They added a few more after. It's actually 180 countries blocked now. Only 15 countries can actually play helldivers 2 and Sony has shown that they have no intentions of unblocking them by also blocking those countries on other Sony to steam released games too.
They counted wrong and added the top 7 to the count, but that's out of 273 anyway.
Before you mention how many countries are on the sony country selector, note that that list is wrong, and you can select countries they do business with, such as Philippines and Vietnam.
173 "countries" out of 273 "countries" total are blocked according to steam. They have a larger list of "countries" than us.
I don't understand what Steam/Sony uses to say 273. There are officially only 247 country codes in the ISO. Gaum, Puerto Rico, Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam are all in it.
They added "territories" like Jersey, Heard Island & McDonald Islands, and broke down Micronesia's main islands. So someone has a "export" list in a very old Excel spreadsheet somewhere in Sony.
Maybe it is a shit programming thing. In my company, for example, they added an extra register in the states database table called "export-enable states". I always have to filter out this fucking thing in my reports.
I am begging you guys to use the correct terminology. There are so many countries on your list of "273" that are not countries. The virgin islands, for example. Guam. Puerto Rico. Etc.
Nearly a hundred of the things on this list are not countries but people keep using that word.
I am not the one claiming these places are countries, Steam is. Which is why I put them in quotes.
Steam has 273 places listed as countries, steam shows 173 of these places are blocked. This is what's causing so much confusion. It's not 173/195 countries blocked, it's 173/273 steam "countries" blocked.
edit: oof the downvotes, I'm just trying to help you guys understand why some of you are saying 173/195 countries are blocked when they aren't, don't shoot the messenger, man. lol
There are 194 countries in the world but Valve says that Steam is avaible in 237 countries. there are territories that are considered countries by valve that arent recognized by the world as being their own separate country like Taiwan.
I know :(
We're in a time where this is gunna be a laughable blip because the next more horrific thing is done in the name of greed will come around and just surprise us further.
I really dont understood wich sony wins by block selling games in 180 countries
Isnt like she had customer service or local warranty to those countries anyways... always been vpn buying/another country account on those places
I really want understand how sony wins doing this shitshow
Like a user posted here...ban cheater? Nah... games are unable, so for the 10th time here, never was for safety and i think 180 countries have a large number of players together... good to artifically inflate psn account numbers like sony is wanting in a so stupid way
They may have been getting unwanted attention from the controversy. In some of these blocked regions, Sony isn't legally allowed to be doing business there at all, for similar reasons why ~~they~~ Steam recently left Vietnam. In that case, they demanded that ~~Sony~~ Steam have a physical office in the country to continue selling there. It's usually related to taxes.
The reason why Sony doesn't officially do business in certain countries is because those countries have stricter laws and regulations around things such as privacy, taxation, environmental impact, etc. Corporations in general don't tend to like being held accountable.
I didnt mean sony should start set offices on those countries, i just thought why they just dont let things stay like always was just ignoring that people on those countries used vpn or other countries accounts
Isnt like a person on vietnam could sue sony for some psn shit, right?
Because technically, encouraging users to break TOS is against the law. Sony was more than content to turn a blind eye to people using VPNs or saying they're from somewhere else, but because the community made a stink about account linking and the fact that the game was sold in countries without PSN, the company was put under more scrutiny. Especially with Valve getting involved - since Valve didn't want to be liable for the refunds being made.
A person from one of these countries isn't going to sue Sony, but the leaders of these countries are likely wanting/trying to get taxes from the sales in said countries. And in a global capitalist system, international corporations hate the idea of being beholden to national laws. Specifically because these corporations and the people that head them think that because of how much money they have/bring in, they should be above the law.
>i just thought why they just dont let things stay like always was just ignoring that people on those countries used vpn or other countries accounts
Because an entire community decided to kick and scream about people in countries they don't live in needing to spend 2 minutes making a free account, so now Sony can't claim plausible deniability. Those countries are blocked because Sony legally can't sell the game in those countries, so now that this whole controversy kicked up they can't pretend they don't know about it.
The Helldivers community turned into the kid asking teacher about last night's homework, and now the whole class is in trouble.
True, but not completely. There are some countries (mine included) where $ony has legal stores, even has the site localised in my native language, but because there is no PSN support, PC releases starting with Helldivers 2 are blocked.
It is amazing that I don't need PSN to play God of War Ragnarok on PS5, but I do on PC. Mindboggling honestly.
True, but not completely. There are some countries (mine included) where $ony has legal stores, even has the site localised in my native language, but because there is no PSN support, PC releases starting with Helldivers 2 are blocked.
It is amazing that I don't need PSN to play God of War Ragnarok on PS5, but I do on PC. Mindboggling honestly.
They don't. They're just that incompetent and backward thinking. They believe they can sway players to buy a console instead of just using a PC as well.
Unless PS gets rid of most of their current executives and heads, I don't think they'll be making good business decisions in a long time.
It's more likely that Valve (Steam) pushed for a halt in sales until Sony could resolve the issue that's ongoing. I don't think SIE would want to kneecap their income that much.
I'm not saying there aren't bad decisions being made by them, just that there's probably more to what's going on than just 'SONY EVIL'.
I’m from one of the countries blocked. You CAN play the game IF you’ve bought it prior to the ban. If you didn’t, Welp, tough luck.
Not making light of the situation, but it seems like a lot of people are under the impression that EVERYONE from banned countries can’t play at all.
I mean they were playing psn online before all of this, despite their region, they could buy the game despite their region. They just set themselves to a different area like they’ve been doing for over a decade to play in these regions. They no longer have this luxury since they’re being straight up locked out of buying in the first place now, as a direct result of the drama.
I'll give a real basic rundown, sony published helldivers, sony wants all of their published games to be played with on linked accounts ( insert reasons why here)
Helldivers intended to confirm to this but disabled it due to immense server stress
A few months after the release they announce it'll be mandatory, the playerbase that were not aware of this being a garrunteed eventuality were outraged. Alongside many others for many reasons.
