Video Game News and Miscellany

AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Jan 9, 2009
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Sony IS to blame; they are the publisher and they are the ones who decided to make the publisher decision sell the game in regions where you can't make a PSN account, knowing that they would eventually force the decision. Arrowhead didn't make that decision and have been actively fighting for awhile.

Sony's notorious about hating cross play in general and are well known as the only publisher that demands monetary compensation to allow it. This is just them trying to gouge more sell-able assets from a suddenly popular title.
 
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Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Nov 26, 2008
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AshburnerX said:
Sony IS to blame; they are the publisher and they are the ones who decided to make the publisher decision sell the game in regions where you can't make a PSN account, knowing that they would eventually force the decision. Arrowhead didn't make that decision and have been actively fighting for awhile.

Sony's notorious about hating cross play in general and are well known as the only publisher that demands monetary compensation to allow it. This is just them trying to gouge more sell-able assets from a suddenly popular title.
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Sony is absolutely to blame for selling it in regions they knew wouldn't be eligible for psn access. But Arrowhead did know well before the game launched that sony was going to force a psn account, and they did a truly poor job of communicating that, thinking it wouldn't be a big deal.

I like Arrowhead, I've been a fan of their games ever since the first Magicka. But they made their own mistakes in this, even if they aren't the ones forcing the issue. Hopefully the backlash might change their mind.
 
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@Li3n

@Li3n

Jan 30, 2009
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Ravenpoe said:
But they made their own mistakes in this
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Did they though ?

Coz the PSN login being busted at release meant they could sell the game in all the places you can't get the account, and releasing a patch to make it mandatory at the height of the games popularity was sure to end up in giant internet drama, which would then convince Sony not to fuck them over by making the game unsellable in said places where there's n PSN...
 
Vrii

Vrii

Nov 27, 2008
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@Li3n said:
Coz the PSN login being busted at release meant they could sell the game in all the places you can't get the account, and releasing a patch to make it mandatory at the height of the games popularity was sure to end up in giant internet drama, which would then convince Sony not to fuck them over by making the game unsellable in said places where there's n PSN...
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Leveraging their paid players' emotional reactions to renegotiate a contract they willingly entered into is a choice they made, but I'm not sure it's one I'd use to present them as a player-focused dev team or one that didn't make any mistakes along the way.
 
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@Li3n

@Li3n

Jan 30, 2009
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Vrii said:
Leveraging their paid players' emotional reactions to renegotiate a contract they willingly entered into is a choice they made, but I'm not sure it's one I'd use to present them as a player-focused dev team or one that didn't make any mistakes along the way.
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So you'd rather less people play it by either excluding places with no PSN access, or by not having a publisher as powerful as Sony ?

And that's supposed to be good for the players ?
 
Far

Far

Nov 28, 2008
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Yeah I feel like that came outta nowhere. I know they'd done early access for a few select people a bit ago but I didn't think wide early access was gonna be any time soon.
 
Vrii

Vrii

Nov 27, 2008
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@Li3n said:
So you'd rather less people play it by either excluding places with no PSN access, or by not having a publisher as powerful as Sony ?
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Personally I'd rather the devs had been honest and communicative about their agreements so that the players had the necessary information to make informed decisions about what they did or did not want to buy into and support with their money. The end result of this may have been positive, but I don't think that justifies the choices they made, nor do I think that it was a safe bet from the outset that Sony would cave on things that were explicitly agreed to in their contract.
 
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@Li3n

@Li3n

Jan 30, 2009
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Vrii said:
Personally I'd rather the devs had been honest and communicative about their agreements so that the players had the necessary information to make informed decisions about what they did or did not want to buy into and support with their money. The end result of this may have been positive, but I don't think that justifies the choices they made, nor do I think that it was a safe bet from the outset that Sony would cave on things that were explicitly agreed to in their contract.
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The PSN req where apparently on the Steam page from the get go.

And i think the game prompted you to log in, but worked just fine if you clicked Cancel.
 
Vrii

Vrii

Nov 27, 2008
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@Li3n said:
The PSN req where apparently on the Steam page from the get go.

And i think the game prompted you to log in, but worked just fine if you clicked Cancel.
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The requirement was listed but not enforced, and the devs were not actively telling people that it was going to be in the future. They've come out and publicly taken responsibility for that.

Again, I'm not saying the outcome here wasn't positive, both for the devs and for their players. I do think the devs gambled big time on player reaction forcing Sony's hand, and that delaying those public statements of their own accountability would push most of the blame and outrage at Sony instead of themselves. I would not trust them to openly communicate about choices that might impact their players in the future - to me that's a big deal, obviously other people are going to be more or less concerned about it.
 
Vrii

Vrii

Nov 27, 2008
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@Li3n said:
I mean, how would you know that before buying the game ?
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Setting aside that word of mouth is a thing, the big benefit of buying on Steam is that you can refund within the first two hours, right? Buy the game, see if you're okay with what it asks you to do, refund if you're not?

The math changes on that dramatically when the devs have arranged to allow things temporarily that won't be allowed long-term, particularly with that two hour window in mind. What happens if they make the change (that again, they always knew they were going to have to make and never bothered to communicate to the players), Sony refuses to let them out of something that they agreed to in a contract, and Steam refuses to refund the game just because the devs and publisher are having a public shouting match about whose fault it is that the rules changed? Who stands to lose from that?
 
Vrii

Vrii

Nov 27, 2008
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Look, you're clearly very convinced that the devs didn't do anything wrong here, and I can't say I'm particularly interested in an extended back and forth that repeatedly comes down to "if this had backfired it was the players who would have suffered for it," so I'm going to leave things there. If you're okay with how it was all handled, great! Enjoy the game!
 
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@Li3n

@Li3n

Jan 30, 2009
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Dude, my original post was a conspiracy theory that the devs where playing 5D chess to force Sony to allow sales in other countries then the 73 PSN is available in. I wasn't being that serious.


Also, apparently the game is still delisted for sale in non PSN countries.

The devs should have been aware that requiring a PSN account would make teh game unplayable in those regions, and just not sell it there. The excuses about not making it clear enough is BS for that reason. I'm pretty sure that at least in the EU not refunding the game under those conditions would get them sued and fined.
 
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