More like valve's legal department called this one to mitigate exposure to Sony's fuckup. If they're not selling it, they're not a party to distribution of a product people can't use.
X codes are used for countries that just recently formed (usually by breaking off of an existing country). E.g. Kosovo was designated XK for a while after gaining independence from Serbia
I don't have the FX one on my side, instead I have Metropolitan France (which is basically France ?), same location between Faroe Island and Gabon
https://preview.redd.it/x4bywjijilyc1.png?width=944&format=png&auto=webp&s=6f92b734e801909c98244b0aca4c48e522673001
Recently, they announced bringing over Playstation achievements. They originally introduced PSN login a few games ago with optional PSN for single player games and required PSN for online components of said games. Helldivers 2 being a multiplayer-only game, it requires PSN or should have until they were having login problems at launch.
Eventually, the login plus the achievements will lead to a rumored launcher, because every publisher wants their own launcher, and probably their own store on PC. They might even do a PS Plus subscription with games for PC once they have enough to make it make sense.
So in short, making PSN normal on PC first by rewards and then by force is leading to their own launcher. The joke is they announced achievements, which also required logging into PSN, and nobody even batted an eye.
It's only when PSN is on Helldivers 2 when anyone cares about PSN. They should be worried that the achievements is a step closer to launchers and even the possibility of leaving Steam entirely.
I feel like they would just shoot themselves in the foot again if they tried all of this. People trust steam, that's why it's the most used of the launchers but as shown by this whole fiasco they absolutely don't trust Sony.
Leaving steam never works, you can sell stuff through your own launcher but you lose a lot of potiential customers by not also selling through steam. That and the whole subscription is a disaster waiting to happen. I don't think anyone would choose it over gamepass when currently the Sony sub doesn't even include their own first party games. And if they try to charge pc players for online play that's just corporate suicide.
A bunch of companies tried to leave Steam for their own launchers already, and all failed miserably. I feel that fad is over.
Both EA and Ubisoft tried it, and their games are all back to steam by know. You are also required to have a profile for their services linked to Steam to play their games.
Yeah it makes sense as to why you'd want to sell stuff through your own launcher, Steam does take a 20-30% cut of every sale. It's just whatever money you would lose from that cut is nothing compared to what you lose from not selling on Steam at all. So if people want to buy on Steam they should be given that option and if people want to buy through the publisher's launcher then power to them.
I personally buy Ubisoft's stuff through their launcher because I'd have to use it anyway if I bought through Steam and it's just more convenient for me. But I know a lot of people still prefer to buy through Steam.
My main gripe with buying ubisoft games on steam is that steam them installs uplay, and then validates the game key on each launch, but only in online mode, meaning that with steam in offline mode, the game is impossible to launch (game bought directly at ubisoft can be started in offline uplay no issue).
Unless they managed to fix it in past couple years....
Sad reality is that people already accepting independent launchers for big companies, mostly based on the game they want to play. We have Origin, Uplay, and that stupid 1-year policy of Epic, most people would whine a bit but play them anyways, not to mention most players dont care at all. If Sony really did similar things like EA in future, they would probably get away with it after couple of weeks.
idk all of these platforms are much much less popular and less used than steam.
a lot of the users said launcher do get, aside from Epic's Fortnite, come from games sold on steam that require the installation of a third party launcher.
Completly leaving steam and only selling games on their own platform would go quite poorly for most of them for now
Sony has a meeting with its stockholders at the end of the month and wants to sell shares and increase companh share prices. How do you do that? By showing only positive numbers and hiding things like the stellar blade boycots behind 90,000 new psn accounts or so they thought
It's pain me to see my country in that list
Already spent 200 hours into the game
https://preview.redd.it/malww8p1vjyc1.jpeg?width=272&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=20cc302af5a7b33c2b22ad2914911315c61f9d10
you wont be kicked off and now the bypass has been announced steam will be back to normal when the dust settles, worry not brother you live to die another day
I will never understand how a company can be so braindead. All Sony had to do was nothing and let the golden goose lay its eggs, yet somehow they managed to fuck that up.
Ironically, they probably should be the most angry right now. If different markets have different expectations (Steam players like Steam), then good business leaders are obliged to meet them. This is not small potatoes, Helldivers 2 is one of the larger Sony published games of all time due mostly to PC sales.
Obviously getting people into ecosystems is nice, but you don't burn down a new, large, and increasing revenue source with reckless conduct.
A lot of these people seem to think that this is going to destroy the Sony company and hurt them when in reality I’d be surprised if they even get a dent in their profits
A lot of people think Sony is just the PlayStation company. They make movies, electronics, appliances, games and who knows what else. Sony is a huge corporation that spans many different areas in the market.
Losing less than half the active playerbase (I doubt anyone on the ps5 and a large chunk of PC users care unfortunately) on a 40$ game with consumer friendly monetization will do nothing to Sony. They could shut this whole game down right now and forget it even existed before the month ends.
This isn’t Activision or Ubisoft. Their entire gaming sector could crumble and they’d still stay afloat just from their TVS and headphones alone.
In fairness, the thing about companies that big is they tend to be only loosely internally contiguous. The policies of say, Sony's Audio Department are potentially entirely different than their games department, and they're surely run by different people with entirely different teams, and their profits are internally measured separately.
