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

On 5/3/2024 1:38 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

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?"
 

Yes of course.  Sony's quite known for their lack of care about their customers at least since their 2005 rootkit scandal.
--
-Justisaur
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