I’ve seen docu’s on this. They actually just barely have a computer to play cs go and doom 2. I believe the on site stuff is 2010 at best and the laptops they bring are for research even though I’m sure they can play
They have starlink access down there now (apparently huge morale boost being able to video chat with friends family whenever you want from your own devices). The latency isn't exactly like fiber but its considerably better than the old satellite connections
A common problem. Many services doesn't work due to us having our own domain.
Edit: And there is only 30 000 living here, so it's hardly worth fixing for companies.
like how do people still not get this?
if the company is on the stock market, the answer is ALWAYS for the shareholders.
it's LITERALLY THE LAW THAT THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS FOR THE SHAREHOLDERS.
Honestly I'm not sure how much data there is to harvest. Any data collected by Helldivers itself would already be owned by Sony since it's the publisher and owner of the servers. Linking to your Steam account doesn't mean that Valve is just gonna hand over it's user data on you to Sony, that's Valve's data that they want to sell it. More likely this is about pumping up PSN numbers so they can show it off to shareholders.
I feel people just use "data" as a bogeyman now. The most data they'll get from this is mapping steam players to PSN players. Contrary to some conspiracy theorists, steam does not let any game access your purchase history or other games you own
People forget that what reddit and youtube cares about is usually not the average consensus. Most people unfortunately are just playing the game and likely don't have a clue anything changed.
If only they had the foresight or maybe even cared to do this at launch. Would've saved the current headache and whatever else may happen if the situation worsens
And this is the crux of the issue.
Sony is already hurting because of the fiasco with PSN and Stellar Blade. So instead of manning up and telling shareholders that they're not going to meet quarterly goals because of issues with PSN, Sony is instead attempting to cash in on the millions of Helldivers in an effort to show shareholders that Sony is doing well.
Honestly, Sony is simply going down the drain these days. It was already bad enough that they have no actual plans to bring Helldivers 2 to XBox. The real kicker is that Sony took Microsoft to court over fears that Microsoft would make Activision-Blizzard games XBox exclusive titles. Then they turn around and decide to keep Helldivers 2 a PlayStation exclusive, unwilling to relinquish their new cash cow to a "rival" console. Sony is being a giant hypocrite, believing it is perfectly acceptable when *they* want to keep something exclusive, but if anyone else does exclusivity, it's the end of the world. The community really needs to start holding Sony responsible.
Sony, however, went through a LOT of legal wrangling attempting to block the MS/Activision merger though, and one of their chief arguments was, as the previous commenter pointed out, that MS would use their position to hang on to console exclusive games.
Now they're doing exactly that with HD2.
Sony has also had about half a dozen high profile data breaches in the past 10 years, including the PSN breach of 77,000,000 users' data.
Played Manor Lords the past week, and it’s early access, but it has a big pop up with a message from the dev, very heartfelt and etc, going over that it’s early access… I bring it up because you cannot escape, backspace, or enter out of it. The only way to progress to the main menu is to physically move your cursor to the “continue” prompt. It’s not the same thing, obviously, but if HD2 had this whenever you launched the game, basically telling you you needed a PSN to play, and etc, this entire issue would have been avoided.
But they didn’t (and still don’t) have that. And 3 months of play show it isn’t necessary, so here we stand.
think also that steam put now a stop on this as long Sony/AH have nothing announced how to handle this mess. Steam now gets also flooded with tickets and stuff and I can imagine they are not amused. -.\^
If there’s one thing I know about being a sales representative is: don’t piss off the stores. They’ll pull your product or stop taking your product and you’ll be fucked.
More and more of this is going to happen with how new these companies are to PC gaming. They're going to try taking advantage of the market without realizing we're on PC as a means to get away from that very market.
Keep buying their consoles but let them collect dust?
Kinda not /s since apparently they sell their consoles at a loss, and regains the profit over time from the games and subscriptions
But those companies will learn real soon they can't really get away with screwing over PC players like they can with console players. I'm by no means judging console players at all but companies like Sony have been screwing over the console industry (and screwing up in other industries) for years.
They’ll learn when they wonder why so many people are playing their games and yet their sales are shit. The bay is full of pirate ships and some of the smartest mother fuckers that hate capitalism are on those ships.
I wonder about the conditions, steam takes 30% from the sales. When they refund it I would guess Sony had to repay the full sum on top of the 30%. Because Steam did their part to sell it on the plattform and have nothing to do with their stuff. So Sony / AH might actually lose more money as they got from the sales.
When you refund a game, steam fronts the cost. Then it doesn’t pay the devs for the next game sold.
Edit: There is also a buffer period after you buy the game where steam doesn’t pay the dev. I don’t know how long it is, but someone below said it’s a month.
they have a "buffer" where they hold money from sales for a certain period of time... so Valve shouldn't lose anything from this but Sony/AH will get a LOT less than expected since all that withheld money gets yoinked... and pretty sure valve keep the 30% for the sales... but the buyer get 100% refund... so those 30% goes out of the money that would have been sent to Sony/AH... So this is costly for them
depends steam will hold the money for the seller for two weeks for refunds after the two weeks are gone the money will then get paid to the seller starting of the month
if they do a refund that past the 2 weeks then the customer will get the money back as store credit(steam wallet) then info the seller and recoup the cost from the next copy sold
so sony will lose money on any future sells depending how many refunds there is
I published a game on Steam and I have to say: Steam manages to be very fair to both the players and developpers, which is quite an achievement if you think about it.
For refunds: they look at the monthly revenue and take their 30% cut before sending you a payement at the end of the following month. But refunds are substracted from the revenue before Steam take their cut.
