Helldivers 2 Players Express Frustration On Steam As It Will Soon Require A PSN Account
Up until this point, a PlayStation Network account was not required to play the game on Steam.
Also their FAQ page on steam is locked down (except for moderators and their disciples) so I can't post about not being able to use native voice chat. Literally KILLS any teamcentric gameplay.
"Let me pause and type out that I just launched an airstrike so my team doesn..."
"Let me delete the warning and retype an apology for nuking my entire squad."
The reason is that Sony wants more data. There's no technical reason for it, as the game has already worked fine without it for months. This is just Sony clamping down on a promise they quietly made and that most people forgot about.
As for the extra hoops, if you're still wanting to play the game and don't already have a PSN account, you'll need to make a free one and link it. It shouldn't require any additional logins after the initial link, so after the initial account setup there shouldn't be any additional change to the process of logging in and playing.
There’s no technical reason for it, as the game has already worked fine without it for months
Well, sort of. Friend requests between PC and PS5 have been borked for a long time now, recently they changed how account ID's are generated randomly to now looking like it's a specific ID. I wouldn't be surprised if linking accounts was part of this in a skeezy way.
The worst part is I have a PSN account but I haven't had a console since the PS2 lol.
I read that Sony is doing it for security reasons for safety/grieving and that the game did originally require a PSN login at launch, but stopped it at launch. But I am guessing this is just them saying hey we have this many people using PSN accounts. No other reason to have Steam prompt for login for anything besides the Steam account
If you're banned on steam for shitting up the game, they don't want you making a new account to shit it up on PSN. And vice versa. Currently you can get banned in game on steam and just pack up and move to PSN.
It means to be an incessant troll you would have to limit your account spam to the PSN side, which requires 2 factor, or make more steam accounts as well.
So halving the troll problem for Arrowhead by not having them chase two separate account systems.
It is likely also so that matchmaking and player counts on the PSN side can be accurate. If there are 300k people playing, but the PSN only reports half of that, it makes the game population seem much smaller for new users.
Honestly i treat it like Origin or EPIC. I don't love having to have it, but the benefits out weight the demerits, and I have the account anyways.
Sony published the game. You already need a PSN account for cross play, but it wasn't required, you just didn't get crossplay. Now you need it to play. A PSN account is free. I've had one for a decade+ and have never even owned a Playstation. Not that big of a deal in my opinion. You will just have to sign in. It is less invasive than a CDPR account for Cyberpunk and Witcher or ubisoft for farcry, or EA for all the others. PSN doesn't even require an additional piece of software launcher like the rest. You literally sign in, in game, and never think about it again. Not that big of a deal.
Well that sucks. It was fun while it lasted. I'll have to change my review now.
That sucks and they will probably do that for all of their titles 🙄.
I guess back to good ol' DRG then
Hasn't it always needed that? I remember having to do it shortly after launch.
Yes. They just didn’t enforce it until now. For people to be raging and demanding refunds is ridiculous.
Okay so I must be missing something. Could someone explain to me why exactly this, of all things, is getting the nuclear backlash? It's not like they're adding a subscription charge or new microtransactions, you just need to have an account.
The account link was optional, but somewhere they have written that the PSN account will be required at a later stage, seemingly due to issues at launch. Now, people who are living in a country where PSN is not available (which are quite a lot actually) will no longer be able to play, neither to refund, since the launch is months ago.
So it's way more than just having yet another account, which is especially ridiculous in the case of PSN for Steam PC games.
Okay so THAT makes sense, people for whom a PSN account is simply impossible will not be able to play, THAT is worth being mad about. But we are absolutely not just seeing outrage from players in countries where they CAN'T have a PSN account, we're seeing outrage from people who could and just don't want to.
What I'm trying to understand is why. I get that it's a greedy data-grab from Sony that is fully not necessary, but also... it's just not a big ask. They're not asking for your credit card, they don't want your social security number, I don't even think there's anything keeping you from telling them that your name is "Bofa Deeznutz." I get wanting to control your data, and I would absolutely suggest a randomly generated super-strong password, but it just seems to me like everyone so angry that they're quitting just... has a pretty easy fix for that.
So for MOST of us, it really, really is just having yet another account. The few who genuinely don't have that option are right to be angry, but for most of us it really just seems like an overreaction.
It works just fine without it, so the reason playstation are enforcing has nothing to do with making the game better and something to do with data collection and them profiting from it.
It's a fucking idiot move, burning goodwill for probably very little actual gain
It's a case of the straw that broke the camel's back I think. People are getting sick and tired of needing an account for everything. And this is getting more attention than it otherwise would have both because of how popular the game is and the fact that the requirement is coming after launch. I'm tired of making an account for epic games, for battlenet, for microsoft, for gog, for capcom, for PlayStation Network. Especially when the game has clearly been functioning perfectly fine without it this entire time
I think that people are finally just reaching the breaking point on this and helldivers was just in the unfortunate position of being the one that finally broke that back
M not really bothered by this. If a game dev wants control of their account system, then that’s fine with me.
but it's not a game dev. It's the publisher wanting to boost active user numbers for shareholder purposes, Arrowhead doesn't gain anything from this happening.
Like I think that's the thing that pisses me off the most about this - Sony clearly didn't give two shits about this game on launch with servers underprepared and overwhelmed for weeks after, but as soon as they smelled money they were more than ready to shit where Arrowhead eats with this godawful requirement.