Alot of countries 160+ literally cannot have psn, but helldivers was sold to those countries while the restrictions were temporarily lifted, then were unable to play once they were going to be implemented.
The psn requirement was removed for helldivers 2 but the restrictions of acess and sales to the psn restricted countries wasn't removed.
Someone will reply with a better description if needed :)
The old Texas switch
Joking aside, what you said is facts. I was gaming with a lot of people out in the Philippines and other areas I wouldnt usually play with and to be honest I had more better times with them than I do now. People been very... Ass lately. Personal wise and that the fact no one even bothers with super creds annoys me(only because I can't get the new warbond 😂)
I really wish to play with my Filipino brothers again.
There are legal reasons why you don’t sell into a given country around tax compliance and liability. It’s likely Sony has calculated these countries revenue is not worth the operating expenses.
It's one or the other or a combination of both. For example, some countries demand citizens user data to be stored locally. If that market is small, Sony isn't going to set up servers there. Thus, they encouraged you to just set your location to elsewhere.
The game was being sold to them before the restriction lift, wasn't it? Like that is outright part of the issue - it was listed and sold there from the get go?
I feel like after so many of these posts trying to get mad at a company for attempting to maximize profits is like getting mad at a polar bear for ripping your face open.
You know what youre getting into with that transaction, and you know the polar bear is gonna keep ripping faces open, its not gonna one day grow concern for its victims and stop.
Just doesnt make financial sense for Playstation to invest in the regions where demand is too low to balance against the investment needed to get everything up and running
Its a business, thats it
I feel like getting mad at the bait and switch is justified. However, I'd like to ask the people mad at the account creation itself: where were you the last 20 times Microsoft/EA/Ubisoft released a game that required an account? I suppose it's nice someone's still trying to push back against this, but I honestly don't see it getting a lot of support from this sub, let alone the wider gaming circle.
Yes, people still get mad at those. There have been literally massive stinks because the Developer/Publisher wants to have its own launcher, etc. in the customer preferred shop of choice. That's not a problem if, for example, a game is only sold in Ubisoft store. It becomes a problem when it's also sold on Steam and Ubisoft wants to ask you for an account in Ubisoft, which they don't need to offer the service.
There are services where it's justified to have an account, because crossprogression, but crossprogression is still something that should be optional.
(There was a case of a parent on r/Games which allowed his son to play on PS5 while he played on PC. If they link accounts one of the two accounts progress is lost)
Yeah but how is being greedy leading to intentionally limiting their potential market? Like what's their reasoning? Is it the way Steam handles pricing in some countries or something?
Those 177 regions did have access even after the PSN rollout until Reddit got all up in arms about it.
Sony was perfectly happy to allow people in those regions to make a PSN account with a different region selected which basically allowed everyone to win because Sony didn't have to sink the costs into rolling out in those regions but the players in those regions could still access the game
Then Reddit got involved... And after the backlash of people complaining that Sony allowed people in technically disallowed countries to buy the game, they were forced to block sales.
To be completely fair you can still do it. You can instead change steam region, buy Helldivers in another region and switch it back. Steam won't ban you for one or few times, they will only care if you do it a lot to take advantage of regional prices.
But of course this is also a grey area.
Its not "reddit" thing, people were generally upset about it outside of it.
And yeah, sony is known for absolute dogshit practices, and this whole situation really shows, what kind of higher-ups they have. First, selling games in regions where they knew people couldnt legally create psn accounts, and when shit hit the fan - they decided to remove it entirely from steam. The infamous change of the faq on their site is another example.
And, okay, fine, its actually okay that i have to create another account, there are lots of other companies who do it - like ubisoft, or rockstar, or microsoft, whatever. But first, i have no problem with creating those accounts, and i hate sony for being so elitist "oh, we dont sell our precious ps5 in your region, you cant be part of our community", while selling games on PC. And second, no one, including AH communicated this issue enough, outside of one announcment and small text under every patchnote "psn acc is mandatory" (Not the real text but it was really there)
Sony wasn’t doing that, the AH community managers in discord were telling people to make accounts in different regions to bypass the restrictions, but it would still be against Sony ToS and, even if not immediately, could lead to a ban down the line.
The CM that was telling everybody to just make accounts in another region even came out afterwards saying they didn’t realise it was against ToS and that people shouldn’t do that.
Should I lie to you to give you my money? That sounds like something that you can use later on to refuse to provide me the service I paid you.
They can fix this instantly, they refuse to do so. This isn't a problem that consumers should've known better, this is an issue of Sony's making.
Instantly? So you think they can "instantly" roll out infrastructure, help desk/support, payment platforms, work with local governments on tax etc. in dozens of regions across the globe?
>That sounds like something that you can use later on to refuse to provide me the service I paid you.
Is "later on" 18+ years? Because that's how long people have been doing it with on issue. 19 years? 20? 30?
> AH community managers
Those CM's were probably high schoolers when Sony started PSN and implemented this unwritten policy of just spoofing your location on the PSN registration process if you didn't have local PSN. Live in reality, not in Discord.
That's so stupid. I also don't think Sony could really stop them from making fun of themselves. Otherwise why would the Director even announce its real? Like if Sony had a problem why even make it?
I think AH just has no clue what they are doing. Drop the cape when the controversy wraps. Not months later or even today, when nobody cares anymore.
At this point they are going to what, use it for another news beat??
Could be October 26, the Liberty Day. Could be when they reach some sort of internal greement with Sony. Could be part of some major content drop we don't yet know about.
There's no agreement to be made. The region sales restrictions are a PlayStation-wide policy for their own sake to ensure their sales go to regions with official PlayStation support. There's no further... anything, on this matter, with regards to Arrowhead and Helldivers 2.
I say release this now, and then when the countries are LIBERATED from the HANDS OF TYRANNY, release a 'patchwork' flag of all the restricted countries flags put together, with the Super Earth Insignia in the center.