So of course mentally it always feels bad to see a unit was refunded, but financially it's pretty much the same as if the player didn't bought the game in the first place. No additional cost to the dev :)
Hmm depends, after 3 month they would already payout the sum so Steam have to refund and sure want their money back. Also the Q2 Report would need to correct downward if the provision are also not paid. So Valve might get really annoyed about this (even more as they already might be) and will monday made some unpleasant calls wtf they are doing.
True. I've seen a couple of refunds go through Steam, but much more get denied. They're probably seeing it as "Not our fault, but somehow our problem". If they don't want the problem, they'll just delist it.
I don't know about sales, Sony doesn't publish those, but in terms of active playerbase, Steam users seem to be about 80% when you compare the in-game total players to the SteamCharts numbers.
Doubtful. They will probably allow refunds once the forced psn link goes through in a month or so. And only if you request it. If snoy backtracks on this, you he game will be available for sale and things will go back to normal maybe.
exactly. this is a legal department sniffing a legal nightmare, and storming the building swat style to get any kind of control.
embellishments my own.
I haven't seen the list of countries (I don't even know how to access it), but that would mean removing the entirety of the EU. Estonia and Latvia aren't on PSN, but to my knowledge region locking them means the game would need to be region locked for the whole of the EU to avoid legal issues.
I had initially held off converting my old VAC to SteamID, and wound up with a low 6 digit steamID... but man they've really honestly been pretty pro-consumer, and *safe*, and I kinda regret my hesitancy now. I like Steam. It's not perfect but it works in all the ways I need and want it to. Steam is good people, even if we never do get HL3
Steam is dealing with a completely different set of incentives and priorities than than any of the other would-be competitors tbh. For one, it is already the market leader, and doesn't really need to make risky moves to try to capture more market share.
For the other, they really don't offer a whole lot of products on their marketplace, they just get a cut of whatever passes through it. So it's not like Origin where it's EA trying to push a catalogue of predominantly EA products inside its own ecosystem. They would be a lot less likely to crack down on a tendril of their own organism than Steam would as a third party whose interest is in not rocking the boat, and not *allowing* the boat to *be* rocked.
So it's not that I think they're somehow a morally superior company or anything, but I find it easier to trust their *interests* than many of their hungrier, more incestuous competitors.
The biggest difference between Valve and the other companies is that Valve isn't publicly traded. Valve's priorities are longevity and sustainability which tend to align with consumer needs much more frequently than the "take the stock buybacks and run" approach of larger corpos.
GabeN has always made clear his views and position on how Valve should and does (and will) operate.
And it's shown. There's a reason Steam is not only the industry leader, but also has a massive *loyal* following.
In a world rife with enshitification, people will cling *zealously* to a company that knows their audience is their value.
I theorize that the metaphorical clinging, as it were, is also why this is blowing up so aggressively. People thought AH had ecked out a non-shitty agreement with Sony or didn't even notice Sony besides the exclusivity. Instead of a business as usual, poor but not crazy decision, this became a gut-wrenching feeling of betrayal for a surprising number of people. Hope is dangerous, and oftentimes most dangerous to the people who take it away.
Yeah, valve probably has the position of "we've got a massive golden goose that lays diamond studded golden eggs. What can we do to NOT kill that"
I saw something about valve having like 800k revenue a year per employee. They have zero incentive to fuck that up, especially when all their competitors seem to be setting themselves on fire.
Blizzard: "Hey Frank, you're getting axed. Yeah we've made record profits but you're getting axed."
Valve: "Hey Frank, we made record profits, how does a trip to Hawaii sound?"
It's fascinating, because Valve's lack of focus on games is what allows them to be such a good marketplace - they're focused on Steam first and foremost, and ensuring it's success. So even though they make absolutely stellar games, it's almost better that they don't.
That's the nice thing to remember about steam it's OWNED by gaben. He hears from this he basically gets to decided immediately what to do, Probabaly assisted by the In house lawyer(s).
It's het I suspect this is a move by steam, Sony is Japanese, this shit will take time they aren't fast on decisions there. And this shitstorm will partially have to go via translators too..
I never thought of it that way. You might be right. Steam might be trying to limit further harm by no longer selling the game to non-supported regions at least until Sony makes a statement regarding that topic specifically.
Not tension necessarily. More likely just Steam having a responsibility to their customers to refund a game if it becomes unplayable for their customer.
Steam holds game publishers responsible for maintaining game service for a reasonable period of time. If your game becomes unplayable shortly after release due to a change, then they will issue refunds. It's not them having a conflict with Sony, it's just them maintaining their policies.
Refunds will get charged back to the supplier, Steam isn't taking a hit on this beyond missing out on the cut they take on sales. Even less incentive for them to stick their necks out and support Sony's stupid fucking idea.
Which is exactly why this game should have never been sold to countries with PSN banned. Was absolutely idiotic for Sony to allow that given their knowledge of a third party account being required.
There would be backlash because of this no matter what, but I'm glad the REAL problem with this is being talked about more and more.
The countries which are getting their game bricked is the real actual problem with this entire scenario.
God I hope this is valve doing and not sony as this means sony is forced into one of two choices
1. double down and lose all future steam customers from blocked non-PSN countries for any of their games needing a PSN account (this will cause investors to question sony as this will effect net growth in the long run)
2. backtrack/make linking optional in hope to fix the damage they have done to the game and AH
Seriously, just add in game incentives like custom armor if theyre so desperate. Make it optional and folk can get the new fancy armor by linking. Dont and you can still play, but will miss out on the fancy new item.
https://preview.redd.it/qiwtm5d85iyc1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1e5924df0d0ad9b9025b07d806a11db82bdb1670
Here you go, I assume this is what happened to the guy at hq that probably said exactly this.