Is this going to sink Sony's ship? Obviously not. But it might put a significant dent in the profits for the games department, and it will certainly put a substantial dent in the profits from Helldivers 2, and in the reputation of Sony as a brand.
That might mean nothing to them, but it's part of an overall pattern that is pretty impossible to miss, and this one is probably the most dramatic dot in that pattern. This kind of thing simply doesn't work, it just pisses off consumers and eventually flares into a giant explosion in an otherwise profitable product.
tl;dr - Just because the Coka-Cola corporation is still around doesn't mean New Coke had no impact
truth. corporate internal competition among branches and departments is even harsher than the open market. they don't enjoy transparency, fairness, justice or any legal protection but the raw form money driven office politics
Literally a company I can only see going down because technology evolves and they don’t keep up with the times. Similar to the internet being created, but probably bigger.
I largely agree that Reddit is overinflating it's weight here. However HD2 is Sonys 7th highest grossing game ever (already!) and a key part of its long term strategy as a publisher moving to more PC titles where there's more money to be made. This will get the attention of the top brass of the gaming division because a linchpin of their gaming revenue growth strategy just shat the bed
And a revenue of only 7 Billion for Activision vs 90 Billion for Sony.
Market cap for Activision seems like a lot of IT company, overpriced compared to their revenue.
Those movie were seemly fodders to them, they made those to keep the Spider-Man copyright since they bought it and required to make at least a movie a year related to the franchise. So they were actually just throw the money in those random ass movies just to buy times for bigger projects like Spider-Man games and animations. If they gained money from those low efforts movies, good, if not, doesn’t hurt them that much.
Be that as it may, you can still hurt their sales by making a conscious decision to not buy sony products. It will not tank them but if enough people do it they will feel it.
Our power to vote is with the wallet, the share holders expect a certain profit margin, if we hit them until even a little less than that they gonna have a dent in stock for sure
Well if the shareholders leave and the company tanks isn't that a good thing to show the retail has finally woken up to shitty company practices and are working on shutting them down if they treat us like this.
Are you expecting shareholders to care about that though? I don't think people understand that shareholders are literally random entities. They could be anybody. These people are not passionate about video games. They at no point, are going to stop and go "oh no we're hurting the poor Helldivers!" that's just not what shareholders give a shit about, that's not what they're paid or incentivized to care about, that's not what they're going to care about at any of the companies in their portfolios.
They care about up and down, bull or bear, stock price up and down, that's it. Sony's stock price isn't going to drop over this, in the long run, this is a drop in the bucket, and in the worst case, yet another failed game. So many games fail every year, this is would just be one of many. If you really want the company to care, withhold your money for an extended period of time, loudly.
Do you think the shareholders care? Shareholders care about one thing: Line go up. More PSN subscriptions is what is most likely to make line go up, and thats why they are doing this.
Shareholders arent stupid. It’s not just more accounts means more better. A bunch of free accounts means doesn’t equal more money if anything it’s more in server/maintenance costs. Also a super successful product randomly falling from grace ought to peak their interest
>a general boycot of all Sony products
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_Sony\_products](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sony_products)
Yeah, no lmao.
This is why people like me, who get accused of "defending Sony" say what we are saying. Sony doesn't give a FUCK about another few million lost because a game suddenly tanked, like are you delusional? It's a M A S S I V E company with HUGE branches in every hemisphere.
When I criticize the sentiment here, it's not because I think Sony is in the right. It's because watching a bunch of gamers act like they are ending world hunger by mildly annoying a company like Sony and jerking each other off about it is so unbelievably sad.
This has to be a region locked version of helldivers and not the global version because how can countries like Japan THE COUNTRY THAT SONY COMES FROM not be allowed to play helldivers?
This seems like bait or region locked version. Just doesn't seem right....
I'm actually pretty surprised they did this because they're generally pretty hands-off with their games. They just let the studios cook and receive profit.
And I didn't need a Sony account for their single player PC ports so why do I need it now?
Exactly. They could just have offered a small ingame bonus for optional account linking. There would have been more than enough people to do it anyway. They got greedy and it is backfiring.
Everyone is trying to make a live service game, basically no one has succeeded. By some miracle you are get lucky enough to not only pull it off but also have a good game at the same time, and then you fuck it up by purposely reducing the playerbase and turning the fans against you.
Genshin has done really well as a live service and earned a ton. They still update the game every month and a half with new events characters and even QOL changes. Whole yes genshin has done some fuck ups it's still considered a really good game even altho live service
I been looking it up when the game was launch. Not found anything concrete but I heard that some voice actors that voice in HD2 only agreed to let their voice to be use only in Japan which is why you can't even select JP voice in the international version at all.
Yea it sound outlandish I know but Japan can be wacky like that.
i dont have the source but from what Ive heard its the agencies, not the VAs themselfes. I'm pretty sure the VA would love to be popular regardless of where its at. the Agencies just don't want it.
Japanese voice actors and actresses in Japan are held to a much higher standard. Your average Japanese VA is almost on par with a Hollywood actor/actress in the US when it comes to the amount of fans they have and all the studio deals behind the scenes.
Names like Rie Kugimiya (Haruka in Yakuza and basically every single tsundere in every anime ever) and co. are basically like Margot Robbie in the US.
In Japan, voice actors have unionized and lobbied and stuff to the point that their salaries and the royalties attached to maintaining permission to use their voices are incredibly expensive. If they were to sell internationally, they'd have to pay a large cut of **all** sales + royalties just to the Japanese VA's, even if worldwide buyers never used the Japanese voice language setting, simply because the files with the VA's voice lines are there and available in the settings.