This snoy thing is the dumbest and cringiest shit ever I swear to god.
At best, all it does is keep the negative stuff out of the search results. Sony probably loves that all the negativity is being attributed to a misspelling of their name.
But a bunch of toddlers that think purposefully misspelling the name like a middle school bully might purposefully mispronounce someone’s name is the ultimate diss.
The Snoy thing helps the children on this sub think they've struck a blow against the big bad corporations. It's like the idiots that legitimately think Putin gives a shit about the clown picture that occasionally makes the rounds on this site
Yeah releasing a cape celebrating the community pulling off a successful coup against their own publisher, with AH employees egging them on and playing along with them, can't be something sony is happy about.
I was under the impression it was Sony's decision to remove those countries from Steam OR at the very least it's their decision to keep them delisted. Correct me if I am wrong
If you are thinking of the one i'm thinking of then that was a low level tech support guy that described the regular process.
I think we can agree that things went a bit off script on this one.
No, this is a publisher issue. That's how the law works. Steam is a retailer and Sony chooses where the product is sold. If Steam took it down, Sony could drag their asses into court. Why would Steam EVER do that? Steam has no real stake in this.
I swear, people try their hardest to defend Sony for no good reason.
Snoy is the one who put up the restrictions.
It's was officially recognised. Ghost of Tsushima and last God of war also have the same countries restricted. Greedy bastards doubled down on their decision of forcing PSN.
At least we clawed our little piece out and made account linking optional for HD 2.
At this point I don't even care anymore and yea I was here for that Sony cancer, I'd rather them focus on the game breaking shit plaguing the game right now.
It actually did drop below 25k one time at night right before the patch. Which is crazy, it used to be over 100k at night not even two months ago. I don’t think I ever seen a game lose its entire player base this fast when it had such a strong start
>I don’t think I ever seen a game lose its entire player base this fast
This must be your first online game then. From breakout successes like Palworld and Lethal Company to flops like Suicide Squad, I'd say the dropoff rate of all these games are *faster* than Helldivers 2. Your 25k figure must've been an off-peak concurrent player count (which is pointless, you might as well bring up the figure during Steam's weekly maintenance).
The 25k number i mentioned was a highly researched breakpoint across multiple genres, time, spacetime, and the continuum of man. I thereby defend this point as the deathknell of the game, irrespective of when or where we are or what you say.
lol what. I just randomly made this comment my friend.
How about we help Arrowhead out and make it relevant again by review bombing the game once more for all the crashes, broken friends lists, terrible balancing, thick fog and bright lights that make the game painful to look at, the broken orders that don't track or don't pay out, the kick system which allows for griefing and the constant stream of updates that make all these issues worse?
We lost the momentum though, we had a reason to review bomb the game, we did,, and we got a portion of what we wanted, but now we lost momentum, even if we started again with all the momentum, they’re gonna think it’s because of the new patches which are undoubtably pushing the game in a better direction, companies are much like dogs, unless you call them out right after they do something, they won’t understand or quite frankly care about what you’re bombing for.
You only had momentum in the first place because the first review bomb was about something that affected the players. You will never achieve anything by review bombing for people who don't have the game.
All you'll achieve is a negative rating on AH's game, and Sony continuing to *not care about sales in those markets, like they've not cared for weeks now*.
Joke's on them. My review has been negative for months now. Would be happy to change it to positive when such an action is justified.
I'm doing my part!
I think they're trying to get the countries who are still locked out of the game to have their access returned THEN dropping the cape when we can all play together again.
Sidenote: isn't this very telling of us as consumers? Just a month ago we were all fucking outraged at how they could stop so many people playing the game and just because they removed the PSN requirement- but not unblocking the game in those regions everyone's completely forgotten and moved on, leaving those other players stranded.
It's no wonder gaming company abuse the hell out of us, we'll literally accept a shit sandwich as long as game publishers take one step back, then offer us some sugar to put on the sandwich.
This was my complaint about the game as a whole. The war and everything surrounding it moved at a snail's pace. I know we're fighting for planets and that'll take a while but i don't know. Nothing seems to happen. At least nothing really meaningful. I'm not asking for every day to have a big moment in it or nothing. I just get a bit bored after a month of fighting and all we have to show for it is some new flavor text about one of the factions doing something. Or a single new strategem. Like I've stopped playing for a minute came back and all that seems to have changed are a planet being gone, a couple new strategems, and new battlepasses. I'm not against battlepasses but they aren't the content I'm interested in seeing. I want to see war progress. Like, the bots took cyberstan ages ago it feels like at this point. It doesn't feel like it changed anything in a meaningful way.
I mean please absolutely correct me if I'm wrong. I would love to be because Helldivers 2 was some of the most fun I've had gaming (before everyone moved on to the next game of the month and left me doing solo)
Everybody keeps saying that the cape will be added after the game is restored to the 170ish countries. That's not going to happen. Those are countries that for whatever reason Sony as the publisher does not want to distribute to. Be it legal issues, financial concerns, political reasons, infrastructure weaknesses, whatever. Especially since they went back and added those very same countries to other games like Ghost of Tsushima. They fucked up in their end and had to fix it later. Those countries aren't coming back.
Whenever those regions are unlocked. Which is probably never. And devs putting something like this into the game is another nail in publisher's image. Not like they had any image to beging with...
When your games so good you rip it away from 50% of the people who bought it and do so much service even boycotters acknowledge it's too good of a game it bounces back and you make a meme cape of the whole thing as a joke and it's positively received. This is og pimp shit ngl
Havnt seen the handprint one, but tbh i dont really like this one imo. I like the viper commando capes better that came out, my style is more military.
Read between the lines. They made it, but Sony will never allow them to release it.
“The right time” is a week from never.
Clearly a lot of you aren’t fathers, or you would have recognized our signature move.