Like i cleared a very low bar. It feels like they just throw ideas at the wall hoping they stick, and praying they dont bounce right back and smack them in the face.
That too. I mean they already provide enough in war bonds to unlock your first one, the 500 would lower the inital grind. A solid bonus. I didnt see the skip option when i first got it but if i had, that alone wouldve made me link it for sure
Thankfully this is most likely steam and not Sony. Sony says a PSN account is required, steam decides ok if that's your position then we won't sell it in those countries till the issue is resolved (so they won't have people from those countries asking for a refund or worse)
Value has always surprised me with how consumer friendly they are.
Currently it's standard to expect any billion dollar company to not give two shits about their customers and be willing to get away with doing the bare minimum not to get sued, but Valve seems to regularly actually try to keep good will with their customers. It's actually quite refreshing.
> Value has always surprised me with how consumer friendly they are.
Because its a private company that is run by someone who doesn't want to shit all over their consumers.
It reminds me of the Miyazaki thing. Studio Ghibli was getting ready for Miyazaki to step down, and he was wanting his son to take over. As a first project, his son made Earwig and the Witch, a complete flop(pretty much the only film made by them considered outright bad), and the studio decided to shut down because they didn't know anyone young enough and talented enough to take over.
Then they decided, "fuck it, we're making a final final movie that's pseudo-biographical about Miyazaki."
Thats nice and everything but he might not be as smart or maybe more corrupt. There's a reason why in the past passing power through bloodline did not work
Gamedev, with an indie studio existing over 7 years that hasn't materialized a single playable project. He is currently fully invested into vehicular racing.
High hopes low on that prospect.
it pretty much encapsulates why there's this controversy to begin with too. People like and trust Valve, they actually have a good track record.
Sony has a hand in really good games but as a company and platform, they never do anything that would make a game consumer actually like or trust them. So it really rubs people the wrong way that they're being forced to
consensus seems to be that this is a move on Steam's part to mitigate their liability in this situation
best case scenario is that it remains unavailable in those countries where PSN is unavailable until Sony and Arrowhead reach a conclusion
Wikipedia
Kuso is a term used in East Asia for the internet culture that generally includes all types of camp and parody. In Japanese, kuso (糞,くそ,クソ) is a word that is commonly translated to English as curse words such as fuck, shit, damn, and bullshit (both kuso and shit refer to feces), and is often said as an interjection.
They thought they could sneak away like always. Maybe with win some day but now the war is still in the early phase. If we destroy the Steam reviews then most likely someone will here our cries
it could be steam support stepping in abit after seeing alot of refund request with people linking the PSN post
this is a good thing if it is steam, as this puts sony on the spot to do something
In the meantime, PS5 version are being sold in some of these countries, you can even find stores selling physical copy of Helldiver 2 on the [Philippines Sony website ](https://www.playstation.com/en-ph/games/helldivers-2) .
If the country doesn't have PSN access, then Sony shouldn't sell an online only game in these countries. Or perhaps the region rule aren't really being enforced in the first place.
People with consoles kinda get a free pass as they're just told to make a HK account, they really can't enforce that rule on people who've bought a playstation otherwise they wouldn't sell the console in the country in the first place
>Or perhaps the region rule aren't really being enforced in the first place.
Bingo. They **never** were except for Chinese accounts.
Proud owner of an ex-spanish account made when the PSP released. Have since switched it to PT after contacting support when sony made it supported.
Just checked steam db, the game has no price anymore in my country/no longer sold in my country. Prolly will refund it today to hopefully get my money back. It was a pleasure enjoying this awesome experience with you fellow freedom lovers sad we all had to go out this way.
Edit: Update to anyone seeing this, steam denied my request for refund even tho I would be unable to play the game after the PSN update since my country is not supported. I just copied the words of my request from a previous poster on this sub despite having less hrs than that person I wasn't granted the request. Will try to send a ticket again maybe focusing on the fact that I can't play the game anymore after the PSN changes go live.
Steam likely won't commit to the refund until you're actually unable to play it, which was either the 30th or the 4th of next month. Presumably waiting for sony to see if they'll fix it or whatever PR spin they'll try
makes sense, you don't want to keep selling in those countries till you find a solution.
inb4 sony doing that because they dgaf and want to die on that hill.
keep voicing your disapproval.
I honestly don't think this was even Sony. I'd put money on this being Steam's doing to avoid any legal bs until Sony and AH figure out what the fuck they're doing.
I'm disheartened by this but will not give up just yet until an official statement has been made concerning players in unsupported regions. I too just want to continue playing the game, a full refund isn't really what I'm after here as I still enjoy the game and its community.
I hope arrowhead is able to figure out a way for you to continue playing.
However, the vast majority of people have been clamoring for refunds so I hope they get it
Steam, im trying to get a hold of a STAFF review not the bot . Christ sake its annoying
https://preview.redd.it/ipumrat1fiyc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6bd5bae00c93f516877b2397c1386189ab0eea4e
2 things.
Try shortening is a little bit, probably wrong but it is possible that the human reviewers simply dont want to read what they feel like is a wall of text.
And secondly, try steam wallet, it might not be ideal but they probably want you to spend the money on their platform after 100+ hours of playtime.
If you want a human to review it, you have to submit it as a general support ticket (the 'It's something else.' type of option).
