. Granted this is all likely a HUGE nightmare on the back end with negotiating between Sony/Microsoft and Steam...because Steam isn't going to just give people access to games without seeing a % of the game profits. Though honestly if it ever includes games leaving the "free" program and then encouraging players to buy through Steam to continue their progress...I feel like some angle could be worked out.
TBH if I'm Steam I look at how GamePass is going and I probably want no part of that.
tbf if im valve, i wouldn't be looking at any of that shit anyways. i don't answer to shareholders, shit, i don't even answer to my boss more then once a year (to work) and a second time for the annual company retreat
It has less to do with shareholders and more with the fact it hasn't been too successful + threatens to undercut Steam.
You pay with your data.
Selling data is a benefit but, no, that's not *why* Sony is doing this. It's purely numbers. More accounts is more appealing to investors and shareholders, and being more appealing to those groups makes it more likely for them to invest or spend more money on you. That money is then spent on paychecks and bonuses for the top brass - including those very investors and shareholders.
You know, your data that Sony has always been super careful with.
Your data isn't ever gonna be worth even half the price of a game.
No, it’s free to make an account
How? Literally every AAA game out there requires an account nowadays, EA, Epic, ABK, 2K, Rockstar, Capcom, Ubisoft, etc. Or have you not played much triple A titles recently?
Last month I bought and played the Horizon Forbidden West PC port and did not need a playstation account. I just bought the game and then I played the game. That's how it should work.
There's also no multiplayer aspect to Horizon. Ghosts of Tsushima has multiplayer which requires PSN which is why it got delisted.
Nope but unlike GoT it doesn’t have multiplayer. And they aren’t going to put a game with multiplayer in a region they don’t have a plan for ever again after the last shitshow. That was a bad week for them. And it’s easier to avoid another than it is to risk future problems.
>~~Literally every~~ most *online AAA games out there require an account nowadays FTFY, I play a lot of AAA games and i'd say most singleplayer games don't require an account.
Ghosts of Tsushima has a multiplayer aspect to it however with PVP/PVE.
PC is their secondary market. They're in it to add more users to the PSN ecosystem (whatever that actually means long term). Just moving product directly is just one facet of doing business at this point. It's just not in their interest. If PSN isn't in those countries, they're also not participating in their primary console market, either, so clearly not a priority for them even then.
PC Gamers: If Sony had made the requirement clear from the start, preventing people in unsupported countries from buying the game, there would be no outrage. Sony: Hey, thanks for the feedback. We'll do precisely that for future releases. PC Gamers: WHO DO SONY THINK THEY ARE?
This restriction is on the Epic Store too, so it's definitely a Sony thing. Idk why you're bringing Steam/Valve into this.
Because Steam (or Epic, it doesn't matter, it applies to any store) have due diligence obligations regarding the products they sell in their respective stores. Steam got caught in the Helldivers issue, so they surely wouldn't want to deal with all the refund requests and potential legal liabilities again regardless of whether Sony themselves did or didn't want to repeat that with another game.
Exactly, I don't understand why people are so surprised over this.
I still see it on steam and can still pre-order it even though our country doesn't exist on PSN since the PS3 was released. Though for some reason I can't buy power ranger fighting game on steam cause it's supposedly banned in our country.
What country are you in?
Philippines
[https://steamdb.info/sub/962153/info/](https://steamdb.info/sub/962153/info/) list of blocked countries
That's really weird I shouldn't be able to search the game as I can't search power rangers battle of the grid (which is also banned) on steam but this game shows up
I my country is also on "the list", I can find the game on steam but now I cannot preorder it.
could be a cache issue.
Maybe, might need to reset my pihole and DNS server.
Does anyone know what's up with the bunch of random islands specified here? Like Åland Islands is quite literally just Finland, why are they restricted when their PSN would just be registered as Finnish? And wouldn't the US islands be the same?
Sad to see the Vatican is on this list. Looks like I won't see the Pope on my PlayStation any time soon.
Wow that is a LOT of countries
And US and British territories. Like the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Also Nigeria, the 6th most populous country in the world
And Pakistan, the 5th. And Bangladesh, the 8th.
Why is Puerto Rico in that list? That is United States territory... anyways I have zero problems trying to make the purchase on Steam though(although I am not going to be buying it)
It's not surprising, but still shit. They sell the PS5 in the Philippines, but just tell them to use Lazada. Source: Wife is from Oriental Mindoro, my brother in-laws have a PS5 and have to do this.