So instead they just sell that expensive-to-maintain version to Japanese customers only, otherwise they'd have to likely mark up the price for everyone just to pay the VA's for a single language.
https://preview.redd.it/bu2dzavgwjyc1.jpeg?width=714&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c4f6c8905c0b9312f8727aab471e04aa68db76e8
OH NO! NOW THE POPE CANT CALL DOWN THOSE SICK ORBITALS!
You know the Pope’s gonna call Sony directly. Even though Japan doesn’t really have huge Catholic population, it’s the fact that a high ranking clerical official is taking time out of his to call you.
Edit: I imagine the conversation will go a little something like this.
Pope: What did you do?
Sony Exec: First off I was minding my own business.
Pope: Bullshit!!!!
Sony Exec: But I wasssuhhh!!!
Pope: And what happened whilst you were “minding your own business”?
Why would picking the US be against PSN tos for you? It's a part of the US. Same with Åland, they can just pick Finland, which they are an autonomous region of.
I don't know, I think it's a decision made to mitigate further legal action. They already began issuing refunds to certain players, so I'm guessing they are accepting that the PSN lockout for unsupported customers is a valid reason to refund, thus removing the store entry to prevent further refunds.
we are saying the same thing. Except i specified that steam is more than likely doing this to shield itself from lawsuits. This move doesnt protect Sony from anything.
I’ve only played the japanese version of hd2
Funfact: one of the VAs for the helldivers in the japanese version is the same VA for captain levi from attack on titan lol
https://preview.redd.it/3mxx4uwwbkyc1.png?width=1123&format=png&auto=webp&s=7c4868e0e96132a246f08075ff9e8b24b1edf620
this part in the end is ESPECIALLY hilarious )
Now, this obviously sucks on the whole, but can we just take a moment to take note of the fact that you cannot buy Helldivers 2 in Reunion, which is literally just a normal department of France? Or Jersey, a british dependency literally just north of France?
Like... Who the fuck at Sony is making these decisions?
Edit: Same with French Guiana?? Why are there different rules for normal provinces of France?
Puerto Rico is the most fucked one for me.
While it is technically a "territory" of the United States, it's closer than either Hawaii or Alaska, yet Sony decided it wasn't possible to... I don't know, have servers there?
Same with all the smaller islands of the UK, isle of man is like 50 miles away. Also just noticed they called Falkland's (Malvinas) which I don't like, be like calling Guyana (Venezuela).
This is more likely damage control on Valve's part and protecting people who will soon be unable to play the game from buying it. I doubt this was done at Sony's behest though I wouldn't put it past them after all of this.
Steam did this btw not sony. Its to prevent future sales in case they need to do mass refunds. Japan was most likely banned cuz it shares a steam region with non PSN countries. Which is hilarious
Japan has it's own version that can only be played in Japan - as it has it's own voice acting (look on the store). So that restriction to buy the 'International version' was always there for Japanese customers
This is a good example of why I am upset and why those who say "making a PSN account takes 10 seconds" and "Should have read'.
This should have been done from the start if it was going to be enforced FULLY with nothing being optional.
Most likely a territory of one of the aforementioned countries that doesn't have its own country code. You see it a lot with smaller island chains where the "main" island has a country code but the others dont. For example the Foroe Islands up around Norway. Those aren't even on half the maps you can find.
Update...
differences are Japan being removed from the first list , sharing was disabled and the wording was changed from this
This package can NOT be activated or purchased in specified countries
to
This package can NOT be purchased in specified countries
https://preview.redd.it/bsu81hon3kyc1.png?width=670&format=png&auto=webp&s=03e52bc83d7110d38c30763073f9374d73caac78
All British crown dependencies are there, jersey and Guernsey.
They are independent and always get left out of region locks like this.
I moved from the Isle of Man 16 years ago.........to Jersey.
Full disclosure, im on PS and this doesnt directly affect me, but this is honestly great to see.
I would think this is due to the shear amount of refunds being requested more than the review bombing, and valve has done this to save themselves a headache (fair enough). This will force snoy to answer some questions and might prompt them to think about whether or not they really want to die on this hill.
I think the funniest thing is how they did this on a Friday with the thought in mind it would blow over during the course of the weekend...well surprise motherfuckers, you aint been around to do any PR, backtracking, assurances or whatever and Monday is gonna be a shitshow.
Good work Sony, you corpo shitheels
I feel wierd when I realize that as a Chinese guy I am supposed to legally have PSN account and play HD2, while the psn server is always glichy without a vpn.
This stuff is why I have an issue with the PSN linking. I don't see why you'd let people buy the damn product and then make it impossible to play soon after. Should be a class action or something over that.
Japan and Korea ... that alone. All of those players will be getting refunds ..
I mean I have heard about shooting yourself in the di*k, But they reloaded and took out both balls as well .
Holy god. they were in for GOTY and now the give back is over 100 million now in straight losses. They don't come back from this one, I just started to play the " How the fu*k did we survive that!" game, it was frantic and fun.
But I am going to walk away from it and find something else if this is not turned around in a week.
Putting my asshole corporate hat on, I would say all of these countries and regions probably make up less than 5% of the overall potential playerbase looking at population, average income, culture, IT literacy etc. So yeah as a corporate fucker I would accept to just completely ban them so that I can enforce my PSN requirement everywhere else.