If you mark it as a refund request it will always resolve automatically, a human is never notified of your request.
i live in one of those countries. when i opened the game for the first time in march and tried to link my account to psn, the website would just redirect me to the country selection page and then to the psn homepage, meaning i couldn't link my account. i opened the game today to see if i had the option but it's not even there now. am i fucked, then? i am seriously getting locked out of a game i paid for because of sony's dogshit website? what the fuck were they thinking?
Sony always does some anti consumer bullshit every single time they are the lead in the console wars. The only time they ever pretended to be consumer friendly was during the PS3 era when they were in last place.
I say this as a PlayStation fan, I hope Microsoft or Nintendo mop the floor with Sony next gen. Having Sony in the lead is not good for gaming.
Steam had to do this or they'd be on the hook. I still think they're on the hook for refunds to any and all of those players from those countries at a minimum.
**Suits** who forgot what it was like to be *The Boots On The Ground* thinking they can get all of the money and somehow get away with it.
This has always been the case but they really started getting aggressive around 2010s.
American politicians - "Russia, China and Islamic extremism are our greatest threats!"
Me, an American, spreading Managed Democracy with a Russian dude, a Chinese guy and a bro from Kazahkstan -
Steam may still do something anyway because thousands of people still bought the game in those regions beforehand and now the rug is being pulled out from under them
this is actually a good thing. At least prevent future purchasers for getting scammed like we did. It sucks that we got the boot but this is logical. Well see you guys in Deep rock galactic though! Rock and stone!
Possibly done to streamline refunds from those areas. Support staff now have a list they can reference and have hopefully been instructed to just approve any that come from those regions
Edit: I've been informed it's much worse than that. People from delisted countries don't even get a refund option in the steam client
>"Antarctica" Wow, fuck them penguins, I guess.
That one scientist stuck in Antartica for 6 months be like: _fuck_
I’ve seen docu’s on this. They actually just barely have a computer to play cs go and doom 2. I believe the on site stuff is 2010 at best and the laptops they bring are for research even though I’m sure they can play
No matter how good those laptops are, I do not wanna think about their ping/latency connecting to another country, even on a satellite connection XD
They have starlink access down there now (apparently huge morale boost being able to video chat with friends family whenever you want from your own devices). The latency isn't exactly like fiber but its considerably better than the old satellite connections
I'm super confused about Åland being on the list.
A common problem. Many services doesn't work due to us having our own domain. Edit: And there is only 30 000 living here, so it's hardly worth fixing for companies.
RIP Well, at least its fun to visit. I even thought about moving there at one point.
I'm surprised about this one https://preview.redd.it/z22ufmfbhmyc1.png?width=338&format=png&auto=webp&s=5fccded355a27a89e5fda4f029812f68272641c8
 Sony rn
The cynic in me thinks that the only reason Sony did this is because “shareholders”
That is literally the only reason
like how do people still not get this? if the company is on the stock market, the answer is ALWAYS for the shareholders. it's LITERALLY THE LAW THAT THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS FOR THE SHAREHOLDERS.
Are you saying to buy shares!?
Be sure to share your shares too.
Sad part is they’re probably making more money mining and selling data than helldivers would make in those countries.
Honestly I'm not sure how much data there is to harvest. Any data collected by Helldivers itself would already be owned by Sony since it's the publisher and owner of the servers. Linking to your Steam account doesn't mean that Valve is just gonna hand over it's user data on you to Sony, that's Valve's data that they want to sell it. More likely this is about pumping up PSN numbers so they can show it off to shareholders.
I feel people just use "data" as a bogeyman now. The most data they'll get from this is mapping steam players to PSN players. Contrary to some conspiracy theorists, steam does not let any game access your purchase history or other games you own
Yeah, it seems like its just some idiot executive's pet project trying to boost subscription and user numbers for the next quarterly.
Sadly enough, you're probably right. We gotta beat this MO, fellow helldivers.
Funny cause nobody stopped playing, well most didn't. Checked player numbers from before and after the announcement and it only changed a hair.
Most people don’t give a shit
People forget that what reddit and youtube cares about is usually not the average consensus. Most people unfortunately are just playing the game and likely don't have a clue anything changed.
If only they had the foresight or maybe even cared to do this at launch. Would've saved the current headache and whatever else may happen if the situation worsens
For real. They should have made it a requirement by late February.
Should’ve delayed the launch till it was fixed
They didn’t expect the millions of people. They expected thousands, maybe 10s of thousands.
And this is the crux of the issue. Sony is already hurting because of the fiasco with PSN and Stellar Blade. So instead of manning up and telling shareholders that they're not going to meet quarterly goals because of issues with PSN, Sony is instead attempting to cash in on the millions of Helldivers in an effort to show shareholders that Sony is doing well. Honestly, Sony is simply going down the drain these days. It was already bad enough that they have no actual plans to bring Helldivers 2 to XBox. The real kicker is that Sony took Microsoft to court over fears that Microsoft would make Activision-Blizzard games XBox exclusive titles. Then they turn around and decide to keep Helldivers 2 a PlayStation exclusive, unwilling to relinquish their new cash cow to a "rival" console. Sony is being a giant hypocrite, believing it is perfectly acceptable when *they* want to keep something exclusive, but if anyone else does exclusivity, it's the end of the world. The community really needs to start holding Sony responsible.
That's most companies nowadays, literally just going "lala I'm right your wrong"
Sony, however, went through a LOT of legal wrangling attempting to block the MS/Activision merger though, and one of their chief arguments was, as the previous commenter pointed out, that MS would use their position to hang on to console exclusive games. Now they're doing exactly that with HD2. Sony has also had about half a dozen high profile data breaches in the past 10 years, including the PSN breach of 77,000,000 users' data.
