Helldivers 2 CEO Praises 'Willpower' of Community in Sony Showdown

I didn’t see the big deal, but I might be biased from having a PSN since I bought myself a PS3 as a kid, but I hope this energy can be used for good things in the future.
There’s been a 60,000 uptick in positive reviews in the last day, so people are trying to respond gracefully now that the demands have been met.

Sony really picked the wrong community to mess around with.

Willpower....all this over a PSN requirement. For years EA, Bethesda, etc required their own launchers to be used and I don't remember seeing this level of reaction from the PC community

@pyrrhic_victory Me neither, we've had stuff like that for years and there was never this level of backlash.

@pyrrhic_victory a pyrrhic victory, indeed

It's a bit cringe worthy seeing the way people are rejoicing as if they stopped microtransactions from existing or something.

@Savage_Joe Touché

@ATaco Seriously, one of the most overblown things I've seen in some time

Good lord. First he tells them their outrage was warranted, now he's applauding their "willpower".

How could anyone come to the conclusion that those involved behaved with restraint and lacked impulsiveness.

@pyrrhic_victory it was there. You probably just weren't playing a game with such a large PC base. It is necessary evil to sustain the AAA budget of in house games. Not saying all PC players are toxic or anything but it's a divisive crowd

Sound's like he's just trying to shift all blame on to Sony so to not Damage AH's rep to me. He knew the score to begin with and could have voiced his concerns in the beginning.

Sonys gonna buy Arr....ohh....nvm....

Would have amounted to nothing had Steam not refused to play this game (pun definitely intended) with Sony.
Steam pulled a Sony (remeber how ruthless they were to Cyberpunk on their store) by removing the game from stores where psn is nowhere to be seen. Sony went "ugh, right in the wallet, huh? I think I'm hurting" and went all soft.
The best thing, Sony had no reason to go this hard and this tone deaf.
Sony could have done this so much better... "We have some great news! Linking to PSN account issues have been resolved. If you decide to link your accounts it will help avoid issues with social part of the Managed Democracy's freedom loving diving! And to show appreciation, Superearth has some special armor and capes for those brave accounts-linking helldivers. Link your accounts today! Managed Democracy depends on it!"
No, I don't think the requirement itself was any different than what other publishers are doing but the way it was put back in play and having it be a requirement without covering all the territories where the game was being sold in is some 2006 era Sony

The big massive issue was the fact they sold the game to players who can't make PSN accounts thus barring them from a game they bought. I expect Steam weren't happy and i wouldn't be shocked if Sony's lawyers advised Sony to reverse the move if they want to avoid a lawsuit.

@pyrrhic_victory Sony happily sold the game to countries where you can't make PSN accounts meaning a bunch of players were being barred from a game they bought.

Got to love the amount of corp asslicking Sony fanboys have been giving them over this. If MS were doing this you lot would have tore them apart but because its the maker of your favourite toy you have to blindly defend them despite Sony not giving a damn about you. This was going to heavily impact a chunk of the playerbase in a very negative way, it was an extremely anti-consumer move and was verging on fraud hence why Sony dropped it as again i expect their lawyers told them too.

Would’ve been nice if they had kicked off about all the other launchers/accounts. I bought an ROG Ally last year and it took me the best part of a day to install all the launchers and password reset about 20 different accounts I needed. Haha.

I love this game. I really like arrowhead as well as they have done a remarkable job with this game and the support has been brilliant. I'm not particularly bothered either way about what has transpired recently as I'm going to be playing helldivers 2 for as long as I can. Is my personal view rather selfish? Yes it is but that does not mean I think it was a bad move. I'm not a huge fan of cross play but it looks like it's an increasing necessary evil these days but at least I have the option to turn it off. I'm Looking forwards to the new content this week.

For those that don’t see the big deal, I guess be grateful that you are in countries that have access to PSN. Maybe appreciate that for those that aren’t, they would lose access to a game they paid for and, perhaps more importantly, were enjoying,

Just because it doesn’t affect you doesn’t mean it’s not a thing. 🤦‍♂️

@DennisReynolds
You can still makya PSN account in those countries in the same way I can make a Japanese PSN account in America. Please stop spreading this misinformation.