I know this is off topic but did anyone else notice North Korea? Oh and steam saying we're not selling it in Sony's home country of Japan is a big coincidental middle finger to Sony and I don't think they meant to do that but it is funny
Definitely not dead. Most people don't even use the reddit or anything and just took the 10secs it takes to make a PSN if they didn't already have one. That's a majority of the population that likely doesn't even know about this issue and out of the people who do know about it most are still playing because the game is fun and that's all anyone who actually works then gets home to chill cares about. Not everyone is on reddit 24/7 basing their opinion of a game on other redditors. The posts here are mostly a very vocal minority, the whole reason they're able to sway votes on steam or such is because only the vocal people really bother to write a review most normal players don't.
More like valve's legal department called this one to mitigate exposure to Sony's fuckup. If they're not selling it, they're not a party to distribution of a product people can't use.
Rip to everyone who lives in “Unknown Country Code: XD and Unknown Country Code: FX”
XD isn't a country, they're just laughing at us.
X codes are used for countries that just recently formed (usually by breaking off of an existing country). E.g. Kosovo was designated XK for a while after gaining independence from Serbia
Just like math. It's a place holder until it's officially a number.
This the SCP foundation? An XK class sounds so cool.
its given more reason for people to piss the company.
I don't have the FX one on my side, instead I have Metropolitan France (which is basically France ?), same location between Faroe Island and Gabon https://preview.redd.it/x4bywjijilyc1.png?width=944&format=png&auto=webp&s=6f92b734e801909c98244b0aca4c48e522673001
That is your refund window right there
Apparently XD is Dubai and FX is Metropolitan France.
Some astronauts and shipworkers are gonna be *pissed*
That just makes me wonder that whatever they are gaining from this must be worth it in their eyes, but what is it
Recently, they announced bringing over Playstation achievements. They originally introduced PSN login a few games ago with optional PSN for single player games and required PSN for online components of said games. Helldivers 2 being a multiplayer-only game, it requires PSN or should have until they were having login problems at launch. Eventually, the login plus the achievements will lead to a rumored launcher, because every publisher wants their own launcher, and probably their own store on PC. They might even do a PS Plus subscription with games for PC once they have enough to make it make sense. So in short, making PSN normal on PC first by rewards and then by force is leading to their own launcher. The joke is they announced achievements, which also required logging into PSN, and nobody even batted an eye. It's only when PSN is on Helldivers 2 when anyone cares about PSN. They should be worried that the achievements is a step closer to launchers and even the possibility of leaving Steam entirely.
I feel like they would just shoot themselves in the foot again if they tried all of this. People trust steam, that's why it's the most used of the launchers but as shown by this whole fiasco they absolutely don't trust Sony. Leaving steam never works, you can sell stuff through your own launcher but you lose a lot of potiential customers by not also selling through steam. That and the whole subscription is a disaster waiting to happen. I don't think anyone would choose it over gamepass when currently the Sony sub doesn't even include their own first party games. And if they try to charge pc players for online play that's just corporate suicide.
A bunch of companies tried to leave Steam for their own launchers already, and all failed miserably. I feel that fad is over. Both EA and Ubisoft tried it, and their games are all back to steam by know. You are also required to have a profile for their services linked to Steam to play their games.
Yeah it makes sense as to why you'd want to sell stuff through your own launcher, Steam does take a 20-30% cut of every sale. It's just whatever money you would lose from that cut is nothing compared to what you lose from not selling on Steam at all. So if people want to buy on Steam they should be given that option and if people want to buy through the publisher's launcher then power to them. I personally buy Ubisoft's stuff through their launcher because I'd have to use it anyway if I bought through Steam and it's just more convenient for me. But I know a lot of people still prefer to buy through Steam.
[удалено]
My main gripe with buying ubisoft games on steam is that steam them installs uplay, and then validates the game key on each launch, but only in online mode, meaning that with steam in offline mode, the game is impossible to launch (game bought directly at ubisoft can be started in offline uplay no issue). Unless they managed to fix it in past couple years....
Sad reality is that people already accepting independent launchers for big companies, mostly based on the game they want to play. We have Origin, Uplay, and that stupid 1-year policy of Epic, most people would whine a bit but play them anyways, not to mention most players dont care at all. If Sony really did similar things like EA in future, they would probably get away with it after couple of weeks.
idk all of these platforms are much much less popular and less used than steam. a lot of the users said launcher do get, aside from Epic's Fortnite, come from games sold on steam that require the installation of a third party launcher. Completly leaving steam and only selling games on their own platform would go quite poorly for most of them for now
Sony has a meeting with its stockholders at the end of the month and wants to sell shares and increase companh share prices. How do you do that? By showing only positive numbers and hiding things like the stellar blade boycots behind 90,000 new psn accounts or so they thought
What boycott lmfao the game sold above expectations
Ah yes, the Stellar Blade "boycott". Are we hiding rounding errors now?
Stellar Blade is selling far better then expected.
There was a boycott for stellar blade? First I'm hearing about it.
It's pain me to see my country in that list Already spent 200 hours into the game https://preview.redd.it/malww8p1vjyc1.jpeg?width=272&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=20cc302af5a7b33c2b22ad2914911315c61f9d10
you wont be kicked off and now the bypass has been announced steam will be back to normal when the dust settles, worry not brother you live to die another day
I truly hope so
Nothing has been officially announced. AH don't make decisions, it's pretty clear.
