To summarize or if the link breaks, one of the devs “knew beforehand” they’d have to require PSN accounts post launch, but disabled them for a smooth launch. That’s interesting, but as long as Sony was acting as publisher I feel like the blame still goes on them for selling the game to non-PSN countries initially.
They don’t even say sorry. They did not use the words Sorry, Mistake, Problem, Wrong, or Fault. They say the approximation of “We see you’re absolutely outraged. We’ve decided to change our decisions. We are always improving.”
They haven’t. Ghosts of Tsushima’s PC release is going to require account-linking from day 1 for the online component. The only thing Sony has learned is that the shittiness has to be ready and working from the start.
Translated: Dear suckers who keep giving us money for half-finished products. We are sincerely sorry, sorry for getting caught. We thought we could squeeze through with this one, but apparently our PC fans are not as gullible as our console fans.
Longer answer: The access hadn’t been removed yet, as the update that would enable account linking wasn’t pushed yet. As for the Steam side, I’m pretty sure people who already had the game installed should’ve had access still, although updates and general unsureness definitely could be obstacles. With this tweet, however, the update is no longer coming, and were just waiting for Sony/Valve to lift the selling/installing restrictions in those countries.
Steam only removes games from the store, and doesn’t remove games from anyone’s library. Those affected people, if they didn’t refund, will still have HD2 in their library. There is also never install restrictions/blocking.
Yeah exactly. And it’s often the only feedback that gets any attention unfortunately. It was getting media attention and getting very loud.
Plus the whole thing was just stupid. They could have accomplished exactly the same thing with little backlash by offering some little in-game trinket for voluntarily linking a PSN account where it was possible to get one. This wasn’t my idea, I saw it somewhere on Lemmy, but that person needs to get a job at Sony stat because the chucklefucks working there now have no clue.
Negative reviews should remain until the purchase restrictions put in place on Steam for non-PSN countries have been reverted.
Until then this looks like a temporary move for damage control and they’ll try this again when refunds are less likely and wont be from restricted countries.
There was a theory that the purchase restrictions were put in place by Valve, not Sony (because those countries couldn’t make an account without violating TOS). If so, Valve might shortly remove the restrictions.
Valve can remove games from sale for any reason they like - it’s been a point of consumer contention when they are accused of censorship for certain risque anime games, too.
They can completely remove a game from sale if it turns out to be bricking people’s computers or function terribly. (Sony did this with Cyberpunk on PSN, without CDPR’s approval)
There may be suspicion the game is not legitimate for sale, for instance it illegally uses someone else’s work.
Going country-specific, if a game is revealed to be slightly less than universally positive to the perfectly infallible, totally-not-genocidal Chinese Communist Party, they may want to stop sales in China.
If a game lets you buy it in Tanzania, download it in Tanzania, and then to play, has you sign an agreement that says “I truthfully state that I do not live in Tanzania”, then that bone-headed agreement reflects poorly on Valve, so they have almost a legal need to take it out of sale in that country.
Basically, each country has its own laws of sale. Having those switches to turn off sales in certain places is important for the store’s own safety. While 60% of the blame for selling a faulty product goes to the manufacturer, 40% still goes to the storefront that chose to stock and sell that faulty good. In this case, the fault was specific to the country of play.
That’s right, I have heard of some of these cases, but thank you very much for the info! I definitely didn’t want Sony to have any ground to stand on here, so happy that Valve is able to step up to protect consumers however they can.
I hope Valve never does this. Tons of games on Steam only work with community fixes, it sets a bad precedent if they pull them because they don’t work in their official state.
It’s better to have them then not, I would just force a disclaimer during sale for abandoned titles that most players have reported that the game does not function without community patches.
Well the guy who made GotR to get saints row working died a few years back and AFAIK the game is effectively nonfunctional for the majority of people who buy it. Those people paid for a product that they cannot use. They could go emulate the game for free and it would run better.
Plus, the owners of the title have a functioning PC version sold elsewhere than Steam. They could easily remedy this if Steam took away their listing.
Illegal means against the law… so no.
Out of their jurisdiction, Steam is Valve’s platform, so no again.
Valve is the seller in this case, who will be liable for the agreement they have with their customers. If one of their sold product is going to end up massively refunded, who do you think will be processing these? Then Valve has to turn around and get the money from Sony… guess how Valve estimates that will go.
So step 1 for Valve is limit exposure by stopping sales where you expect issues.
Step 2 is analyzing the potential for refunds in other countries and limiting there as well if deemed to big a risk.
I can only imagine that feedback from Valve to Sony played a role in the decision to not push forward. As large corporations only speak money… the cost benefit made at Sony must have missed some things to have it now skew the other way.
I’ll believe the account requirement will be totally in the past IF the sales to the non PSN countries are reinstated. Cause why limit your customers to countries if that is not necessary.
Honestly I’m keeping my negative review permanent. The game is great and I enjoy it, but besides a temporary back lash I want the sting to stick around to hopefully teach companies about fucking around and finding out.
They won’t learn anything. They only nulled their bullshit because it would hurt their financial quarter because their biggest cash cow game at the moment is bombing. They only way to maybe make them learn would be if every single one of the “outraged gamers” would just uninstall and never play it again, but that won’t happen and Sony knows that (which is why they can try pulling that shit in the first place).
Good for the peeps in non-PSN countries tho. For them, this is a real win.
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