@Intr1n5ic

Hey now… I agree that people are, as usual, overreacting a bit (some at least). But this IS warranted, almost.

Here at Push Square we’re biased so much it almost hurts.

Let’s not forget Sony broke their own damn TOS, and tried to quietly change it just a few days ago. What they did broke the law in most countries. Let’s also not forget that their TOS let people in 170 countries/regions who doesn’t even have access to PSN play their games on PC, something this would have completely broken. And so on, and so forth.

The funny thing is that it indeed did state, for a bit, that PSN linking would be required later on. But that in itself broke their own TOS 🤦🏻‍♂️
A cluster ***** on Sonys part.

Personally i didn't have an issue with all this. But i'm biased though.

As much as I thought some of the reactions from the PC crowd were far too hysterical, the counter reactions of people claiming Sony are spineless for bending the knee or even "destroying themselves" because of it are somehow even worse. Can we all just behave like normal human beings for a change? Is that really so hard?

Ultimately, the right decision was reached to ensure that everyone could continue playing the game, which is the only thing that REALLY matters in all of this. The whole thing will blow over except in the minds of some people who will remain obsessed by stuff like this. The rest will just happily move on and continue playing.

Now that we know that bullying is an effective strategy and Sony are willing to fold so easily, why can't PlayStation people do the same when it comes to the PS+ requirement for online and the £70/$70 price of 1st party games compared to the PC versions?

@Ataco @DennisReynolds

It's an automatic ban if sony find out you've created an account to access psn in a country which you don't reside, he's not misinformed but you are.

Definitely warranted. And for those who try to conflate this and ‘bullying of devs’, this is a technical issue affecting different markets around the world caused by overreach of publishers, no different than trying to raise awareness of bugs or being anti-DRM. Any sort of movement trying to actively get devs to change artistic decisions in their game however, that’s a completely different kettle of fish.

@Stanek22990
I'm going to need to see proof of someone being banned for doing this. Please do not link anything from a Helldivers sub as well because that information could be false just to further spread the idea that you will be banned.

@ATaco If you want a ban then go ahead as it goes against Sony/Steam's T&C and its way harder to hide on PC then it is on console due to the fact its tied to your Steam account. Some advice mate don't spread misinformation.

It’s insane people think this was an overreaction. It was blocking whole markets with no PSN from playing the game. How in the world is that ok?

@DennisReynolds
This fearmongering is just ridiculous. 😅

@ATaco Call it fearmongering if you like, it's still a risk. By doing that, you're giving the platform holder and/or publisher a legitimate reason to get your account banned. If that is the only option available to players in certain regions, that can hardly be considered a viable solution.

@Ainu20
Look, I'm honestly happy that everyone who wants to play Helldivers 2 will still be able to play it without jumping through any additional hoops, I really am. I'm just INCREDIBLY frustrated that there was no huge rallying cry like this when huge things hit like the $70 price hike, the introduction of microtransactions, the constant scam that is the battle pass...I'm overwhelmingly disappointed that being made to create an account for a corporation you don't like was the thing that everyone decided to fight against. It's clear that this works...so why didn't this happen with all the other garbage polluting modern gaming?

First we had the "2cm of boob covered from a single costume" controversy.

And now we have the "login to an account" controversy.

I'm terrified as to what will we get next? I barely survived these two, I hope Sony start providing therapy to customers

@ATaco Fear mongering? Dude by creating an account for a country you don't live in you're giving them false info, that's against the T&C for much pretty much 95% of anything you sign up for. Yeah majority of time Sony won't do a thing but Steam very well might so its really not worth the risk of having your Steam account banned as well as your IP address.

Seriously dude just because you love your PS console it doesn't mean you need to defend the multi-billionaire corporation who made it.

Willpower? These people started threatening the devs writing racist stuff about Japan even saw a comment on Steam that said Japan should be nuked again because of a PSN account.