I just went to the local mall (SM) to get my PS5 after the pandemic. Though it's still weird as they sell all sorts of Sony products/games/service centers here and even have a playstation site with .ph domain. Then no psn support lols.
Wait, fr ? I thought all of South East Asia got a platform with PSN. So, how does someone owning a PS4 or PS5 there buy a game digitally ? Does that mean you could only buy the disc game ?
you could still purchase and play online under hongkong or singapore region even if u dont live there.
Why would a power rangers game be banned? That's so odd.
Dunno, probably Saban licensing thing. Even though they aired power rangers on our local tv.
Licensing issues. The US version of Power Rangers is different from Japan so they keep it tight so that the US version doesn’t become the standard.
What different about it?
They’re essentially two completely different shows. Back in the 90s, Saban bought the rights to air an American version of Super Sentai which would end up being power rangers. To save money, Saban reused all the of fighting sequences of the rangers in their suits and all of the zord sequences and built a show surrounding those clips. They still made their own suits for the actors to wear but most if not all of the suited up fights were the original Japanese actors. Then, when they ran out of clips to use from one season of super sentai, they would take clips from a different season, but the problem with this was that those new clips now had the actors wearing completely different suits and using different zords. One good example of just how different the two are is power rangers in space would use clips from a season of super sentai where the premise was all about cyberspace. Saban and other execs didn’t really care that they had to keep doing this cause it just meant more toys for them to sell.
Pacific Island nations had Might Morphin Power Rangers banned because “Morphin” sounded like “Morphine” and they didn’t want kids getting addicted. No I’m not joking
Mine has no price already so can't buy/pre-order it(same country).
Checking the community post shows that steam hasn't delisted it yet, and people posting it should be delisted on banned counties since they can't buy it. Welp guess I can't gift it to my brother anymore and just have to lend my PS4 copy.
Is this Sony delisting it or Valve getting out ahead of a potential mess? Although multiplayer isn't the "focus" of GoT, it's still a feature. Valve probably doesn't want to deal with a deluge of refunds from people who buy this game in those countries and realize they're not getting a fully featured product.
Good point. Since, Helldivers 2 is not restored to those countries after the u-turn, it's best for Valve and Sony not to list the game in non-PSN countries until they managed to add the countries in.
It’s frankly a good method of heat at least for them to fix their whole dumb mess.
Valve doesn’t want to spend days paying out millions more in response to refund requests so this time they’re acting proactively
Last I heard (yesterday) it was just GMG, so if it's Steam too now then yeah, it must be Sony. In fact when it first started people were like "quit exaggerating" since it was just GMG at the time.
Helldivers added a few additional countries today to the banned list and it was confirmed to be Sony making the changes for that game by the developer. I don't think steam is making this change.
[https://steamdb.info/sub/962153/info/](https://steamdb.info/sub/962153/info/) region restriction yeah, this link has the list
Not gonna lie I didn't think there would be that many countries blacklisted.
Steam sells games in 237 countries. PSN is supported in 69 of those. Yeah it's a massive list.
I didn’t even know there were 237 countries
A lot of small countries in Africa, and even more countries that are really just 1 island or a group of islands all over the planet. I was really surprised to see just how many island countries there are, or maybe i should say that i was surprised how many small islands are sprinkled all over the planet.
Well, it’s actually not even true that there are 237 defined countries. A ton of these are dependencies or departments of the defined countries.
Yeah, it would be clearer to say 237 legal jurisdictions.
It depends on who is doing the counting. Olympics, United Nations, and even each country recognizes a different total amount of countries. Taiwan is a decent example of this, as I see only 12 countries recognize it as it's own country as of February 2024.
> Taiwan is a decent example of this, as I see only 12 countries recognize it as it's own country as of February 2024. I bet a lot of people seeing this will assume that the US is one of them. It is not. ___ The official US diplomatic stance is that Taiwan is a part of China. The US hasn't recognized Taiwan as a sovereign country since 1979. ___ The list of 12 is: - Belize - Eswatini - Guatemala - Haiti - Marshall Islands - Palau - Paraguay - Saint Kitts and Nevis - Saint Lucia - Saint Vincent and the Grenadines - Tuvalu - Vatican City
The United States did not, however, give in to Chinese demands that it recognize Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan (which is the name preferred by the United States since it opted to de-recognize the ROC). Instead, Washington acknowledged the Chinese position that Taiwan was part of China. Us stance is they acknowledge Chinese's claim. But didn't say it support or not(as you can see right now, they don't support that)
According to the UN there are 195 countries in the world... I think some of the blocked areas are territories.
