The lesson we learn here is that you don’t take money from the mob.
Don’t go public with youre company.
Don’t get involved with the devil.
Comment on "PSN isn't supported in my country. What do I do?" Arrowhead CEO: "I don't know"
slaacaa@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The most depressing thing I’ve seen related to this topic. A small team that worked incredible hard were lucky enough to achieve the impossible, and now they watch without any control as it is taken from them, for no other reason than greed.
Due to to unchecked neoliberal capitalism, big companies like Sony already cover so much of the developed markets, that they have no way to naturally grow more. So they are forced to squeeze more out of what they already have, as stagnation is not accepted in this hellish system.
The line must go up, whatever the cost!
Iapar@feddit.de 6 months ago
JDPoZ@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Said this in another thread :
First off - yes Sony is in the wrong.
Second - Helldivers ain’t Flappy Bird. Making an online multiplayer game that needs the ability to do reliable matchmaking across multiple platforms with hundreds of thousands of players out there needs MASSIVE network and infrastructure support…
So you may say “don’t take money from the mob,” but this is more a situation of where if they HADN’T taken Sony’s support, they likely wouldn’t have been able to have the resources to have done all that themselves which could have made the difference between their great success and failure.
Remember that the first helldivers game was also a Sony published title where everything worked out fine for everyone then… but mostly because it wasn’t near as big a success story and making headlines but was instead a far more niche title lost mostly in the noise of smaller dev Sony titles.
I’m sure arrowhead has learned its lesson now and it will likely able probably to flex its muscles in the future thanks to its success financially - as I’m sure lots of publishers will be now coming at them with much more lucrative and favorable contract deals going forward, but they probably would not have been able to do what they wanted to do at the scale that they have been able to had Sony not been there to help provide that initial capital and infrastructure support.
This is Sony’s fault fully. The guys at Arrowhead are just wanting to have the means to make good games. They needed the resources to launch successfully and pretending it would have been feasible otherwise without said resources is sadly… naive.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Or make a game that doesn’t rely on those resources. I was considering getting this game when I got a system that could handle it. I’m gonna stick to my single player indie stuff.
JDPoZ@lemmy.world 6 months ago
This is like saying to any sort of person involved in commercial agriculture “don’t buy a John Deere tractor if you don’t like their draconic business practices.”
Like… there’s not really many other choices if you want to make a game that can do simultaneous cross-platform networked multiplayer and want to be able to launch on any console.
I mean, unless you want them making something that has massive difficulty coming to console… like maybe Lethal Company is the only recent example I can think of that’s a small non-major publisher-backed title that has networked 4-player multiplayer… and even then i’m not sure what sort of challenges that dev had when trying to implement any sort of netcode for gameplay.
reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 6 months ago
what’s your solution for online matchmaking in a squad shooter?
RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 6 months ago
What does it matter if the game “launches successfully” if it doesn’t sustain itself? They knew theyd likely lose their players but they were hoping theyd be special - this game is not successful in the end.
Your entire argument boils down to: they wouldn’t have been able to cheat us into thinking this was a good game without sony. If theyre going to take my money and kill the game anyway, it would have been better to not make it at all. That’s what thousands of indie devs have to contend with every day.
Goldmage263@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I think his argument comes down to, don’t hate the playa, hate the game. Far better for them to have made the game, as it clearly is a good game. The publisher coming in and shitting all over everything is what makes the situation bad. Hopefully, this can serve as more inspiration for indie devs (who do make most of my fav games) and maybe lead to more studios not accepting Sony as a publisher. I can’t fault Arrowhead for wanting to make what they love, but I can hope Sony burns to the ground never to rise again.
DogWater@lemmy.world 6 months ago
You’re talking like this was premeditated by the development studio…is that really the case?
Iapar@feddit.de 6 months ago
I agree with you that they most likely needed the money to do what they wanted to do at that scale.
But I think my point still stands. Because it is a deal with the devil in the most literal sense that is possible. You get to your goal faster, easier or at all but in the end you have to ask yourself if the price you paid for that was worth it when the devil comes collecting. That is the moral of the fictional Storys, isn’t it?
But to add to this. I think we, as consumers, aren’t completely innocent either. Buying only the best looking, 1000 hours, other buzzword games. This undeniably sends a message to indie devs which can lead to people making self harming decisions.
One could argue that we got groomed to want that. And I do. All those blockbuster-games that were made under gruesome conditions are unsustainable. But we didn’t knew that. We thought that they were the new normal.
