It’s like the Helldivers 2 incident, but for a single-player game, there’s no excuse.
God of War Ragnarok PC port
suffersearns review bombing on Steam due to PlayStation Network account requirement
Fixed it for them
Submitted 1 month ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to gaming@lemmy.zip
It’s like the Helldivers 2 incident, but for a single-player game, there’s no excuse.
God of War Ragnarok PC port
suffersearns review bombing on Steam due to PlayStation Network account requirement
Fixed it for them
God of War Ragnorak earns thousands of bad reviews as Sony launches inferior product
FTFY
I hate the “review bombing” term.
It’s been diluted by improper use, not unlike “trolling” or “incel.”
“Review Bombing” implies these aren’t legitimate reviews from miltiple real peoples.
Sony is just selling an inferior product, that should be the headline.
Exactly.
I hate that the term “review bombing” completely generalized to just “a lot of negatively reviewing something”. Review bombing is supposed to be negative reviewing that’s not relevant to the game, like when it was originally used to speak out against publishers, because, you know, that’s the only thing that seemed to get their attention. Now we just have the tools and excuses to just kill genuine criticism.
Remember when this happened with Helldivers and a bunch of people switched their review back from negative to positive when Sony backed off the requirement? Because they’d “learned their lesson”? Lol
G*mers are some of the most entitled, weak-willed people in existence.
Sony still left the rootkit in the game, though. I think Helldivers 2 might still be active if not for that.
I sympathize with fellow PC gamers for this needles requirement (even though PSN account is my main account). I’m just surprised there’s no similar backlash for other devs requiring respective account creation (EA, BioWare, Blizzard etc. etc.). Sony did not invent this practice.
There is. Newer EA games, anything with Epic Online Services (but especially with a login), etc. They get negative reviews fairly consistently.
Some older games get overlooked, but even then adding in a third party software (not even necessarily needing an account) often lowers a game to a mixed rating on Steam for recent reviews.
I think the only game I’ve actually gone and made the external account for was SWTOR.
I noped the fuck out of Multiversus, the Avengers demo, and others because of the account requirement. And God forbid you get a Ubisoft game anywhere that’s not a console because you’re forced to launch their shitty launcher even if you try to start it from steam.
Well if it blocks playing in steam deck and Linux it’s not like other devs requiring account creation.
Also weird, the game includes the unnecessary PlayStation overlay, which makes it unable to run on Linux. The devs were nice enough to specifically disable the overlay on Steam Deck, but all other Linux players have to set a special launch option to fake being a steam deck in order to get the game to run.
. This is just gamer rage against a console maker. They’ve all got ea accounts, Ubisoft, blizzard , discord, twitch, YouTube dozens of accounts all over the place .
But when a console maker does it’s different.
As it should.
I think this will end with playstation making yet another launcher on PC. No paying Gabe a cut, PSN all they want, tight review control. Really hope it doesn’t come to that.
Then they can join the list of ‘AAA’ game publishers that have had to eat crow and release on steam after their own launchers flopped horribly.
I hope it does. Then they can fuck off and die nameless, cause I’m not buying it if it’s not on steam or gog, and I’ve recently aso begun not buying it if it requires a PSN account. Take your shitty business practices and stuff them up your console’s ass.
Don’t you need to have the game in order to review it? Or did that change?
People are buying it, unable to play because of PlayStation account requirement (the PlayStation servers are having issues and not letting people log in or create an account), and then leaving an angry review and refunding it.
People will buy it, review, and then get a refund within the return window.
I was thinking that after I commented. Sounds right.
That does sound like review bombing then. People elsewhere in the thread are arguing about definitions.
I’ve already beaten the game. It hasn’t asked me to sign in. There’s still a “sign in” button in the main menu.
I’m guessing they tried to allow it temporarily, hoping it would reduce the backlash, then flip on the requirement later.
The fact that there’s a giant box that says account linking is required is enough for me to never touch it. Fitgirl already has a repack so I guess I need to reinstall Windows to get it installed…
There’s actually a repacker that happens to think that LinuxRuleZ and those work out the box for Linux. And this game is already there
Oh no. Lemmy keeps showing me things I need to look into for my move to Linux. No more FitGirl, or is it this game (among others of course) specifically?
Funny, I don’t remember PC gamers flipping out when they had to make UPlay accounts and Rockstar Social Club accounts to play those games on Steam. Those were single player as well.
I was one of those people flipping out about the Rockstar Social Club and Ubisoft Connect crap. There’s zero need to force additional DRM on paying customers. We might not have all been vocal but we were around.
Considering the requirement doesn’t impact me personally as I have an account. I do understand part of the backlash. Requiring players to sign up to an account for a single player game that then asks you for to upload your government ID is kinda a bit much. I’d be sour too if I had to do likewise.
For reviewing a game it is needed to buy it on Steam (my logical thinking would say, yes.).
If that is correct then I think a better way to express your disagreement with this game would be simply don’t buy it, or just pirate it (if it is possible).
Steam has a very generous 2 hours played policy where the system will basically refund you no questions asked so long as you have played less than 2 hours of the game (refunds beyond that are totally possible but usually require manual review before approval).
This means that you can buy the game, open it once, leave a negative review, and get it refunded. Which is more impactful on Sony’s bottom line than leaving a review on Metacritic or something because it directly affects the game’s rating on the largest platform for PC gaming, and is therefore more likely to see action taken to fix the issue. Sony doesn’t care if people make angry social media posts, but they will care if they can directly see it impacting their profit margins.
This is actually a fantastic idea. How long will it take Valve to threaten account bans for doing it?
Or review it on other platforms
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 1 month ago
It’s not review bombing when there’s a legitimate problem!
helenslunch@feddit.nl 1 month ago
Is it not? What is “review bombing”? I thought it was just when a bunch of negative reviews were submitted in a short period of time.
acosmichippo@lemmy.world 1 month ago
you could argue it is supposed to refer to negative reviews that have nothing to do with the product. Like when a bunch of idiots gave Captain Marvel 1 star reviews because they hate Brie Larson.
lunarul@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Review bombing is an intentional attack (e.g. someone posts a story about a shitty restaurant owner and everyone on the internet starts leaving negative reviews for that restaurant even though they’ve never been there). Just getting negative reviews organically for being bad is not review bombing.
lud@lemm.ee 1 month ago
How much of a problem is it really though?
I don’t like it but eh.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 1 month ago
Its a huge problem, for a variety of reasons.
It means Sony won’t sell the game in countries where they don’t allow PSN accounts.
Their servers suck ass. I’m literally unable to play this game, even if I wanted to, because I get one generic server error after another when trying to make an account. This is the same reason it was originally removed from Helldivers 2.
Sony has a horrific track record of data breaches.
They’re collecting and selling data about you for profit.
Its a completely arbitrary and anti-consumer requirement that has zero benefits to you as the consumer.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 1 month ago
Publishers are trying to exclude “review bombing” because they think it’s just social manipulation, while just casually ignoring that there are actual problems with the game. Review bombing used to be something else, but now be wary of it because it’s usually them just trying to discredit actual concerns.
SquirtleHermit@lemmy.world 1 month ago
How much of a problem it is will vary by how much it impacts and upsets a customer. For you, sounds like it’s not that big of an issue. But
the fact that they pulled out the “review bombing” exscuse means that it qualifies as a problem to a significant percentage of customers.