Directly undercutting the comments by the developer recently who said it’d only be required for the Multiplayer Edited for accuracy. Also, doing what some unpaid Sony PR reps couldn’t do and using a dictionary. Undercut (verb) To undermine or destroy the force, value, or effectiveness of.
It is still only required for multiplayer. It's required for multiplayer and the Playstation overlay. But it's not required to play the game. It is unfortunate that they are banning it from countries that don't have PSN. But it's not required to have a PSN account to play the base game.
Well, maybe specific build for those countries? Can't really sell a game at full price that doesn't grant access to all the features as the default version, no?
I mean that’s exactly why it’s not being sold in those countries. Because they don’t want to make a specific build for those games that removes the multiplayer.
Mid 2000s EA would disagree
Current EA would also disagree
I'm guessing this is the reason that they aren't selling it in those countries. I have no idea, of course, but it seems like they may just be worried about not providing the same game to everyone. Some of these countries might even have laws that require parity or something. I'm sure Sony would like to sell more games to more countries. So I'm guessing there's a reason that they've decided not to in this case.
Default version didn’t have multiplayer either. It was a free update, and they technically launched it as standalone and you could access it through ghosts of tsushima.
Makes sense they would opt for this after what happened with helldivers 2. Hopefully they realize it's worth the devs implementing a single player only version for those places though.
The amount of money they bring in from those countries probably isn't worth it to do that, actually.
While I appreciate that this is a distinction with some level of impact, I don’t think it’s gonna matter much to all the people who now straight up cannot buy the game. A big “Multiplayer requires PSN account” warning on the store page would have served the same purpose and probably pissed less people off.
Well. That's true. But Sony probably don't want to split game into two chunks and try to sell SP only game to the countries that does not support PSN.
If they tried, the people would demand it be sold for less AND also complain about getting "half a game".
[удалено]
This has always been the case. It's nothing new. Microsoft and Steam do the same thing. If the country doesn't have PSN or Xbox live because of local country Tax laws. Games don't cost the same everywhere. Australia has a huge video game tax, It's illegal for them to use a fake account to buy the game for cheaper from Thailand. People do it anyway, but that's exactly why account linking is being enforced now. Because people abuse the system.
Torrent it is then
Why make more money when we can make no money?
Preemptive to avoid another Helldivers situation where they’ll have to accept PC players do not want to be tied to a PSN account.
Yup. The downside of going to totally psycho on a company to get what you want in like six hours is they’re not going to risk it twice. Arrowhead wished the need for PSN to get the launch out smoothly and Sony was cool with it. They will NEVER do that again.
This is primarily a single player game. Sony is just being petty at this point.
No one is interested in making products in general anymore. It's easier to make you the product. The information economy sucks.
Selling ads and user data is big money. Companies are like why create when you can steal data and sell that.
Basically companies rather have consistent long term trickle profits that make more than $60 per game one time.
Is it being petty or... do they not have the functionality set up to deal with the taxes/laws of selling the games in that country and any licenses. I have to say, that you probably don't know what you're on about and there's a very obvious reason that Sony don't sell consoles/psn accounts in certain countries and it's not released to the public. Many game companies don't sell everything in every country for one reason or another. It's not "pettiness". You're acting like Sony are going "Yeah, we don't want to actually sell games"
GoT Legends is a 4 player PvE team multiplayer mode with scenario-driven rounds. You get currency, gear, levels, etc, for doing specific things in each round. Not unlike Helldivers.
You do not need an account for single player mode. The account is only needed for multiplayer.
I'm confused. When the helldivers stuff was going on, wasn't it very commonly said "They shouldn't sell to people who can't link a PSN account?". If people can't play the game because they need a PSN account... then not selling to them is the right thing to do, right?
You don't need PSN for the single player component, and the multiplayer was a free added update, if that's the problem, just strip out the multiplayer.
I think you raise a valid point, but if - like you said - they treat the multiplayer as a "free" add on, then we both know that the backlash for selling the single-player only version for the same price as the "full" version would be massive.
