Re: Helldivers 2 to require Playstation subscription even bought on Steam for PC.

On Fri, 3 May 2024 11:43:45 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

Helldivers 2 was looking like a pretty good squad Co-op game, I was
somewhat interested, but so many things to play, not enough time.  It
won't affect me if I were to play it, but there's regions where it was
sold that the PSN isn't available.

<snip>

Account linking plays a critical role in protecting our players and
upholding the values of safety and security provided on PlayStation and
PlayStation Studios games. This is our main way to protect players from
griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of players that engage in
that type of behaviour. It also allows those players that have been
banned the right to appeal.

Here's the stuff Sony left unsaid:

    "More importantly, onboarding people into a new service
    is possibly the hardest step of getting new customers. Even
    if it's free, there is a huge amount of inertia to overcome
    getting people to sign up. By tying our newest, most popular
    game to the service, we force people to choose between
    quitting the game, or signing up. We're fairly sure that
    most people will choose the latter rather than give up a
    product they enjoy and already paid for.

    "And once their subscribed to PSN, the likelihood of their
    buying further products through the service - magnitudely
    increases. We feel this more than outweighs any downsides,
    such as losing the few customers who don't want to sign up,
    or any ill will earned by this move.

    "The stuff about the 'protecting the player'? That's all
    secondary to this move. Sure, it helps with that, maybe.
    It doesn't really matter. Heck, by putting everyone under
    our service's aegis, it even help us better comply with
    various laws around the world dealing with privacy and /
    or moderation laws. We might even make a bit of a profit
    from collecting and reselling your data! But, really, none
    of that stuff is the important bit. What we really want
    is to finally get you onto PSN, because that's how we're
    gonna make the real money. After all, it worked for Valve
    with Half-Life 2 and Steam; it worked for Epic with Fortnite
    and their Epic Game Store. So why shouldn't it work with us?"