I had a nightmare situation a few years back with a ZenFone 6.
It bricked itself within a week, and after I sent it in I got months of radio silence, until I started calling them about it. They had no clue what the status of my repair was, there were a ton of orders for part after part, and it just kept going.
Eventually I just started pressuring anyone I could with “I need a new phone, this old one is falling apart, I can’t just keep using it for months on end as you figure your shit out” and they eventually relented, instead just giving me an entire new unit.
Last year I bought an Asus monitor with clearly advertised “on-site-warranty” (which means a courier comes to your house and just drops off a replacement in exchange for picking up the old one), it was DOA.
I thought great, “on-site-swap” should have this sorted by tomorrow. I started the RMA and the first thing they want me to do is ship my monitor to Germany at my expense. I said “fuck no”, and instead returned it to the retailer as I was still within the return window, and then just walked into another retailer with more in stock, to pick up another, which then worked.
Then, months later, some dude calls me and asks when I’ll be home for my on-site warranty swap, straight up dropping my jaw to the floor. I know I cancelled my RMA.
Lo and behold, the RMA case-number wasn’t even the same, so for some reason Asus decided, on their own, to open another RMA, WITHOUT TALKING TO ME for a monitor I TOLD THEM I WOULD BE RETURNING. Maybe someone tried to fix the fuck-up of not honouring the on-site warranty, but holy fuck if that took two months, thank god I took it into my own hands and got it fixed within 24 hours.
Your approach to discussion is similar to that of a wrecking ball.
Next time, just add a single sentence along the lines of “still glad seeing everyone involved anti-consumer bullshit crash and burn”.
That’s still a valid take. But you’re not gonna see the improvement in the industry we all want realized without caring about the nuances, or acknowledging how and when most people actually care.
The problem was never the PSN requirement, it was dropping it on people months after launch. No one would be pissed if it had been enforced from day one.
They don’t want out, they want sony to wise the fuck up and get with the program.
All I’m saying is, this isn’t some planned-in-advance good cop bad cop routine.
Agreeing to terms isn’t the same as watching your business partner mismanage the customer base to the point your lunch goes up in flames.
Sony is the publisher. Launching the game in countries that don’t even have PSN is 100% on them. Sony is taking action that makes no fucking sense in context, no matter what Arrowhead agreed to.
Because if good games from a decade ago are freely available, they can’t shove a new overexploiting live service game down our throats when it pales in comparison to the entertainment that’s available for free.
They can only sell less for more, by taking the previous option off the table.