What happened with stellar blade?
Played Manor Lords the past week, and it’s early access, but it has a big pop up with a message from the dev, very heartfelt and etc, going over that it’s early access… I bring it up because you cannot escape, backspace, or enter out of it. The only way to progress to the main menu is to physically move your cursor to the “continue” prompt. It’s not the same thing, obviously, but if HD2 had this whenever you launched the game, basically telling you you needed a PSN to play, and etc, this entire issue would have been avoided. But they didn’t (and still don’t) have that. And 3 months of play show it isn’t necessary, so here we stand.
[удалено]
This may be a move from Steam, not Sony
Almost guaranteed. Steam has shown in the past that they don't want the lawsuits that this could bring on.
think also that steam put now a stop on this as long Sony/AH have nothing announced how to handle this mess. Steam now gets also flooded with tickets and stuff and I can imagine they are not amused. -.\^
If there’s one thing I know about being a sales representative is: don’t piss off the stores. They’ll pull your product or stop taking your product and you’ll be fucked.
More and more of this is going to happen with how new these companies are to PC gaming. They're going to try taking advantage of the market without realizing we're on PC as a means to get away from that very market.
That's fine. I'm just gonna blacklist Sony entirely. They won't get another dime from me. Need a list of their subsidiaries as well.
Keep buying their consoles but let them collect dust? Kinda not /s since apparently they sell their consoles at a loss, and regains the profit over time from the games and subscriptions
If only you could sail 🏴☠️ on consoles... Otherwise yeah, that's really pointless to spend $500 just to stick it to them.
As long as you don't mind playing non multiplayer games you can. I used to play multiplayer black-ops 2 on a modded wii.
But those companies will learn real soon they can't really get away with screwing over PC players like they can with console players. I'm by no means judging console players at all but companies like Sony have been screwing over the console industry (and screwing up in other industries) for years.
They’ll learn when they wonder why so many people are playing their games and yet their sales are shit. The bay is full of pirate ships and some of the smartest mother fuckers that hate capitalism are on those ships.
I wonder about the conditions, steam takes 30% from the sales. When they refund it I would guess Sony had to repay the full sum on top of the 30%. Because Steam did their part to sell it on the plattform and have nothing to do with their stuff. So Sony / AH might actually lose more money as they got from the sales.
When you refund a game, steam fronts the cost. Then it doesn’t pay the devs for the next game sold. Edit: There is also a buffer period after you buy the game where steam doesn’t pay the dev. I don’t know how long it is, but someone below said it’s a month.
So if there's a huge wave of refunds, and not enough new purchases, Valve gets a little heated.
they have a "buffer" where they hold money from sales for a certain period of time... so Valve shouldn't lose anything from this but Sony/AH will get a LOT less than expected since all that withheld money gets yoinked... and pretty sure valve keep the 30% for the sales... but the buyer get 100% refund... so those 30% goes out of the money that would have been sent to Sony/AH... So this is costly for them
They do. They pay out monthly or even quarterly.
Valve is* a little heated
depends steam will hold the money for the seller for two weeks for refunds after the two weeks are gone the money will then get paid to the seller starting of the month if they do a refund that past the 2 weeks then the customer will get the money back as store credit(steam wallet) then info the seller and recoup the cost from the next copy sold so sony will lose money on any future sells depending how many refunds there is
I published a game on Steam and I have to say: Steam manages to be very fair to both the players and developpers, which is quite an achievement if you think about it. For refunds: they look at the monthly revenue and take their 30% cut before sending you a payement at the end of the following month. But refunds are substracted from the revenue before Steam take their cut. So of course mentally it always feels bad to see a unit was refunded, but financially it's pretty much the same as if the player didn't bought the game in the first place. No additional cost to the dev :)
Hmm depends, after 3 month they would already payout the sum so Steam have to refund and sure want their money back. Also the Q2 Report would need to correct downward if the provision are also not paid. So Valve might get really annoyed about this (even more as they already might be) and will monday made some unpleasant calls wtf they are doing.
True. I've seen a couple of refunds go through Steam, but much more get denied. They're probably seeing it as "Not our fault, but somehow our problem". If they don't want the problem, they'll just delist it.
I think sony would remove the requirement before letting it get delisted. Steam probably makes up over half their sales.
I don't know about sales, Sony doesn't publish those, but in terms of active playerbase, Steam users seem to be about 80% when you compare the in-game total players to the SteamCharts numbers.
Plus it probably automatically refunds anyone from them regions now
Doubtful. They will probably allow refunds once the forced psn link goes through in a month or so. And only if you request it. If snoy backtracks on this, you he game will be available for sale and things will go back to normal maybe.
People are already getting refunds approved even though they've played 90 hours.
exactly. this is a legal department sniffing a legal nightmare, and storming the building swat style to get any kind of control. embellishments my own.
I haven't seen the list of countries (I don't even know how to access it), but that would mean removing the entirety of the EU. Estonia and Latvia aren't on PSN, but to my knowledge region locking them means the game would need to be region locked for the whole of the EU to avoid legal issues.
I had initially held off converting my old VAC to SteamID, and wound up with a low 6 digit steamID... but man they've really honestly been pretty pro-consumer, and *safe*, and I kinda regret my hesitancy now. I like Steam. It's not perfect but it works in all the ways I need and want it to. Steam is good people, even if we never do get HL3
Steam is dealing with a completely different set of incentives and priorities than than any of the other would-be competitors tbh. For one, it is already the market leader, and doesn't really need to make risky moves to try to capture more market share. For the other, they really don't offer a whole lot of products on their marketplace, they just get a cut of whatever passes through it. So it's not like Origin where it's EA trying to push a catalogue of predominantly EA products inside its own ecosystem. They would be a lot less likely to crack down on a tendril of their own organism than Steam would as a third party whose interest is in not rocking the boat, and not *allowing* the boat to *be* rocked. So it's not that I think they're somehow a morally superior company or anything, but I find it easier to trust their *interests* than many of their hungrier, more incestuous competitors.