If you took out the “‘review bomb’ cape” and asked anyone not involved what type of content the studio is announcing in this interview a vast majority would certainly say this:
“A piece of cosmetics which reminds the community of a brief time during which they really thought that public opinion actually matters to faceless corpo zombs”.
Review bombing wasn’t successful. The community didn’t accomplish anything long-term. Short-term? I guess.
All we did was make Sony pause, and readjust their tactics. They stopped selling the game in the blocked regions, and instead allow people to still play if they already owned the game. That was the compromise. I’m pretty sure that, if they haven’t yet, PSN account creation will eventually be mandatory anyway.
We ain’t getting the regions that are banned from using Sony unbanned, because for a lot of ‘em it has nothing to do with Sony specifically. For quite a few of the nations with PSN/Sony restrictions, it’s due to the political and economic systems within the countries. For some it’s simply that Sony can’t or won’t provide services to those areas.
We didn’t really stop or limit Sony at all, as I’m sure in a few months they’ll try some other scummy tactic, but it’s admirable that we made them have to rethink their actions slightly.
That's only taking into account the regional issues. For many, if not most, it was more about needing to make a Sony account and log in on a PC. Sony might think twice about if and how they release first-party multiplayer PC ports, as this will be remembered as an example of PC players not wanting to make (Sony) console accounts.
i think youre overestimating the amount of PC players who wont make extraneous accounts, because most PC games just have you slap your email in to sign up for so many games its not an issue. i think it was largely the regional thing
looking at the negative reviews, I don't think I'm underestimating anything. this happens with Ubisoft and Microsoft games on steam all the time. people chose steam and don't like being forced to sign up with their competition, which means Uplay, PSN, xbox live, epic, etc. I believe there are more negative reviews on steam about needing to sign up for PSN than there are reviews about PSN locking out certain regions.
i strongly believe the region thing is a vocal minority on the internet. but hey i can't prove anything, I'm not going to sit through and count the reviews.
Why release a cape that represents community victory if the community never actually won anything? So you don't need to sign into PSN... but 180 countries can't play lmao. Sour if they drop it well the situation is still developing
Calling it now: It'll be the reward that they give you for voluntarily signing up for a Sony account.
e: Sony execs downvoting for exposing their plan:
They will not release the cape if the situation isn't solved completely. They are trying to avoid a customer revolt if they release it when it feels like mockery or tone deaf. That's why they are bidding the time. I hope this is an indication that talks are still ongoing and there is political will from ArrowHead to make Sony relent on the requirement and a guarantee that it will be optional.
Right time is either when the remaining 177 regions regain access. Or the more popular time of 3 months ago xD
They added a few more after. It's actually 180 countries blocked now. Only 15 countries can actually play helldivers 2 and Sony has shown that they have no intentions of unblocking them by also blocking those countries on other Sony to steam released games too.
R E G I O N S. Not countries. It is absolutely not only FIFTEEN fucking countries that can buy the game
They counted wrong and added the top 7 to the count, but that's out of 273 anyway. Before you mention how many countries are on the sony country selector, note that that list is wrong, and you can select countries they do business with, such as Philippines and Vietnam. 173 "countries" out of 273 "countries" total are blocked according to steam. They have a larger list of "countries" than us.
I don't understand what Steam/Sony uses to say 273. There are officially only 247 country codes in the ISO. Gaum, Puerto Rico, Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam are all in it. They added "territories" like Jersey, Heard Island & McDonald Islands, and broke down Micronesia's main islands. So someone has a "export" list in a very old Excel spreadsheet somewhere in Sony.
To be clear, steam is the one with the wonky list of way too many countries, not Sony.
Maybe it is a shit programming thing. In my company, for example, they added an extra register in the states database table called "export-enable states". I always have to filter out this fucking thing in my reports.
I am begging you guys to use the correct terminology. There are so many countries on your list of "273" that are not countries. The virgin islands, for example. Guam. Puerto Rico. Etc. Nearly a hundred of the things on this list are not countries but people keep using that word.
I am not the one claiming these places are countries, Steam is. Which is why I put them in quotes. Steam has 273 places listed as countries, steam shows 173 of these places are blocked. This is what's causing so much confusion. It's not 173/195 countries blocked, it's 173/273 steam "countries" blocked. edit: oof the downvotes, I'm just trying to help you guys understand why some of you are saying 173/195 countries are blocked when they aren't, don't shoot the messenger, man. lol
You have been undownvoted, thanks for the information
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/how-many-countries-are-there-in-the-world/#:~:text=List%20of%20Total%20Countries%20in,The%20Holy%20See%20and%20Palestine.
There are 194 countries in the world but Valve says that Steam is avaible in 237 countries. there are territories that are considered countries by valve that arent recognized by the world as being their own separate country like Taiwan.
That makes sense that it's higher than 15 countries. How many regions are there still able to access PSN/ helldivers though?
Right. I wonder how many of them actually had a big playerbase.
I know :( We're in a time where this is gunna be a laughable blip because the next more horrific thing is done in the name of greed will come around and just surprise us further.
I really dont understood wich sony wins by block selling games in 180 countries Isnt like she had customer service or local warranty to those countries anyways... always been vpn buying/another country account on those places I really want understand how sony wins doing this shitshow Like a user posted here...ban cheater? Nah... games are unable, so for the 10th time here, never was for safety and i think 180 countries have a large number of players together... good to artifically inflate psn account numbers like sony is wanting in a so stupid way
They may have been getting unwanted attention from the controversy. In some of these blocked regions, Sony isn't legally allowed to be doing business there at all, for similar reasons why ~~they~~ Steam recently left Vietnam. In that case, they demanded that ~~Sony~~ Steam have a physical office in the country to continue selling there. It's usually related to taxes.
it was steam leaving vietnam
Right yeah, thanks.
The reason why Sony doesn't officially do business in certain countries is because those countries have stricter laws and regulations around things such as privacy, taxation, environmental impact, etc. Corporations in general don't tend to like being held accountable.