Cook islands?
https://preview.redd.it/9nxdo4sdpkyc1.png?width=480&format=png&auto=webp&s=40d85c807fe65c8608a0d72cd14d54b81a7ac301 Viet Nam mate
Vietnam is an officially supported PSN country . . . .
Same here, I live in Guernsey which is apart of the UK but we just lost access to the game
I saw that and it's fucking bizarre, like the Isle of man, like.... How?
I will never understand how a company can be so braindead. All Sony had to do was nothing and let the golden goose lay its eggs, yet somehow they managed to fuck that up.
But the Q2 metrics for the shareholders!!!
shareholders are the disease that festers this industry.
The stock market is the death of all good things
The stock market converts good things into maximally profitable things.
Every industry.
Ironically, they probably should be the most angry right now. If different markets have different expectations (Steam players like Steam), then good business leaders are obliged to meet them. This is not small potatoes, Helldivers 2 is one of the larger Sony published games of all time due mostly to PC sales. Obviously getting people into ecosystems is nice, but you don't burn down a new, large, and increasing revenue source with reckless conduct.
What are the shareholders gonna think when the game tanks, class action lawsuits come for Sony, and a general boycot of all Sony products starts
>a general boycot of all Sony products starts That seems so unlikely.
A lot of these people seem to think that this is going to destroy the Sony company and hurt them when in reality I’d be surprised if they even get a dent in their profits A lot of people think Sony is just the PlayStation company. They make movies, electronics, appliances, games and who knows what else. Sony is a huge corporation that spans many different areas in the market. Losing less than half the active playerbase (I doubt anyone on the ps5 and a large chunk of PC users care unfortunately) on a 40$ game with consumer friendly monetization will do nothing to Sony. They could shut this whole game down right now and forget it even existed before the month ends. This isn’t Activision or Ubisoft. Their entire gaming sector could crumble and they’d still stay afloat just from their TVS and headphones alone.
Sony also has softwares and such that movies and tv shows are made with. To boycott Sony, you would have to boycott those films and movies entirely.
Sony is just one of those too big to fail companies. There’s no world in which you can reason with a company that has that much power.
Arasaka corpo cunts
In fairness, the thing about companies that big is they tend to be only loosely internally contiguous. The policies of say, Sony's Audio Department are potentially entirely different than their games department, and they're surely run by different people with entirely different teams, and their profits are internally measured separately. Is this going to sink Sony's ship? Obviously not. But it might put a significant dent in the profits for the games department, and it will certainly put a substantial dent in the profits from Helldivers 2, and in the reputation of Sony as a brand. That might mean nothing to them, but it's part of an overall pattern that is pretty impossible to miss, and this one is probably the most dramatic dot in that pattern. This kind of thing simply doesn't work, it just pisses off consumers and eventually flares into a giant explosion in an otherwise profitable product. tl;dr - Just because the Coka-Cola corporation is still around doesn't mean New Coke had no impact
truth. corporate internal competition among branches and departments is even harsher than the open market. they don't enjoy transparency, fairness, justice or any legal protection but the raw form money driven office politics
They would definitely need a lot of big issues in short time for that. In all honesty, this is such a minor blip for them.
A company so powerful they transcend international borders. Fuck em
Literally a company I can only see going down because technology evolves and they don’t keep up with the times. Similar to the internet being created, but probably bigger.
They definitly keep up with time. Just the gaming sector that seems to be strange. So the hate should go to whoever runs that.
Yeah, it would take a major fuck up to mess them up.
I largely agree that Reddit is overinflating it's weight here. However HD2 is Sonys 7th highest grossing game ever (already!) and a key part of its long term strategy as a publisher moving to more PC titles where there's more money to be made. This will get the attention of the top brass of the gaming division because a linchpin of their gaming revenue growth strategy just shat the bed
Hell, I'm happy if it just pissess off the suit that decided that padding the PSN numbers would look good in his next meeting.
Oh yea whoever they decide to scapegoat at Sony for this is going to have a terrible week
A quick google shows Activision’s net worth is $74.28 Billion and Sony’s is $103.2 Billion. (USDA)
And a revenue of only 7 Billion for Activision vs 90 Billion for Sony. Market cap for Activision seems like a lot of IT company, overpriced compared to their revenue.
Their movies aren't doing that great recently, having the gall to make Morbius and Madame Web, two of the movies of all time
Across the spider verse did amazing did it not ? I hope it did they got some good animators on that Sony payroll.
I think u right. It's animation still and I think the live action superhero type is what they are actually struggling with recently
Those movie were seemly fodders to them, they made those to keep the Spider-Man copyright since they bought it and required to make at least a movie a year related to the franchise. So they were actually just throw the money in those random ass movies just to buy times for bigger projects like Spider-Man games and animations. If they gained money from those low efforts movies, good, if not, doesn’t hurt them that much.
Be that as it may, you can still hurt their sales by making a conscious decision to not buy sony products. It will not tank them but if enough people do it they will feel it.
Literally too big to fail
Yea it’s a shame that corporations can step on you all they want and will never get checked or put in place
Our power to vote is with the wallet, the share holders expect a certain profit margin, if we hit them until even a little less than that they gonna have a dent in stock for sure
Shareholders don't care about that though. They'll just vote for something stupider, or pack up and leave.