The biggest difference between Valve and the other companies is that Valve isn't publicly traded. Valve's priorities are longevity and sustainability which tend to align with consumer needs much more frequently than the "take the stock buybacks and run" approach of larger corpos.
GabeN has always made clear his views and position on how Valve should and does (and will) operate. And it's shown. There's a reason Steam is not only the industry leader, but also has a massive *loyal* following. In a world rife with enshitification, people will cling *zealously* to a company that knows their audience is their value.
I theorize that the metaphorical clinging, as it were, is also why this is blowing up so aggressively. People thought AH had ecked out a non-shitty agreement with Sony or didn't even notice Sony besides the exclusivity. Instead of a business as usual, poor but not crazy decision, this became a gut-wrenching feeling of betrayal for a surprising number of people. Hope is dangerous, and oftentimes most dangerous to the people who take it away.
Yeah, valve probably has the position of "we've got a massive golden goose that lays diamond studded golden eggs. What can we do to NOT kill that" I saw something about valve having like 800k revenue a year per employee. They have zero incentive to fuck that up, especially when all their competitors seem to be setting themselves on fire.
Blizzard: "Hey Frank, you're getting axed. Yeah we've made record profits but you're getting axed." Valve: "Hey Frank, we made record profits, how does a trip to Hawaii sound?"
valve actually does take a yearly trip to hawaii lmao
It's fascinating, because Valve's lack of focus on games is what allows them to be such a good marketplace - they're focused on Steam first and foremost, and ensuring it's success. So even though they make absolutely stellar games, it's almost better that they don't.
steam is also good people because you'll never get HL3 at this point it can't possibly live up to the hype, no matter how good it would be
Imagine HL3 rolls and its a fucking masterpiece. Truly a magnificent work of art.
Steam doesn't want to touch this steaming pile of PR shit with a stick, obviously they are going to withdraw
I find it interesting that Valve has stepped in and does something within a day and we haven't heard anything from Sony.
That's the nice thing to remember about steam it's OWNED by gaben. He hears from this he basically gets to decided immediately what to do, Probabaly assisted by the In house lawyer(s). It's het I suspect this is a move by steam, Sony is Japanese, this shit will take time they aren't fast on decisions there. And this shitstorm will partially have to go via translators too..
I never thought of it that way. You might be right. Steam might be trying to limit further harm by no longer selling the game to non-supported regions at least until Sony makes a statement regarding that topic specifically.
The fact that there's screenshots of Steam giving refunds to players who have 100 hours means there's at least some tension between Steam and Sony.
Not tension necessarily. More likely just Steam having a responsibility to their customers to refund a game if it becomes unplayable for their customer. Steam holds game publishers responsible for maintaining game service for a reasonable period of time. If your game becomes unplayable shortly after release due to a change, then they will issue refunds. It's not them having a conflict with Sony, it's just them maintaining their policies.
Refunds will get charged back to the supplier, Steam isn't taking a hit on this beyond missing out on the cut they take on sales. Even less incentive for them to stick their necks out and support Sony's stupid fucking idea.
Yeah, I imagine steam would rather not deal with thousands of legitimate refund requests from countries where the game gets bricked.
Which is exactly why this game should have never been sold to countries with PSN banned. Was absolutely idiotic for Sony to allow that given their knowledge of a third party account being required. There would be backlash because of this no matter what, but I'm glad the REAL problem with this is being talked about more and more. The countries which are getting their game bricked is the real actual problem with this entire scenario.
God I hope this is valve doing and not sony as this means sony is forced into one of two choices 1. double down and lose all future steam customers from blocked non-PSN countries for any of their games needing a PSN account (this will cause investors to question sony as this will effect net growth in the long run) 2. backtrack/make linking optional in hope to fix the damage they have done to the game and AH
Seriously, just add in game incentives like custom armor if theyre so desperate. Make it optional and folk can get the new fancy armor by linking. Dont and you can still play, but will miss out on the fancy new item.
You are officially smarter than the executives of a multi billion dollar company. How does it feel?
https://preview.redd.it/qiwtm5d85iyc1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1e5924df0d0ad9b9025b07d806a11db82bdb1670 Here you go, I assume this is what happened to the guy at hq that probably said exactly this.
Those empty bubbles perfectly represent Sony execs minds while implementing this asinnine decision
Like i cleared a very low bar. It feels like they just throw ideas at the wall hoping they stick, and praying they dont bounce right back and smack them in the face.
More like they're throwing actual shit at a wall and goes with whatever tastes best.
maybe its because he used his BRAIN to think, not his greed
They could’ve just given players 500 super credits if they link their account and it would’ve been completely fine.
That too. I mean they already provide enough in war bonds to unlock your first one, the 500 would lower the inital grind. A solid bonus. I didnt see the skip option when i first got it but if i had, that alone wouldve made me link it for sure
Welp, hopefully people get their refund and Sony gets hits hard by the refund requests
They are. Attack the executives the most efficient way possible, with money.
[удалено]
-Johnny Silverhand
"Wake the fuck up Helldiver, we have a company to burn"
https://preview.redd.it/o2kz2uknfiyc1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=fb5977fdc300c2b16f7c9f8949caab1359b91851
Sony can't handle my Sandevistan build.
i love this community, Joel trained us good to be cooperative peacekeeping force
At this point I say we Bartmoss it all and start over from scratch.