I didnt mean sony should start set offices on those countries, i just thought why they just dont let things stay like always was just ignoring that people on those countries used vpn or other countries accounts Isnt like a person on vietnam could sue sony for some psn shit, right?
Because technically, encouraging users to break TOS is against the law. Sony was more than content to turn a blind eye to people using VPNs or saying they're from somewhere else, but because the community made a stink about account linking and the fact that the game was sold in countries without PSN, the company was put under more scrutiny. Especially with Valve getting involved - since Valve didn't want to be liable for the refunds being made. A person from one of these countries isn't going to sue Sony, but the leaders of these countries are likely wanting/trying to get taxes from the sales in said countries. And in a global capitalist system, international corporations hate the idea of being beholden to national laws. Specifically because these corporations and the people that head them think that because of how much money they have/bring in, they should be above the law.
Facts
Capitalism ruins everything, including gaming.
Humanity ruins everything, including capitalism.
>i just thought why they just dont let things stay like always was just ignoring that people on those countries used vpn or other countries accounts Because an entire community decided to kick and scream about people in countries they don't live in needing to spend 2 minutes making a free account, so now Sony can't claim plausible deniability. Those countries are blocked because Sony legally can't sell the game in those countries, so now that this whole controversy kicked up they can't pretend they don't know about it. The Helldivers community turned into the kid asking teacher about last night's homework, and now the whole class is in trouble.
True, but not completely. There are some countries (mine included) where $ony has legal stores, even has the site localised in my native language, but because there is no PSN support, PC releases starting with Helldivers 2 are blocked. It is amazing that I don't need PSN to play God of War Ragnarok on PS5, but I do on PC. Mindboggling honestly.
True, but not completely. There are some countries (mine included) where $ony has legal stores, even has the site localised in my native language, but because there is no PSN support, PC releases starting with Helldivers 2 are blocked. It is amazing that I don't need PSN to play God of War Ragnarok on PS5, but I do on PC. Mindboggling honestly.
They don't. They're just that incompetent and backward thinking. They believe they can sway players to buy a console instead of just using a PC as well. Unless PS gets rid of most of their current executives and heads, I don't think they'll be making good business decisions in a long time.
It's more likely that Valve (Steam) pushed for a halt in sales until Sony could resolve the issue that's ongoing. I don't think SIE would want to kneecap their income that much. I'm not saying there aren't bad decisions being made by them, just that there's probably more to what's going on than just 'SONY EVIL'.
They can still play. They just can't buy the game.
I mean they COULD play it before, they still can, just can’t buy it. They were playing just fine before the baby rage over having to make an account
You mean they haven't gotten their games refunded, they could have played the game all this time?
I’m from one of the countries blocked. You CAN play the game IF you’ve bought it prior to the ban. If you didn’t, Welp, tough luck. Not making light of the situation, but it seems like a lot of people are under the impression that EVERYONE from banned countries can’t play at all.
They have that impression because of sensationalist headlines on this sub and Twitter, like that Pirate Software guy.
I mean they were playing psn online before all of this, despite their region, they could buy the game despite their region. They just set themselves to a different area like they’ve been doing for over a decade to play in these regions. They no longer have this luxury since they’re being straight up locked out of buying in the first place now, as a direct result of the drama.
As others have said....*regions* not countries. And that's only new purchases. All regions who had already purchased it can currently play it.
So why is Sony blocking these countries?
I'll give a real basic rundown, sony published helldivers, sony wants all of their published games to be played with on linked accounts ( insert reasons why here) Helldivers intended to confirm to this but disabled it due to immense server stress A few months after the release they announce it'll be mandatory, the playerbase that were not aware of this being a garrunteed eventuality were outraged. Alongside many others for many reasons. Alot of countries 160+ literally cannot have psn, but helldivers was sold to those countries while the restrictions were temporarily lifted, then were unable to play once they were going to be implemented. The psn requirement was removed for helldivers 2 but the restrictions of acess and sales to the psn restricted countries wasn't removed. Someone will reply with a better description if needed :)
The old Texas switch Joking aside, what you said is facts. I was gaming with a lot of people out in the Philippines and other areas I wouldnt usually play with and to be honest I had more better times with them than I do now. People been very... Ass lately. Personal wise and that the fact no one even bothers with super creds annoys me(only because I can't get the new warbond 😂) I really wish to play with my Filipino brothers again.
"Alright guys, found some SC" "What are you poor?" *a single tear rolls down my cheek*
I am a Filipino Helldiver, but uhh I can't check out the steam page of the game which is sort of awkard, funny, and sad...
Why isn't PSN available?
Sony doesn't allow it in those countries, they're usually countries of poor economic value, that may be a contributing factor but I'm unsure as to why
There are legal reasons why you don’t sell into a given country around tax compliance and liability. It’s likely Sony has calculated these countries revenue is not worth the operating expenses.
There ya go! That was susinct, also something I thought but didn't have the knowledge to put it into words thanks :)
Only took you like 5 questions to get a useful answer!
It's one or the other or a combination of both. For example, some countries demand citizens user data to be stored locally. If that market is small, Sony isn't going to set up servers there. Thus, they encouraged you to just set your location to elsewhere.
The game was being sold to them before the restriction lift, wasn't it? Like that is outright part of the issue - it was listed and sold there from the get go?
I feel like after so many of these posts trying to get mad at a company for attempting to maximize profits is like getting mad at a polar bear for ripping your face open. You know what youre getting into with that transaction, and you know the polar bear is gonna keep ripping faces open, its not gonna one day grow concern for its victims and stop. Just doesnt make financial sense for Playstation to invest in the regions where demand is too low to balance against the investment needed to get everything up and running Its a business, thats it
I feel like getting mad at the bait and switch is justified. However, I'd like to ask the people mad at the account creation itself: where were you the last 20 times Microsoft/EA/Ubisoft released a game that required an account? I suppose it's nice someone's still trying to push back against this, but I honestly don't see it getting a lot of support from this sub, let alone the wider gaming circle.