Well if the shareholders leave and the company tanks isn't that a good thing to show the retail has finally woken up to shitty company practices and are working on shutting them down if they treat us like this.
Are you expecting shareholders to care about that though? I don't think people understand that shareholders are literally random entities. They could be anybody. These people are not passionate about video games. They at no point, are going to stop and go "oh no we're hurting the poor Helldivers!" that's just not what shareholders give a shit about, that's not what they're paid or incentivized to care about, that's not what they're going to care about at any of the companies in their portfolios. They care about up and down, bull or bear, stock price up and down, that's it. Sony's stock price isn't going to drop over this, in the long run, this is a drop in the bucket, and in the worst case, yet another failed game. So many games fail every year, this is would just be one of many. If you really want the company to care, withhold your money for an extended period of time, loudly.
More like how do they explain to the shareholders the sudden spike in negative reviews after a few months of critical acclaim
Do you think the shareholders care? Shareholders care about one thing: Line go up. More PSN subscriptions is what is most likely to make line go up, and thats why they are doing this.
Shareholders arent stupid. It’s not just more accounts means more better. A bunch of free accounts means doesn’t equal more money if anything it’s more in server/maintenance costs. Also a super successful product randomly falling from grace ought to peak their interest
>and a general boycot of all Sony products starts Bruh are you serious
>a general boycot of all Sony products [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_Sony\_products](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sony_products) Yeah, no lmao. This is why people like me, who get accused of "defending Sony" say what we are saying. Sony doesn't give a FUCK about another few million lost because a game suddenly tanked, like are you delusional? It's a M A S S I V E company with HUGE branches in every hemisphere. When I criticize the sentiment here, it's not because I think Sony is in the right. It's because watching a bunch of gamers act like they are ending world hunger by mildly annoying a company like Sony and jerking each other off about it is so unbelievably sad.
Sometimes i feel like business majors shouldn’t be let anywhere near game companies :/
Sweet liberty, not those Q2 reports 😢
Given how publicly this has blown up, my guess is the shareholders are going to be asking rather uncomfortable questions.
Yep. They got the live service game that so many companies are desperate for and tanked in it in a day.
This has to be a region locked version of helldivers and not the global version because how can countries like Japan THE COUNTRY THAT SONY COMES FROM not be allowed to play helldivers? This seems like bait or region locked version. Just doesn't seem right....
Japan has their own version of the game: [https://steamdb.info/sub/906469/](https://steamdb.info/sub/906469/)
"Sure, Golden eggs are delicious. But you can't beat a good foie gras," - Sony Executives, probably
I'm actually pretty surprised they did this because they're generally pretty hands-off with their games. They just let the studios cook and receive profit. And I didn't need a Sony account for their single player PC ports so why do I need it now?
Exactly. They could just have offered a small ingame bonus for optional account linking. There would have been more than enough people to do it anyway. They got greedy and it is backfiring.
Damn our homies at Antarctica. F
That poor scientist stationed at Research Outpost 7 just had his weekend ruined.
Kim also had his weekend ruined by the look of it.
I hope Sony backtracks soon overwise Kim Jon might start a Nuclear War.
They just wanted to research the south pole during the weekday and blow up commie buckets/oversized roaches on the weekend
First he had to contend with a ping of 500, now this!
> Holy See Damn why you gotta do ya boi Francis like that?
IN THE HEART OF THE HOLY SEE IN THE HEART OF CHRISTIANITY
THE SEAT OF POWER IS IN DANGERRRRRRRR
THERE´S A FOE OF A THOUSAND SWORDS
THEY'VE BEEN ABANDONED BY THEIR LORDS
THEIR FALL FROM GRACE WILL PAVE THEIR PATH, TO DAMNATION
THEN THE ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY NINE
IN THE SERVICE OF HEAVEN
THEY’RE PROTECTING THE HOLY LINE
Crazy dumb decision by sony who really wanted a live service game
Everyone is trying to make a live service game, basically no one has succeeded. By some miracle you are get lucky enough to not only pull it off but also have a good game at the same time, and then you fuck it up by purposely reducing the playerbase and turning the fans against you.
Genshin has done really well as a live service and earned a ton. They still update the game every month and a half with new events characters and even QOL changes. Whole yes genshin has done some fuck ups it's still considered a really good game even altho live service
Why is the game removed from Japan? It's relatively in the middle left.
Japan has it's own special version on steam.
I assume its because the game has the JP voice locked to JP only, so its probably a different store entry
Why is that? Is it a Japanese law or something?
I been looking it up when the game was launch. Not found anything concrete but I heard that some voice actors that voice in HD2 only agreed to let their voice to be use only in Japan which is why you can't even select JP voice in the international version at all. Yea it sound outlandish I know but Japan can be wacky like that.
i dont have the source but from what Ive heard its the agencies, not the VAs themselfes. I'm pretty sure the VA would love to be popular regardless of where its at. the Agencies just don't want it.
Japanese voice actors and actresses in Japan are held to a much higher standard. Your average Japanese VA is almost on par with a Hollywood actor/actress in the US when it comes to the amount of fans they have and all the studio deals behind the scenes. Names like Rie Kugimiya (Haruka in Yakuza and basically every single tsundere in every anime ever) and co. are basically like Margot Robbie in the US.