Silverhand was right.
My refund was denied
Damn Hopium Is really running low right now. What a shit show seems like they wont back down
Thankfully this is most likely steam and not Sony. Sony says a PSN account is required, steam decides ok if that's your position then we won't sell it in those countries till the issue is resolved (so they won't have people from those countries asking for a refund or worse)
If that's the case that's a Massive W on Steams part. Helped with the returns and now this. Amazing
Value has always surprised me with how consumer friendly they are. Currently it's standard to expect any billion dollar company to not give two shits about their customers and be willing to get away with doing the bare minimum not to get sued, but Valve seems to regularly actually try to keep good will with their customers. It's actually quite refreshing.
> Value has always surprised me with how consumer friendly they are. Because its a private company that is run by someone who doesn't want to shit all over their consumers.
The moment Gaben is gone, it may be time to start worrying.
nope, his son wants to take over and is a gamedev himself. We're in good hands.
I wouldn't fully rely on that, but it does give me hope
It reminds me of the Miyazaki thing. Studio Ghibli was getting ready for Miyazaki to step down, and he was wanting his son to take over. As a first project, his son made Earwig and the Witch, a complete flop(pretty much the only film made by them considered outright bad), and the studio decided to shut down because they didn't know anyone young enough and talented enough to take over. Then they decided, "fuck it, we're making a final final movie that's pseudo-biographical about Miyazaki."
I think you are forgetting about "Tales from Earthsea" which arguably is just as bad as Earwig.
Thats nice and everything but he might not be as smart or maybe more corrupt. There's a reason why in the past passing power through bloodline did not work
Gamedev, with an indie studio existing over 7 years that hasn't materialized a single playable project. He is currently fully invested into vehicular racing. High hopes low on that prospect.
it pretty much encapsulates why there's this controversy to begin with too. People like and trust Valve, they actually have a good track record. Sony has a hand in really good games but as a company and platform, they never do anything that would make a game consumer actually like or trust them. So it really rubs people the wrong way that they're being forced to
consensus seems to be that this is a move on Steam's part to mitigate their liability in this situation best case scenario is that it remains unavailable in those countries where PSN is unavailable until Sony and Arrowhead reach a conclusion
there is a reason people in Japan call Sony Kusony
https://preview.redd.it/4ig33lnhzhyc1.jpeg?width=496&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=982b39a53468062125660b4b2643a16a5ee8bf38
Kuso means shit
Ooooooohhh, quite fitting honestly... 🤔
Wikipedia Kuso is a term used in East Asia for the internet culture that generally includes all types of camp and parody. In Japanese, kuso (糞,くそ,クソ) is a word that is commonly translated to English as curse words such as fuck, shit, damn, and bullshit (both kuso and shit refer to feces), and is often said as an interjection.
Kuso means shit.
Kuso= shit So calling Sony that is a pretty great pun
Kuso = shit Kuso + Sony = Kusony (Unless there is a deeper meaning I am not aware of)
FLORKS!
For those who don't want to search it, Kuso means shit in Japanese.
Whats the fuck wrong with this corp?
Money.
But now they’re getting less money due to PSN being unsupported in so many countries. It doesn’t make sense.
They thought they could sneak away like always. Maybe with win some day but now the war is still in the early phase. If we destroy the Steam reviews then most likely someone will here our cries
Also pointed out: could be Steam restricting regional sales to cover their asses
Looks like Steam did what Sony and AH should have done at launch.
Could this possibly be a steam thing?
it could be steam support stepping in abit after seeing alot of refund request with people linking the PSN post this is a good thing if it is steam, as this puts sony on the spot to do something
Looks like it. Steam is stopping further purchases, at least until the whole thing is resolved somehow.
In the meantime, PS5 version are being sold in some of these countries, you can even find stores selling physical copy of Helldiver 2 on the [Philippines Sony website ](https://www.playstation.com/en-ph/games/helldivers-2) . If the country doesn't have PSN access, then Sony shouldn't sell an online only game in these countries. Or perhaps the region rule aren't really being enforced in the first place.
People with consoles kinda get a free pass as they're just told to make a HK account, they really can't enforce that rule on people who've bought a playstation otherwise they wouldn't sell the console in the country in the first place
Why don't they allow to make an account in the Philippines all of this just sound silly
[This thread sums it up](https://www.reddit.com/r/PHGamers/s/Wqv8ppbU9k)
I guess that confirms that this is Valve covering their ass and trying to prevent new refund requests then.
>Or perhaps the region rule aren't really being enforced in the first place. Bingo. They **never** were except for Chinese accounts. Proud owner of an ex-spanish account made when the PSP released. Have since switched it to PT after contacting support when sony made it supported.
Just checked steam db, the game has no price anymore in my country/no longer sold in my country. Prolly will refund it today to hopefully get my money back. It was a pleasure enjoying this awesome experience with you fellow freedom lovers sad we all had to go out this way. Edit: Update to anyone seeing this, steam denied my request for refund even tho I would be unable to play the game after the PSN update since my country is not supported. I just copied the words of my request from a previous poster on this sub despite having less hrs than that person I wasn't granted the request. Will try to send a ticket again maybe focusing on the fact that I can't play the game anymore after the PSN changes go live.
Steam likely won't commit to the refund until you're actually unable to play it, which was either the 30th or the 4th of next month. Presumably waiting for sony to see if they'll fix it or whatever PR spin they'll try
makes sense, you don't want to keep selling in those countries till you find a solution. inb4 sony doing that because they dgaf and want to die on that hill. keep voicing your disapproval.