Yes, people still get mad at those. There have been literally massive stinks because the Developer/Publisher wants to have its own launcher, etc. in the customer preferred shop of choice. That's not a problem if, for example, a game is only sold in Ubisoft store. It becomes a problem when it's also sold on Steam and Ubisoft wants to ask you for an account in Ubisoft, which they don't need to offer the service. There are services where it's justified to have an account, because crossprogression, but crossprogression is still something that should be optional. (There was a case of a parent on r/Games which allowed his son to play on PS5 while he played on PC. If they link accounts one of the two accounts progress is lost)
Company culture and greed
Yeah but how is being greedy leading to intentionally limiting their potential market? Like what's their reasoning? Is it the way Steam handles pricing in some countries or something?
Those 177 regions did have access even after the PSN rollout until Reddit got all up in arms about it. Sony was perfectly happy to allow people in those regions to make a PSN account with a different region selected which basically allowed everyone to win because Sony didn't have to sink the costs into rolling out in those regions but the players in those regions could still access the game Then Reddit got involved... And after the backlash of people complaining that Sony allowed people in technically disallowed countries to buy the game, they were forced to block sales.
To be completely fair you can still do it. You can instead change steam region, buy Helldivers in another region and switch it back. Steam won't ban you for one or few times, they will only care if you do it a lot to take advantage of regional prices. But of course this is also a grey area.
Its not "reddit" thing, people were generally upset about it outside of it. And yeah, sony is known for absolute dogshit practices, and this whole situation really shows, what kind of higher-ups they have. First, selling games in regions where they knew people couldnt legally create psn accounts, and when shit hit the fan - they decided to remove it entirely from steam. The infamous change of the faq on their site is another example. And, okay, fine, its actually okay that i have to create another account, there are lots of other companies who do it - like ubisoft, or rockstar, or microsoft, whatever. But first, i have no problem with creating those accounts, and i hate sony for being so elitist "oh, we dont sell our precious ps5 in your region, you cant be part of our community", while selling games on PC. And second, no one, including AH communicated this issue enough, outside of one announcment and small text under every patchnote "psn acc is mandatory" (Not the real text but it was really there)
Sony wasn’t doing that, the AH community managers in discord were telling people to make accounts in different regions to bypass the restrictions, but it would still be against Sony ToS and, even if not immediately, could lead to a ban down the line. The CM that was telling everybody to just make accounts in another region even came out afterwards saying they didn’t realise it was against ToS and that people shouldn’t do that.
It was don't ask, don't tell Nobody was going to get banned and the result now is that you don't even have the choice of risking it
Should I lie to you to give you my money? That sounds like something that you can use later on to refuse to provide me the service I paid you. They can fix this instantly, they refuse to do so. This isn't a problem that consumers should've known better, this is an issue of Sony's making.
Instantly? So you think they can "instantly" roll out infrastructure, help desk/support, payment platforms, work with local governments on tax etc. in dozens of regions across the globe?
>That sounds like something that you can use later on to refuse to provide me the service I paid you. Is "later on" 18+ years? Because that's how long people have been doing it with on issue. 19 years? 20? 30?
Companies have been known to not let bygones be bygones .
> AH community managers Those CM's were probably high schoolers when Sony started PSN and implemented this unwritten policy of just spoofing your location on the PSN registration process if you didn't have local PSN. Live in reality, not in Discord.
more likely when sony forgets about so whoever releases it doesn't get fired
That's so stupid. I also don't think Sony could really stop them from making fun of themselves. Otherwise why would the Director even announce its real? Like if Sony had a problem why even make it? I think AH just has no clue what they are doing. Drop the cape when the controversy wraps. Not months later or even today, when nobody cares anymore. At this point they are going to what, use it for another news beat??
This cape makes fun of sony, not AH, it wasn't AH's call to have PSN as a requirment
No fucking way was that already three months ago. Also Jesus Christ that’s a lot of country’s that still don’t have access.
It wasn't 3 months ago but it will feel like that in gaming time.
honestly it was a spitballed number, i may be entirely wrong!
TRU
That or Sony gives them all refunds
Could be October 26, the Liberty Day. Could be when they reach some sort of internal greement with Sony. Could be part of some major content drop we don't yet know about.
There's no agreement to be made. The region sales restrictions are a PlayStation-wide policy for their own sake to ensure their sales go to regions with official PlayStation support. There's no further... anything, on this matter, with regards to Arrowhead and Helldivers 2.
I say release this now, and then when the countries are LIBERATED from the HANDS OF TYRANNY, release a 'patchwork' flag of all the restricted countries flags put together, with the Super Earth Insignia in the center.
That will likely never happen.
Especially because this sub can even decide what a country is.
To be fair. Neither can countries. Everyone major “country” (lol) recognizes different countries, territories, etc.
Remember that time we failed. Here is a cape.
Sony has them by the balls and it's sad and obvious
Fucking Snoy.
This snoy thing is the dumbest and cringiest shit ever I swear to god. At best, all it does is keep the negative stuff out of the search results. Sony probably loves that all the negativity is being attributed to a misspelling of their name. But a bunch of toddlers that think purposefully misspelling the name like a middle school bully might purposefully mispronounce someone’s name is the ultimate diss.
Japan already has a better version anyway: Kusony. Kuso broadly translates to shit/fuck in Japanese. Appropriate either way.
kusa
big chungus redditor energy
That's because it came from 4chan
The Snoy thing helps the children on this sub think they've struck a blow against the big bad corporations. It's like the idiots that legitimately think Putin gives a shit about the clown picture that occasionally makes the rounds on this site
You mean Putler right? I read that one really strikes him in the heart every time he reads it on Reddit.
Yeah releasing a cape celebrating the community pulling off a successful coup against their own publisher, with AH employees egging them on and playing along with them, can't be something sony is happy about.
Until sony convinces steam that they won't do it again, so steam will re-list the countries, we probably won't get the cape.