@Ainu20 @DennisReynolds @Stanek22990 Unless I'm mistaken, and if I am please correct me, what you're referring to is the submission of false personal information under section 6 that results in a suspension, not ban, from the playstation network. I can see nowhere where it specifically states choosing a country you don't reside in results in a ban. If you're suspended and this is the reason given, you can appeal that decision. In the rare circumstance this happens, you could easily make a case for why you were unable to do so. The onus would be on Sony to find a solution to a problem they created by selling a product in a country where a requirement couldn't be met by the consumer. At the very least you would get a full refund.

Suggesting Steam would have banned people on behalf of Sony over this and locked them out of their Steam account is unfounded. I agree with @ATaco regarding fear mongering on that.

I think people forget Sony isn't Nintendo. They won't just mercilessly plough ahead through a firestorm of controversy and bad press.

Recall online anger also pushed them not to shut down the PS Vita and PS3 storefronts.

The absolute best thing about Sony is that they can be pressured into doing the right thing.

@truerbluer Considering the sheer amount of mindless tribalism I've seen in the last couple of days from Playstation fanboys in this community, I'm inclined to think Sony's base would be more likely to thank them for jacking up prices than complain about it.

Actually, as I recall, the more expensive PS5 versions of their recent cross-gen games like HFW and GoW:R sold better than the PS4 versions, so that's probably not far off the mark.

@RamboMike They didn't change their TOS, they altered the wording on the FAQ section of their website, which isn't illegal by the way, even if it's a s**t thing to do in the middle of a storm.

Ultimately, this mess should never have happened. Registration was supposed to be in from the start. Arrowhead should have explained it's requirement and the reasons why they weren't initially implementing it, being transparent on the fact they would be at a later date. A workaround for customers unable to meet those requirements should have been communicated from both Sony and Arrowhead or the game should never have been available to purchase for them in the first place.

All of that is valid. I don't agree the way people behaved over it was.

@ATaco It's just very hard to compare all these things. It's not always easy to get the same sort of directed, focused protest going against more "general" issues. It's harder to get the same momentum going, unless it's a particularly egregious case, like Dragon's Dogma 2's microtransactions (which did receive its own share of review bombing).

In this case though, while part of the player base would merely be inconvenienced, another part would simply lose access to the game, which makes it a far more immediate issue. Instead of comparing and whataboutism, I think it's better to just accept that this was an untenable situation and Sony eventually did the right thing.

@Intr1n5ic

Indeed. It’s not illegal to change the TOS. But to change the exact bit about PSN requirement EXACTLY right after this ***** show started? And they still broke their own TOS, change-after-the-fact or not.

***** move, extremely tone deaf and out of touch, this whole thing. Talk about not having the ear to the ground. It’s like they don’t have people earning A LOT OF money to think about stuff like this and prevent them from happening in the first place. Hell, my 12 year old son could have predicted this.

@RamboMike They didn't change their TOS, it's an FAQ page under support on their website. A requirement was never stated in their EULA, nor was one amended.

@DennisReynolds That's the one thing that was really stupid for Sony to do, I'll agree, but I get the feeling that most of the uproar came from steam users just not wanting to make a PSN account.

Makes you wonder if this will scare Sony into not doing day and date with PC on some titles if purely signing up to PSN is too much for some of these people to handle 😂

@CastelloGG ‘They'll never destroy our way of life’

@DennisReynolds Off topic slightly, but regarding the false info/location stuff, I had the opposite with Steam last year. I hadn’t used my account in about 5 or 6 years. When I tried to log on, it had clearly been hacked, my avatar was some blonde woman and the language was set to some Cyrillic text. After a few days or speaking to them, they finally gave my account back but refused to change the country. I said that’s crazy as I am British and have bought all my games on that store front and have a British bank account. After a week of back and forth, they refused to change it, so I had to create a new account. I think the terms and conditions are determined by the support person you end up speaking to. Haha.

@Intr1n5ic Suspend or ban does it matter? Either way that account used for HD2 is f'ed if Sony take notice.

@pyrrhic_victory the amount of people that refuse to buy games on Epic is very significant. Also I have stopped buying EA and Ubisoft games on PC BECAUSE of the (god awful) launchers. Alan Wake 2 poor sales were just brought up recently and not being on Steam is a part of that.