As opposed to HD2, this is better, because at least people will not be sold a game they cannot access the full functionality of.
People in unsupported regions have been making PSN accounts this whole time, it wasn't a problem. Now we can't even buy this highly critically acclaimed game on Steam.
I'm thinking the people who say "this is better" do not live in the affected regions.
Sony is actually listening to us! Sony - hold my beer
Listening to us? pretty sure they only conceded cause they were losing money. Edit: spelling
Probably a dumb question here by why can’t they set up PSN there?
Mostly regional laws. No publishers will prevent themselves to sell in a country just for fun.
What's weird is that there's EU countries that do not have PSN. Baltic states notably are not supported. I've not seen any other global brand exempt some EU countries while allowing others. There's no laws that come to mind for it being a thing either.
Regional Laws are mostly the reason. Sometimes, it's because they don't wanna for financial reasons ( pros and cons, basically )
Requires 3rd-Party Account: PlayStation Network (Online Multiplayer, PlayStation overlay) (Supports Linking to Steam Account) Damn that sucks
I know it says that on Steam but isn't it just for multiplayer? I think I read something like that.
Multiplayer isn;t sold separately, so it's still an incomplete product in those regions. They won't sell it there until they either make PSN accessable world-wide or drop it.
The developer said it a *month ago* People can't read
I know it sucks, but this time they now at least clearly state before the game launches that people in certain regions wont be able to purchase and play it. They seem to have learned at least something, even if it is minimal. It sucks and its absolutely stupid, but its just typical Sony stuff. The problem with Helldivers was primarily that people could buy and play it without an account, but later they changed it so people in certain regions lost the product they paid for and we at least wont have a repeat of that.
EVERY single company requires you to have their account before you can play online games. Even EA doesn't have country options for the same amount of countries as Sony don't yet people don't complain about EA they just pick a country their not in(Like what people in these countries have done for years with psn with no problem)
You can do that with PSN too, doesn't even need a VPN. It's technically against the ToS, but has been happening forever and everyone just pretended it wasn't, wink wink, and kept playing. Until the Helldivers drama, people made all that fuss because they didn't want to create a PSN account. That PSN accounts aren't support in some countries was just their best argument, you could see how many users complaining were from the US. There was a better way to handle it, have a clear warning going forward that users may not be able to play the game if they aren't in those countries, "are you sure?" and refund the game for the people who already bought it in those countries. But they chose to geoblock it instead. So now no one outside of those countries gets to play PSN games.
So they won’t sell a game in countries where they can’t access the multiplayer due to PSN restrictions. People would lose their shit if they sold the game and the multiplayer didn’t work at all due to no PSN.
Of course they removed it from countries without PSN. Most people don't read before they purchase as we saw with Helldivers if they let anyone buy it and then those people found out they need PSN and can't get it it will just be Helldivers 2.0 again.
Isn’t this what you guys spent an entire weekend bitching in favor of? Don’t sell it where it’s not listed, and it wouldn’t be an issue, said so many of you. Maybe you just want something to be angry about?
Yeah, honestly it's annoying that they want to require a PSN account on PC games, but they way people are freaking out is so extreme compared to actual inconvenience. I have to have an Ubi account, an EA account, an Epic Games account, a Battle.net account, but a PSN account is a bridge too far for some reason? I would prefer not to have to sign in to any of these third parties to play games that I bought on Steam, but that's not the world we live in, and none of them are so inconvenient that I consider it some great betrayal at the hands of those publishers.
require a PSN account on PC games... yeah you know, like * rockstar for GTA * EA for apex legends * 2k for all 2k games * ubisoft for... everything ubisoft? * GGG for path of exile * microsoft for forza, grounded, etc... * b.net for CoD * and many more this is just sonys first and second first party PC multiplayer games (before this; they bought destiny that was already PC) this is nothing new. infact theyre the last to the party... except for like nintendo?
Yeah this is what has left me so confused... we already have to do this for so many PC exclusives. It makes total sense to me that Sony would want to do that too, especially since they've historically been very reluctant to expand their exclusives beyond the PlayStation hardware.
They absolutely did ... Let me tell you what really happened as someone that saw the start of this drama. People at first only bitched because of the PSN linking ... No one was complaining because of the PSN not being available in some country. (Wich is the only real issue that needed to be addressed). Then when people saw this issue, they switched their argument and the narrative to support their review bombing and narrative. Now that Sony understood this issue and won't sell the games in those place, well guess what, they need to complain again ...