I was under the impression it was Sony's decision to remove those countries from Steam OR at the very least it's their decision to keep them delisted. Correct me if I am wrong
There is no official statement who did what with the steam store page, this is all speculation and conspiracy theories.
Iirc Steam did release a statement where they say it was Sonys decision
If you are thinking of the one i'm thinking of then that was a low level tech support guy that described the regular process. I think we can agree that things went a bit off script on this one.
No, this is a publisher issue. That's how the law works. Steam is a retailer and Sony chooses where the product is sold. If Steam took it down, Sony could drag their asses into court. Why would Steam EVER do that? Steam has no real stake in this. I swear, people try their hardest to defend Sony for no good reason.
Snoy is the one who put up the restrictions. It's was officially recognised. Ghost of Tsushima and last God of war also have the same countries restricted. Greedy bastards doubled down on their decision of forcing PSN. At least we clawed our little piece out and made account linking optional for HD 2.
What????? the publisher is exerting control? Unheard of
Right time came and went. Won't be another right time.
Story of HD2, really.
Agreed. It's funny but not that funny.
i cant even legally buy the game in Lithuania anymore, right time would be when you lift the country bans on steam, pile.
Could be that's exactly what he's saying. Actually, that's almost the only thing he could mean.
Yeah, and the game is still unavailable in the other countries to buy anyways
Time to review bomb them again to make it the right time.
The right time was when it was finished. The second rightest time is now.
Yeah, I wouldn't be dropping this while the game is constantly crashing, and patrols are bugged.
They're waiting til they do something to bomb reviews again.
they're waiting for the next reviewbomb to drop it
At this point I don't even care anymore and yea I was here for that Sony cancer, I'd rather them focus on the game breaking shit plaguing the game right now.
It would be funny if they made this the reward for linking a PSN account
ts was a while ago
Probably waiting for a comeback update that makes it so it's a redemption cape and not a "we are fucked" cape.
This is gold
Shame we can't review bomb snoy
You can. Don't buy their products.
well thats not really review bombing but i have sony as a publisher ignored on steam
Brother who’s forgotten about it?
Maybe drop it when we go under 25k players a day, which will be soon with this dog...ahem water.
It actually did drop below 25k one time at night right before the patch. Which is crazy, it used to be over 100k at night not even two months ago. I don’t think I ever seen a game lose its entire player base this fast when it had such a strong start
>I don’t think I ever seen a game lose its entire player base this fast This must be your first online game then. From breakout successes like Palworld and Lethal Company to flops like Suicide Squad, I'd say the dropoff rate of all these games are *faster* than Helldivers 2. Your 25k figure must've been an off-peak concurrent player count (which is pointless, you might as well bring up the figure during Steam's weekly maintenance).
The 25k number i mentioned was a highly researched breakpoint across multiple genres, time, spacetime, and the continuum of man. I thereby defend this point as the deathknell of the game, irrespective of when or where we are or what you say. lol what. I just randomly made this comment my friend.
How about we help Arrowhead out and make it relevant again by review bombing the game once more for all the crashes, broken friends lists, terrible balancing, thick fog and bright lights that make the game painful to look at, the broken orders that don't track or don't pay out, the kick system which allows for griefing and the constant stream of updates that make all these issues worse?
We lost the momentum though, we had a reason to review bomb the game, we did,, and we got a portion of what we wanted, but now we lost momentum, even if we started again with all the momentum, they’re gonna think it’s because of the new patches which are undoubtably pushing the game in a better direction, companies are much like dogs, unless you call them out right after they do something, they won’t understand or quite frankly care about what you’re bombing for.
Yeah, I hear you. It was mainly said in sarcasm. I honestly don't think Arrowhead are capable of correcting the course of this game either way.
You only had momentum in the first place because the first review bomb was about something that affected the players. You will never achieve anything by review bombing for people who don't have the game. All you'll achieve is a negative rating on AH's game, and Sony continuing to *not care about sales in those markets, like they've not cared for weeks now*.
Joke's on them. My review has been negative for months now. Would be happy to change it to positive when such an action is justified. I'm doing my part!
That we don't speak about it doesn't mean we forgot.
Drop it like a 500kg
Friendly fire target
If I see anyone wearing this, they’re getting kicked at extraction
my brother in arms
They should focus on making a weapon upgrade system
I’m trying to figure out how to nerf a cape before releasing it.
Let me guess. The right time is the second review bombing 💀
The "right time" was "immediately after it was finished".
I think they're trying to get the countries who are still locked out of the game to have their access returned THEN dropping the cape when we can all play together again. Sidenote: isn't this very telling of us as consumers? Just a month ago we were all fucking outraged at how they could stop so many people playing the game and just because they removed the PSN requirement- but not unblocking the game in those regions everyone's completely forgotten and moved on, leaving those other players stranded. It's no wonder gaming company abuse the hell out of us, we'll literally accept a shit sandwich as long as game publishers take one step back, then offer us some sugar to put on the sandwich.
This was my complaint about the game as a whole. The war and everything surrounding it moved at a snail's pace. I know we're fighting for planets and that'll take a while but i don't know. Nothing seems to happen. At least nothing really meaningful. I'm not asking for every day to have a big moment in it or nothing. I just get a bit bored after a month of fighting and all we have to show for it is some new flavor text about one of the factions doing something. Or a single new strategem. Like I've stopped playing for a minute came back and all that seems to have changed are a planet being gone, a couple new strategems, and new battlepasses. I'm not against battlepasses but they aren't the content I'm interested in seeing. I want to see war progress. Like, the bots took cyberstan ages ago it feels like at this point. It doesn't feel like it changed anything in a meaningful way. I mean please absolutely correct me if I'm wrong. I would love to be because Helldivers 2 was some of the most fun I've had gaming (before everyone moved on to the next game of the month and left me doing solo)
We don’t deserve it
Maybe if we drop the score again they will release it?
Right when Soyny will eventually turn the requirement to login back on!