I didn’t think that the PSN account was that significant until I saw people needing Government IDs for it (not something I had to do in the US) and of course, straight up losing access to the game. The thing about a community is that people will band together, even if the problem does not hit them hard personally, for the sake of others.

@DennisReynolds It does when it comes to spreading misinformation. People hear something and they run with it as fact. The fact is it doesn't result in an immediate ban.

In the unlikely event of a suspension there's no way you would have lost an appeal because they were in the wrong. The minimum resolution would have been a full refund.

@Intr1n5ic it is a bit ridiculous the lengths people are going to for this. Acting like everyone who was angry was doing it for the altruistic purpose of making sure everyone could continue to play. Sure perhaps the people here were actually concerned but I'll bet the vast majority of people just really hate Sony and didn't want to make an account. Simple as that.

@ATaco For sure, and those same people will likely create a scene should they be asked again on other titles in the future.

@Intr1n5ic Here's the thing it could result in a ban if Sony just decide suspend and ban are the same thing because here's the thing "ban" is a scary word but "suspend" isn't, its typical PR marketing and either way the account is gone so same thing. My Mum used to be a TA at a School and she always said a perminamt suspension was just the School's nice way of saying expelled. Permanently banned or permanently suspended what's the difference? 🤷‍♂️

@DennisReynolds It's not PR marketing, it's their legally binding terms of service.

I'm not even sure what argument you're trying to make now by saying "Sony could decide suspend and ban means the same thing". You're creating hypothetical points to support an opinion with no evidence backing it up. If you said to me, here is proof of numerous times where Sony decided suspended and banned meant the same thing, then your point would have merit. The fact is their TOS clearly states what constitutes a suspension and how that can be appealed. The outcome of that appeal is what decides whether you get permanently banned or not.

@Intr1n5ic Permanently suspended and permanently banned tell me the difference.

Fair play. A great victory.

Now it would be nice is Sony ditched the need for psn to play any of their PC games online. Especially considering psn isn't available in most places

@DennisReynolds This has been a great insight in to how ridiculous some perspectives were during this overblown nonsense.

Edit - I've edited this as I incorrectly stated you were wrong in your previous comment. My apologies.

@pyrrhic_victory I mean everyone hates the launchers and have complained for a long time. But it's one thing dealing with that as opposed to makeing a profile for a console you don't own and PSN isn't available in alot of countries.
Pretty sure it's so Sony can say look we added x amount of people to psn....

@Intr1n5ic This is a great insight into how people think T&C have any legal weight when it comes to gaming and that a good lot of it goes against peoples rights. Sony put suspend because its a loop hole, in fact actually read T&C for your games and then read your consumers rights and notice how they either contradict each other or certain specific wording is used to get around your rights hence suspend rather then banned. Permanent suspension is also very much a thing, i have had enough jobs these past 15 years to know the wording and how its used on colleagues or myself when they want rid of you.

@DennisReynolds Were you permanently suspended from most of them for spreading misinformation?

@Intr1n5ic No but my sister had those words used on her when she let a co-worker have lunch early at McDonald's she worked at (its a long story and you don't care so i won't bother telling it). They never said she was fired they just suspended her indefinitely.

Here's the facts Sony can suspend/ban your account for false info. The account if suspended can be suspended for as long as Sony wish meaning if you can never access it again you're basically banned. Also banned doesn't mean forever either, suspend or banned two different sure both mean the same thing really its just as i said suspend is more PR friendly. Play Yugioh? They have a thing called a Ban List what Konami uses to balance the game, the cards on it can come off it its not permanent.

Look we're just arguing here now over two words that mean the same thing. Sony lost its over and done and MS have kinda stolen that thunder from them so i'm more in invested in that rather then a petty argument over two two different. I'm not replying again but hey you want the final reply be my guest i'm sure someone else will see it.

@truerbluer have you read the comments? There are so many fanboys who are pretty bent out of shape by this decision. I don't think they have the stones to pick a fight with Sony over anti consumer practices. I'm with you, though. The $80/year base PSN and $70 games got me to build my PC pretty fast