But now we know better. This is just normal if you walk over corpses to get to your goal. And if we want developers that value our time and mental health, then we should value developers time and mental health in return.
Which means showing them that we will buy games that are not those 10 million dollar productions. And that we will measure the quality of the game compared to the resources that went into that particular game and not compared to a game that had an unholy amount of resources to burn through.
In the end we need to find a way to cut out all the rich people who came into the gaming industry as it broke into mainstream, who are throwing their weight/money around and bully everybody into submission.
And that needs strength of character. It means not buying the new shiny thing that we have seen an add for the hundredth time today, no matter how much we want that. It means not taking that deal which will make that problem go away quicker.
If gaming has taught us anything, it is how to prevail against overwhelming forces. That it takes compassion, companionship, a bit of anger and sacrifices.
If we haven’t learned that, why the fuck are we even playing.
RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 6 months ago
So many threads about Hello Games (No Man’s Sky) and other Sony backed titles being “victims”. They knew what they were doing,
DogWater@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Highly recommend the Internet Historian video about no man’s sky.
Also that game is really awesome now
daltotron@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Highly recommend the Internet Historian video about no man’s sky.
I wouldn’t, that dude’s a nazi
maynarkh@feddit.nl 6 months ago
If you don’t go public with your company, some other company will go public, and buy your company or your customers from under you with the money they got from Wall Street. There are some companies that can try and resist, but the field tilts against them.
dustyData@lemmy.world 6 months ago
When you own something and someone comes to offer you money to buy it, you have this thing called “No” you can say, and then they don’t buy it. It’s a pretty neat hack.
maynarkh@feddit.nl 6 months ago
Epic is trying to IPO and has all kinds of investors. It tried to undermine Valve by buying out its partners by just spraying money at them for exclusives - you know, “disrupt” the industry. Steam prevails because they are real good at what they do, and they had a head start, but it takes a Gaben to not sell out, a good team and a lot of luck to manage that. Steam is playing against a tilted field is what I’m saying, and is one of the few players who successfully are managing it. They are the exception.
Maddier1993@programming.dev 6 months ago
The devs that made Helldivers MUST have been aware of Sony’s mandatory PSN policy. This is just a sob story and throwing Sony under the bus at this point.
fluckx@lemmy.world 6 months ago
This would have been less of an issue if it remained enforced from the start. Re-enforcing it after demonstrating it clearly works without makes it look scummy and greedy. People could also easily refund if they didn’t agree. Now its too late.
For a lot of people it now looks as: now that the game is a success we want to collect everybody their data as well so we can make even more money.
Tbh, other games just require a 3rd party account without linking them explicitly. This requires an actual link which ( likely ) gives them access to a lot of your steam information which you’d rather NOT give to a corp that doesn’t seem capable at guarding people their data.
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
People can still get a refund. It just has to be manually reviewed and deemed justified instead of just being okayed by the automated system.
fluckx@lemmy.world 6 months ago
That is true, but it I’d an additional hurdle. Sony is playing it smart.
They made an announcement and had a bunch of Outrage now. If they had just enforced it people would have refunded on mass probably. Now people can still actually play.
I’m guessing steam might be less eager to refund when the actual deadline hits. I also feel like a lot of people will just cave and link/create the account.
That’s definitely what Sony is expecting. And it’s also what I’m hearing from friends. That they dont want to, but that it’s a fun game ans they’d rather keep playing with friends.
FooBarrington@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I’ve had three refund requests rejected so far (~10h playtime).
eskimofry@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Re-enforcing it after demonstrating it clearly works without makes it look scummy and greedy.
Day 1 policy was that PSN linking was mandatory. Arrowhead execs knew this. Players who bought the game in non-PSN countries shouldn’t have gotten a pop-up banner saying as much instead of the payment screen.
fluckx@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Im not even sure if the game would have taken off at all. Psn servers couldn’t handle the load which is Why it was disabled ( temporarily ) in the first place.
A lot of people, including myself, never even linked the psn because I could skip it.
CluckN@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Sony bailed them out when their servers went down in February by sending engineers to assist. It makes sense that Sony wants a favor in return.
Jajcus@kbin.social 6 months ago
Sounds like a mobster kind of favor. They took advantage of studio weakness.