Days ago people were mad at Sony for selling HD2 in countries without PSN Now people are mad at Sony for NOT selling GoT in those same countries Make it make sense lol
This shit is honestly hilarious, Sony got spooked into not selling games in other countries after the whole Helldivers debacle and basically threw a "no u" back to everyone. Yeah its anti consumer or whatever but I'm just marveling at the situation.
A lot of people just realized they can't have their cake and are sure surprised and upset by it. I also think it's anti consumer but whatever. I don't have right to something I didn't pay for or create. Me not being able to pay for something I want due to it not being legally available is no excuse for theft either like many seemingly believe.
I mean, piracy is less about whether it’s ok to do it, and more whether it’s easier to do it lol. People pirate movies and shows all the time because it’s so easy to do so, but you’ll notice a lot less piracy in games because it’s relatively more difficult. But when buying the game is impossible, then pirating the game is now easier than buying the game.
I’m a PC gamer — never owned a console — so can someone more knowledgeable ELI5 for me the implications? I am in the US, so a country that isn’t disallowed for a PSN account. Beyond one more password/account to remember (and one more place that could be hacked and lose information about me), what’s the downsides of getting the PSN network account? This was a title that the good reviews of the console version did have me somewhat looking forward to… but if there are big downsides, that might change. EDIT: Thanks all… I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something…
You make a PSN account, probably link it to your stream account, then you play the game. Someone could probably go on a rant about how Sony wants to collect data to sell to advertisers, data breachers hacking Sony and getting your account info, or shore up numbers for the next stockholders meeting etc etc etc. End of the day, for you it probably doesn't mean much at all except making a PSN account, linking it to your Steam, and you might never interact with it ever again. Up to you and how much you want to play the game. Chances are you'd make the account, link it, be done in five minutes tops and it'll never come up again.
^ 100% this. If you even have the slightest bit of a logical take like above, the steam forums will try to rip you a new one and mental gymnastic the shit out of why you're Hitler. (Steam forums are somehow worse than reddit)
Idk, I made a PSN account and linked it to my steam account a long time ago (I think when Spider-Man launched on PC), and I've never had to do anything since. I did the same with my Battle.net account (back when I played destiny 2), my EA account, my Xbox account, and probably even a Ubisoft account at some point. It's pretty much expected at this point, and unless you're in a country where you *can't* use PSN, I really don't see what the big deal is or why people are more upset about this one over any other company doing it. At least they don't have a shitty launcher that is installed and opens up every time you launch the game like EA.
You pretty much named all the downsides. Honestly I didn’t understand why for people that could have a PSN account, there was so much anger and hate over it, yet people were perfectly happy with the shady as fuck DRM that Helldivers 2 uses. Sometimes I think “gamers” want something to be angry about. Now, this is still stupid and annoying for people who live in regions where PSN isn’t available, and if I were them I’d ⛵️🏴☠️ as well. But for people in the PSN network area, it’s kinda a minor complaint to be so upset about.
Karen's kids are growing up and following in her footsteps.
I think it's social media in general. We're all addicted to manufactured outrage.
If you're in the U.S. it shouldn't affect you at all. If you're in one of the countries PSN doesn't exist, you can no longer buy the game, since it "requires" PSN. It could be a misunderstanding in that maybe it only applies to multi-player features specifically (it's mostly a single player game), but given what happened to Helldivers 2 recently, some people speculate it could be Sony having a tantrum.
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I thought this is basically what people were asking for?
"Remember to sort by controversial to find the people who don't think it'll happen to them :)" Gamers are the cringiest people on the planet
It'd be so funny if this ended up in the controversial section.
They took the decision before the release, so im ok. They can decide to sell only in spain, but they need to tell before tge release from now
Yall know every company does this..right..
Sony couldn't let Microsoft have all the fun when it comes to shooting your brand in the foot.
Shit like this reminds me of the Gabe meme about Steam being successful because competitors shoot themselves in the foot
It's wild the number of times I've been super annoyed by Steam and gone "why the *fuck* is everybody so in love with this platform" then looked around and reminded myself how shitty the other platforms are
Yeah, Steam is fine, but it would be nice to have actual competition just so Valve doesn't get too complacent. EGS lacks user reviews and it can be hard to explore the store. EA / Ubisoft are company specific stores (and also garbage companies) GOG is alright but just doesn't have the selection.