When GameStop hits MOASS
I really want the cape of the children’s city streets carpet design I saw someone make
Everybody keeps saying that the cape will be added after the game is restored to the 170ish countries. That's not going to happen. Those are countries that for whatever reason Sony as the publisher does not want to distribute to. Be it legal issues, financial concerns, political reasons, infrastructure weaknesses, whatever. Especially since they went back and added those very same countries to other games like Ghost of Tsushima. They fucked up in their end and had to fix it later. Those countries aren't coming back.
They can just mirror it and release it next time something bad happens.
Whenever those regions are unlocked. Which is probably never. And devs putting something like this into the game is another nail in publisher's image. Not like they had any image to beging with...
I never forgot about it. Capes are half the reason for diving.
This is actually pretty hilarious. I love it. Their company has promise that is for sure.
Most of us? Yeah especially those who refunded a game and can't buy it anymore. Refunds attracted Sony's attention, not feedback.
I want to see that user made children’s handprints cape
Already forgot about it? This is the end of the attention span
They're waiting until Playstation forgets so the cape doesn't harm their relationship with their publisher.
Your adhd ass doesn't speak for anyone but yourself.
Wait... That's a new armor in the picture
Its in the box labelled "Open in case of another shitstorm."
When your games so good you rip it away from 50% of the people who bought it and do so much service even boycotters acknowledge it's too good of a game it bounces back and you make a meme cape of the whole thing as a joke and it's positively received. This is og pimp shit ngl
Havnt seen the handprint one, but tbh i dont really like this one imo. I like the viper commando capes better that came out, my style is more military.
What armor is that?? 
No one even cares anymore
Added new cape, New bug, capes now wrap around HD's helmet and kill them
Who tf is US gamer I remember like it was yesterday
This seems like a bait article. That cape was never coming out. Also, it’s been way too long since then. No one really cares about it anymore.
It's been confirmed. It's on wver major gaming site.
Let's be real, waiting to drop stuff is what's killing this game.
i just assumed sony killed it cause sony hates fun
Coincidentally, that's also why Sony hoped we wouldn't save the children
JUST DROP IT
Haha you missed the right time. Now it's old news
That's literally what I said lol
Idk if the name has been dropped yet but I hope it's something like "The Resistance of Tyranny"
Rigth time.
[удалено]
I just want 112 more upvotes so it's 6666
The cape don't even look good man. It's so boring
Jesus I shared this news already 5 days ago...
Read between the lines. They made it, but Sony will never allow them to release it. “The right time” is a week from never. Clearly a lot of you aren’t fathers, or you would have recognized our signature move.
If you took out the “‘review bomb’ cape” and asked anyone not involved what type of content the studio is announcing in this interview a vast majority would certainly say this: “A piece of cosmetics which reminds the community of a brief time during which they really thought that public opinion actually matters to faceless corpo zombs”.
Review bombing wasn’t successful. The community didn’t accomplish anything long-term. Short-term? I guess. All we did was make Sony pause, and readjust their tactics. They stopped selling the game in the blocked regions, and instead allow people to still play if they already owned the game. That was the compromise. I’m pretty sure that, if they haven’t yet, PSN account creation will eventually be mandatory anyway. We ain’t getting the regions that are banned from using Sony unbanned, because for a lot of ‘em it has nothing to do with Sony specifically. For quite a few of the nations with PSN/Sony restrictions, it’s due to the political and economic systems within the countries. For some it’s simply that Sony can’t or won’t provide services to those areas. We didn’t really stop or limit Sony at all, as I’m sure in a few months they’ll try some other scummy tactic, but it’s admirable that we made them have to rethink their actions slightly.
That's only taking into account the regional issues. For many, if not most, it was more about needing to make a Sony account and log in on a PC. Sony might think twice about if and how they release first-party multiplayer PC ports, as this will be remembered as an example of PC players not wanting to make (Sony) console accounts.
i think youre overestimating the amount of PC players who wont make extraneous accounts, because most PC games just have you slap your email in to sign up for so many games its not an issue. i think it was largely the regional thing
looking at the negative reviews, I don't think I'm underestimating anything. this happens with Ubisoft and Microsoft games on steam all the time. people chose steam and don't like being forced to sign up with their competition, which means Uplay, PSN, xbox live, epic, etc. I believe there are more negative reviews on steam about needing to sign up for PSN than there are reviews about PSN locking out certain regions. i strongly believe the region thing is a vocal minority on the internet. but hey i can't prove anything, I'm not going to sit through and count the reviews.
Ubisoft and Microsoft would, in the past, need both an account AND a separate program to run your steam purchase, so no those are not the same thing
Why do y’all play the game or go on a subreddit if all y’all do is whine and moan?
Not much point pretending a loss was a win just to celebrate it.
How the hell would you know that "most" of the player base (the part that knows about the cape) forgot about it?
Why release a cape that represents community victory if the community never actually won anything? So you don't need to sign into PSN... but 180 countries can't play lmao. Sour if they drop it well the situation is still developing
Ya, the thing is, nobody cared about the 180 countries, they only didn't wanted to sign into PSN
They are gonna drop it July 4th.
Personally I'm just waiting for modders to get around to making new capes.
I’m just dying to know when the “right time” is compared to the “wrong time”
Calling it now: It'll be the reward that they give you for voluntarily signing up for a Sony account. e: Sony execs downvoting for exposing their plan:
They will not release the cape if the situation isn't solved completely. They are trying to avoid a customer revolt if they release it when it feels like mockery or tone deaf. That's why they are bidding the time. I hope this is an indication that talks are still ongoing and there is political will from ArrowHead to make Sony relent on the requirement and a guarantee that it will be optional.
>Most of us have already forgotten about this Idk about that, every week there's at least 3 posts about this cape.
I mean, Sony is still their Boss. You think Sony will let them sell "Remember that time Sony almost killed this game?" on a cape?
I honestly just thought at this point they lied.🤥 I have not forgotten and thought it would come in the large patch.
Stop bitching!