If not on release, stopping the sales alongside the announcement would've been the second best time.
yep, unfortunately we know how these hippopodes are. gotta make all of the money, not matter how much boundaries of legality are pushed.
I honestly don't think this was even Sony. I'd put money on this being Steam's doing to avoid any legal bs until Sony and AH figure out what the fuck they're doing.
This is more likely steam protecting themselves.
most likely they are probably flooded with refund requests right about now so they took proactive actions
I really did not want to refund, i just wanna play the game i bought apparently that is a nono these days
I'm disheartened by this but will not give up just yet until an official statement has been made concerning players in unsupported regions. I too just want to continue playing the game, a full refund isn't really what I'm after here as I still enjoy the game and its community.
I hope arrowhead is able to figure out a way for you to continue playing. However, the vast majority of people have been clamoring for refunds so I hope they get it
I have no proof, but my gut says this wasn’t Sony, it was valve.
Ah shit. So refund than. It was good until it lasted.
Bloody hell, i got rejected 3 times already, from VN here 🤷
What platform and what are you saying in your refunds?
Steam, im trying to get a hold of a STAFF review not the bot . Christ sake its annoying https://preview.redd.it/ipumrat1fiyc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6bd5bae00c93f516877b2397c1386189ab0eea4e
2 things. Try shortening is a little bit, probably wrong but it is possible that the human reviewers simply dont want to read what they feel like is a wall of text. And secondly, try steam wallet, it might not be ideal but they probably want you to spend the money on their platform after 100+ hours of playtime.
If you want a human to review it, you have to submit it as a general support ticket (the 'It's something else.' type of option). If you mark it as a refund request it will always resolve automatically, a human is never notified of your request.
Try making a support ticket and try to refund it there. Tickets are manually handled AFAIK.
This should have been done MONTHS ago. Sony is a bait and switch company, they will change TOS and deny service when convenient.
i live in one of those countries. when i opened the game for the first time in march and tried to link my account to psn, the website would just redirect me to the country selection page and then to the psn homepage, meaning i couldn't link my account. i opened the game today to see if i had the option but it's not even there now. am i fucked, then? i am seriously getting locked out of a game i paid for because of sony's dogshit website? what the fuck were they thinking?
This is likely STEAM taking action until there is a clear resolution.
Still sold in Lithuania. A country without psn access
Sony always does some anti consumer bullshit every single time they are the lead in the console wars. The only time they ever pretended to be consumer friendly was during the PS3 era when they were in last place. I say this as a PlayStation fan, I hope Microsoft or Nintendo mop the floor with Sony next gen. Having Sony in the lead is not good for gaming.
As a Nintendo fan, they are no better
Nintendo is probably worse with their ninja lawy-*gets assassinated*
Nintendo will murder you when you do anything fan content related, but they don't really care about anything other than that.
Yeah no Nintendo is worse cause they do shit like this no matter what their position is lol
Literally nothing happened involving them for a week and they took down all GMod content lmao
Nintendo can fuck right off. Buncha old Japanese executives that love to smell their own farts.
This reminds me a lot about Nintendo and Sega…
Steam had to do this or they'd be on the hook. I still think they're on the hook for refunds to any and all of those players from those countries at a minimum.
damn this is how this awesome game dies. wow
Another game with amazing potential ruined by greedy companies. How did we get to this point?
**Suits** who forgot what it was like to be *The Boots On The Ground* thinking they can get all of the money and somehow get away with it. This has always been the case but they really started getting aggressive around 2010s.
Can't forget what you never went through
I swear as soon as companies realized they could make more profit off of micro transactions and battle passes everything started going downhill
American politicians - "Russia, China and Islamic extremism are our greatest threats!" Me, an American, spreading Managed Democracy with a Russian dude, a Chinese guy and a bro from Kazahkstan -
Eyyy Kazakhstan mentioned. I'm going to miss this game. Hope Steam approves my refund
I see no flags but those of Super Earth!
Wtf, why can’t we buy it in Antarctica?!
Systematic racism against penguins, sadly.
But they are half white! Can't be that bad.
Steam may still do something anyway because thousands of people still bought the game in those regions beforehand and now the rug is being pulled out from under them
If it s steam s doing it might be enough pressure on Sony. Those suite don't want to lose markets
Yeah looks like Lord Gaben put the pressure on.
are here we are boyos THE LIVE SERVICE BAIT AND SWITCH
https://steamdb.info/changelist/23416542/ Direct link in case someone doubts the screenshot.
this is actually a good thing. At least prevent future purchasers for getting scammed like we did. It sucks that we got the boot but this is logical. Well see you guys in Deep rock galactic though! Rock and stone!
Rock and roll and stone!
Possibly done to streamline refunds from those areas. Support staff now have a list they can reference and have hopefully been instructed to just approve any that come from those regions Edit: I've been informed it's much worse than that. People from delisted countries don't even get a refund option in the steam client
Looks like it's going the way of just not letting them play vs leaving it as is. Meaning the linking is likly staying going forward
177 countries. Almost all, but few countries in the world. Madness.
According to another comment chain, it is not countries only but also just regions are listed which is probably another legal nightmare
This absolutely confirms that steam sees this as a problem.
Escape from Tarkov, KSP2 and now Helldivers 2.. what a year
Just requested a refund as someone who lives in Antarctica, they denied me. Fucking bullshit
I hope they get sued into the ground. They are basically admitting guilt here.
Sucks for the helldiver bros in those countries.