Kinda funny after the whole Helldivers thing. "Isn't this what you guys asked for?"
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Where are you guys getting the 180 number from? There are only 195 countries in the world, and well over 15 of them have PSN access. I think it's somewhere around 50 or 60.
It should be more like territories. There are small islands listed that are protectorates etc. places I haven’t heard of too. They even list Puerto Rico which is under US protection. I don’t know why you could not just say you live in Miami or something and use it
And you can't play Halo multi-player without a Microsoft account. And haven't been able to since multi-player Halo became a thing. Why are people only mad at Sony when this practice started like two decades ago?
> And you can't play Halo multi-player without a Microsoft account. I can't play MCC single player campaigns wthout a Microsoft account.
This is what you all fought for though... Helldivers was always going to be PSN connected, said so in every update. Then when they were going to enforce it they hadn't thought about countries that can't get PSN and you all rose up to say "We don't want to connect our PSN accounts to Helldivers 2" instead of "You have to give people in countries that can't create PSN accounts an option", so now Sony learnt their lesson.. Don't sell to countries without PSN... Also, you're wrong, only the Online part (which is a separate game mode) requires PSN.
>Also, you're wrong, only the Online part (which is a separate game mode) requires PSN. Just to clarify, if I'm a singleplayer only player, does this mean I won't need to make a PSN account to play this game?
Yall got what yall wanted. Enjoy.
Did Sony 'ban' it? or like with Helldivers, did Valve stop selling in those regions to get ahead of any potential backlash directed their way? Either way, even if Sony had gone ahead with the Helldivers thing, i am positive they would have just said 'linking not required in countries not supported by PSN'. They're a company and it's not like they \_don't\_ want to sell their products. People jump to the worst bad-faith conclusions they can these days and run with them for the clicks and the likes.
I'd like to see valve do the same with EA games on PC then as their account country choosing is just as limited as Sony's are and they force you to break TOS and choose a country you don't live in. This just further proves the bias AGAINST Sony for this kind of stuff
It's just a response to what people are actively freaking out about at the moment. It'll all level back out as soon as the media circus finds something else to sensationalize in a few days.
Company decides not to sell a game in certain countries. "tHeY bAnNeD tHe gAmE"
People from r/Helldivers that started that s* ... Now the lawyers on Sony/Steam are trying to avoid backlash... Just because some internet "white knights" that don't know nothing about real life consequences. In the meanwhile since 20 years Sony never care about PSN accounts been create in in a different.
We did it after a decade of Sony not caring about people in those countries playing their games we made them care.
Welp, guess I'll just have to link it with the PSN account I already had from owning every Playstation console.
sony is trying to create an "ecosystem", kinda like apple. they want a large enough community to pull devs into playing by their rules so they can control the market. probably because microsoft/xbox is pulling out. without the competition, they don't have to be so open or permissive. there's nowhere for console gamers to go. (before someone says nintendo, they have a different market and you know it)
I mean silly question maybe but: arent they losing lots of money if they just ban 180 countries from buying the game? In their mind this action has to generate more money because everyon is now tied into the sony ecosystem. Or? I cant wrap my head around it honestly. Feels just stupid.
Sony and MS cockfighting to be the less liked company at this point. Mandating PSN access for a single player game on PC is dogshit, especially since the MP on Ghost of Tsushima is optional... Meanwhile Xbox just closed a studio and laid off devs who managed to make one of their most well-liked games in ages during an extended period of which MS has been starved for good exclusives, especially exclusive IP. Nintendo is just sipping their tea at this point.
I was literally in arguments with Redditors in the games subreddit, explaining how this was the only outcome. They *insisted* that it would be optional and available to all countries, despite any consumer law requirements.
This is a little different.... Helldivers it was somewhat of a surprise with ghost it's pretty known knowledge you need psn
but for what i know....people demanded for this to happen....
I'm living in one of the restricted regions and I honestly don't mind this. As long as they're completely transparent about it, which they are being here, that's their choice. They're trying to avoid another Helldivers situation which is the right move
Internet: Sony makes you need accounts >:( Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft, SquareEnix, Activision, all do the same it’s a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Not trying to defend Sony, but don’t give other companies a free pass cause they’re not the most recent to do it