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
In what world is that a mobster deal? The game initially released saying that PSN accounts were required, this is in every store front description. The devs clarified that was not enforced due to technical issues at release time.
Sony funded the game in the first place too. They didn’t take advantage of a moment of weakness. This is all contract stuff agreed upon long before release.
It absolutely sucks ass, but this is an incredibly basic business deal. Sony stepped in to provide server support because it’s Sony’s game, and Sony makes money off it. Now that the game is more stable, they likely went back to Arrowhead and said “Hey, it’s time you sorted out the contracted requirement for PSN accounts. You agreed to this.” and here we are.
Maybe Sony told Arrowhead that PSN accounts could be made by everyone. Maybe Arrowhead thought they could push back on the requirement after the game came out without them required. We likely will never know what went on behind closed doors.
But this isn’t shady, just absolutely monumentally fucking shitty.
Unfortunately, as long as refunds are handled reasonably well like they were with Cyberpunk 2077’s PS4 release, gamers won’t really have a leg to stand on. It’ll just be complaining that they can’t play something they wanted to play, after getting a number of hours in it for effectively free.
eskimofry@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Or… think like an adult… they have support contracts in place.
Kedly@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Why do you care that a company as scummy as Sony is getting thrown under the bus. Outside of this fiasco Helldivers was a pretty great game. If throwing Sony under the bus gets this decision reversed literally EVERYONE wins, and honestly, as the Publisher, thats probably one of the things that comes with the title, taking the heat for shitty ass decisions that could otherwise tank a game
eskimofry@lemm.ee 6 months ago
My argument here is that Arrowhead is not some great dev that is helpless.
David_Eight@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I didn’t think that’s necessarily true. They were contracted to make the game by Sony and when they started probably had no idea it would even be sold on PC.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The most depressing thing I’ve seen related to this topic. A small team that worked incredibly hard were lucky enough to achieve the impossible, and now they watch without any control as it is taken from them, for no other reason than greed.
KSP’s original team must feel the same way
Omegamanthethird@lemmy.world 6 months ago
There are a lot of console exclusives that I like. I think an argument can be made that companies like Sony and Microsoft can add funding and support to make games better, sacrificing profits for console value.
With Xbox failing for another console, putting out half-baked products, and buying IPs instead of creating new ones, I’m worried that Sony will just start maximizing profits.
BruceTwarzen@kbin.social 6 months ago
Sony brought out a console that was almost impossible to buy and has no games. Now they try to inflate their numbers by forcing people to make psn accounts. Fuck them. Not that i ever planned to buy a playstation, but i make sure to stay away from everything sony related
Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 6 months ago
I mean it’s entirely possible this was for crossplay or cross save … I doubt this is about the numbers.
static09@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I play FFXIV and Warframe. I don’t have a PSN account and crossplay is fully functioning with both Playstation and Xbox users. Heck, Warframe is even available on Switch and crossplay works just fine with those users without any account linking.
b3an@lemmy.world 6 months ago
You were right though. And it’s only because we were also furious about what they were doing and raise such a fuss about it that they decided to renege on that.
CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Including lying, controlling narratives, committing outright fraud, controlling the fate of companies through “consultants”, changing the definition of Recession, killing of whistleblowers, killing of journalists who help whistleblowers, to name just a very short few.
This system blows, how many millenia does it fucking take to figure that out?
Passerby6497@lemmy.world 6 months ago
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
-Upton Sinclair
inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I read The Jungle a few months ago and its aged so depressingly well.
KevonLooney@lemm.ee 6 months ago
“The Jungle” famously spurred large reforms. The FDA exists and has a lot of power because people were disgusted by what they read.
That’s why you’re reading a hundred-year-old book: it was influential.
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
We haven’t done nothing. There’s Rojava and the EZLN building whole competing systems. There’s loads of people doing mutual aid or building cooperative economic structures all over the world, and those movements are gaining a lot of traction as people are waking up to how shit things are.
You don’t usually hear about all these projects, in the same way you may not notice termites hollowing out a structure until it’s far too late to save it.
rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
I’m afraid “this system” has existed since humans learned to lie and commit fraud, and it’s not called capitalism.
But there are some laws which these things follow - the more horizontal and decentralized everything is, the less such rot.
The political ideology is called distributivism and unfortunately associated with Catholicism, but it’s the sanest I’ve encountered.
boogiebored@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Capitalism is the current name for the problem.
rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
No, capitalism is a religious term among leftists, used for things much younger.