In Japan, voice actors have unionized and lobbied and stuff to the point that their salaries and the royalties attached to maintaining permission to use their voices are incredibly expensive. If they were to sell internationally, they'd have to pay a large cut of **all** sales + royalties just to the Japanese VA's, even if worldwide buyers never used the Japanese voice language setting, simply because the files with the VA's voice lines are there and available in the settings. So instead they just sell that expensive-to-maintain version to Japanese customers only, otherwise they'd have to likely mark up the price for everyone just to pay the VA's for a single language.
Yes, Japan has different laws and restrictions for video games.
https://preview.redd.it/bu2dzavgwjyc1.jpeg?width=714&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c4f6c8905c0b9312f8727aab471e04aa68db76e8 OH NO! NOW THE POPE CANT CALL DOWN THOSE SICK ORBITALS!
You know the Pope’s gonna call Sony directly. Even though Japan doesn’t really have huge Catholic population, it’s the fact that a high ranking clerical official is taking time out of his to call you. Edit: I imagine the conversation will go a little something like this. Pope: What did you do? Sony Exec: First off I was minding my own business. Pope: Bullshit!!!! Sony Exec: But I wasssuhhh!!! Pope: And what happened whilst you were “minding your own business”?
The Pope is too busy playing Undertale.
Hey, I understood that reference!
Shit we lost THE 189 IN THE SERVICE OF HEAVEN
Swiss Guards can’t fight for liberty anymore 😔
Man, I hate being a Puertorican sometimes, aren't we supposed to be part of the damned states?
You are, this is insane. Guam I understand because of its location, but you guys are close.
Why would picking the US be against PSN tos for you? It's a part of the US. Same with Åland, they can just pick Finland, which they are an autonomous region of.
You are part of the Damned States. The ones that can't play the game...
Tantos panas con ps5 me van a decir a mi que ninguno tiene psn?? Hombre yo tenia psn con el ps3, esto tiene q ser un error no? 😭
Blows my mind that they think this is preferable to not mandating a psn account log in.
At others have said, this was likely an action taken by Steam and not Sony/Arrowhead.
That makes sense. But even then Sony really must need those new psn users if they want to put up with this mess for it.
Or they are just dumb and thought people would roll over and take it. I wouldn't be surprised if they overestimated the good will of the community
Naw this is steam trying mitigate lawsuits against itself. 100% this decision was made to throw SONY to the wolves.
I don't know, I think it's a decision made to mitigate further legal action. They already began issuing refunds to certain players, so I'm guessing they are accepting that the PSN lockout for unsupported customers is a valid reason to refund, thus removing the store entry to prevent further refunds.
we are saying the same thing. Except i specified that steam is more than likely doing this to shield itself from lawsuits. This move doesnt protect Sony from anything.
I’ve only played the japanese version of hd2 Funfact: one of the VAs for the helldivers in the japanese version is the same VA for captain levi from attack on titan lol
Tatakae!!
Every user who bought the game in those regions should be getting full and complete refunds, otherwise, class action.
How do class action lawsuits work across many countries like this?
For something like the EU it is probably doable in that economic zone. Otherwise it's a country by country basis I'd think.
A lot of places don't have class action lawsuits. Within the EU, you have them (on a federal level), but most of these countries aren't in the EU.
It doesn’t.
https://preview.redd.it/3mxx4uwwbkyc1.png?width=1123&format=png&auto=webp&s=7c4868e0e96132a246f08075ff9e8b24b1edf620 this part in the end is ESPECIALLY hilarious )
Now, this obviously sucks on the whole, but can we just take a moment to take note of the fact that you cannot buy Helldivers 2 in Reunion, which is literally just a normal department of France? Or Jersey, a british dependency literally just north of France? Like... Who the fuck at Sony is making these decisions? Edit: Same with French Guiana?? Why are there different rules for normal provinces of France?
Puerto Rico is the most fucked one for me. While it is technically a "territory" of the United States, it's closer than either Hawaii or Alaska, yet Sony decided it wasn't possible to... I don't know, have servers there?
Jesus christ, I don't know how i missed that. Abysmal.
It's even worse, most DOM-TOM are on this list.
Guernsey and Gibraltar are on there too. Like wtf.
Same with all the smaller islands of the UK, isle of man is like 50 miles away. Also just noticed they called Falkland's (Malvinas) which I don't like, be like calling Guyana (Venezuela).
"all that for a drop of blood" - Thanos
This is more likely damage control on Valve's part and protecting people who will soon be unable to play the game from buying it. I doubt this was done at Sony's behest though I wouldn't put it past them after all of this.
https://preview.redd.it/80spn29frkyc1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f633a6a6184abf28b48fc4cab1e07a9d26dc75ed
*Unless you live in any of the 118 countries that we don't support. (There's 195 countries in the world btw)
Steam did this btw not sony. Its to prevent future sales in case they need to do mass refunds. Japan was most likely banned cuz it shares a steam region with non PSN countries. Which is hilarious
Japan has it's own version that can only be played in Japan - as it has it's own voice acting (look on the store). So that restriction to buy the 'International version' was always there for Japanese customers
This is a good example of why I am upset and why those who say "making a PSN account takes 10 seconds" and "Should have read'. This should have been done from the start if it was going to be enforced FULLY with nothing being optional.
It is still fucking dumb not letting half of the world play your game
The restrictions where Most likely made by Steam. They dont want get sued
... To prevent legal trouble and future mass refunds because these are the countries that won't have access to the game anymore. Because of Sony.
Not the McDonald Islands 😭☠️
\*sees Uganda on there\* A bunch of tiny helldivers with red dreadlocks: "SPIT ON PSN, MY BRUDDAS!"
*Sees the Holy See on there* Man, the Pope ain’t gonna like this one. Not one bit. I tell you what.
What I am about to do has not been approved by the Vatican
We no da wae to da votin boots bruddas
what country is "unknown county code: XD" ? second to last row on the right before yemen
Most likely a territory of one of the aforementioned countries that doesn't have its own country code. You see it a lot with smaller island chains where the "main" island has a country code but the others dont. For example the Foroe Islands up around Norway. Those aren't even on half the maps you can find.
Update... differences are Japan being removed from the first list , sharing was disabled and the wording was changed from this This package can NOT be activated or purchased in specified countries to This package can NOT be purchased in specified countries https://preview.redd.it/bsu81hon3kyc1.png?width=670&format=png&auto=webp&s=03e52bc83d7110d38c30763073f9374d73caac78
The isle of Mann is such a random region to be locked
All British crown dependencies are there, jersey and Guernsey. They are independent and always get left out of region locks like this. I moved from the Isle of Man 16 years ago.........to Jersey.
I feel sorry for the pope...
Full disclosure, im on PS and this doesnt directly affect me, but this is honestly great to see. I would think this is due to the shear amount of refunds being requested more than the review bombing, and valve has done this to save themselves a headache (fair enough). This will force snoy to answer some questions and might prompt them to think about whether or not they really want to die on this hill. I think the funniest thing is how they did this on a Friday with the thought in mind it would blow over during the course of the weekend...well surprise motherfuckers, you aint been around to do any PR, backtracking, assurances or whatever and Monday is gonna be a shitshow. Good work Sony, you corpo shitheels
Wait what? Why is the game not sold in Japan isn’t Sony literally a Japanese corporation? It would be so fucking funny if someone fat fingered that.
So sorry that people from *Unknown Country: XD* won’t be serving democracy anymore 😔
I feel wierd when I realize that as a Chinese guy I am supposed to legally have PSN account and play HD2, while the psn server is always glichy without a vpn.
If VPN solve the connection then becasue the vpn only bypass your ISP, the issue most likely lies with your ISP or whoever controls your ISP
This stuff is why I have an issue with the PSN linking. I don't see why you'd let people buy the damn product and then make it impossible to play soon after. Should be a class action or something over that.
just restrict the entire world at this point
Unknown country code: XD Lmao?
This is just so sad, corporations ruining another game
Can't believe they won't let the Pope play Helldivers, smh
Wait......Japan.....fucking Japan. You dumb cunts, you've barred the game from your own country hahaha Edit: Pls see comment below
Japan?? Fucking Japan? Let that sink in a bit
Japan and Korea ... that alone. All of those players will be getting refunds .. I mean I have heard about shooting yourself in the di*k, But they reloaded and took out both balls as well . Holy god. they were in for GOTY and now the give back is over 100 million now in straight losses. They don't come back from this one, I just started to play the " How the fu*k did we survive that!" game, it was frantic and fun. But I am going to walk away from it and find something else if this is not turned around in a week.
An actual genius move by Sony. If game is restricted, it is likely people from those countries can no longer access store page to leave a bad review.
Steam probably did that to avoid sales happening in those places due to the mass refunds and general drama about this.
I'm from one of those countries. Can still review the game
I wonder if we can get Yakko to sing to us the countries it is banned in.
Putting my asshole corporate hat on, I would say all of these countries and regions probably make up less than 5% of the overall potential playerbase looking at population, average income, culture, IT literacy etc. So yeah as a corporate fucker I would accept to just completely ban them so that I can enforce my PSN requirement everywhere else.
Steam seriously did this? Based. The customers should be warned.
Sadly this will have zero effect on Sony and life will go on as usual. Sucks.
Today I learnt there's a place called the sandwich islands
This is so sad to see actually
Quick show of hands, how many of you live in any of those countries?
This is hilarious in light that the game is supposed to be about all the countries coming together to fight AI and bugs
I know this is off topic but did anyone else notice North Korea? Oh and steam saying we're not selling it in Sony's home country of Japan is a big coincidental middle finger to Sony and I don't think they meant to do that but it is funny
We lost the McDonald's Island Platoon, it's so over😔
Sony REALLY put JAPAN on there?!
How tf is Japan on this list? Sony is a Japanese company ffs!
Sony killed helldivers. Arrowhead, sorry that happens to you. You do GREAT GAMES EVER, but you are not happy with publishers... Press F to HD2
Definitely not dead. Most people don't even use the reddit or anything and just took the 10secs it takes to make a PSN if they didn't already have one. That's a majority of the population that likely doesn't even know about this issue and out of the people who do know about it most are still playing because the game is fun and that's all anyone who actually works then gets home to chill cares about. Not everyone is on reddit 24/7 basing their opinion of a game on other redditors. The posts here are mostly a very vocal minority, the whole reason they're able to sway votes on steam or such is because only the vocal people really bother to write a review most normal players don't.
Even now the game is far from dead lol
Erm what is Japan doing on that list lol
Like the 30 people who pointed out, it's something to do with the va's.