Major orders completed, Helldivers: Following an outpouring of criticism from aggrieved players unhappy with the proposed move, Sony has officially backpedaled on their plans to require PC players to link their Steam accounts to the PlayStation Network in order to play Helldivers 2.
As previously reported, this invasive requirement was first announced on May 2nd courtesy of an official post made by the game’s publisher Sony to the game’s official Steam page.
“Attention Helldivers,” wrote Sony. “Due to technical issues at the launch of HELLDIVERS™ 2, we allowed the linking requirements for Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network account to be temporarily optional. That grace period will now expire.”
“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,” said the game’s publisher. “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.”
“We understand that while this may be an inconvenience to some of you, this step will help us to continue to build a community that you are all proud to be a part of,” Sony ultimately concluded. “Many thanks for your continued support of HELLDIVERS 2!”
Unsurprisingly, this news went over extremely poorly with the game’s playerbase, as not only was the mandatory creation of a PSN account viewed as inconvenient, unnecessary, and unsafe (since 2011, Sony has suffered seven major hacks, each of which resulted in the offenders gaining to personal employee and customer information), but this new requirement also meant that despite being sold within their borders, Helldivers 2 would be rendered unplayable in the 93% of countries (177 of the 190 across the globe) where PSN is not available, including significant markets such as Egypt, Vietnam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela.
Hit with such a blatant insult to their consumer rights, players soon attempted to resolve the situation by reaching out to the game’s community managers.
However, after being hit with a ‘Do you not have phones?’-level response from a CM known as Spitz, as seen below, and realizing that official channels would offer no help in the matter, players soon took to voicing their discontent via the only avenue they had left: Review bombing.
Taking to the game’s Steam page, hundreds of thousands of unhappy players proceeded to hit the game with negative feedback, in doing so impressively managing to turn its overwhelmingly positive review average into little more than a smoldering wasteland of red thumbs down icons and anti-Sony sentiment.
Further compounding the backlash was an influx of customer refund requests, all of which cited either the game’s soon-to-be-unavailability in their country or Sony’s unethical decision to sell the game in these territories despite knowing that the impending requirement change would render their copies unplayable as the reason for their filing, many of which Steam reportedly granted even if the relevant player had already played the game for more than the game’s maximum ‘refund window’ time of two hours.
Faced with mounting pressure from fans – and in a result that even the most optimistic of the review bombing campaign’s proponents would admit they had little believe would actually come to fruition – Sony backed down.
Taking to the official PlayStation Twitter account on May 5th, the company declared, “Helldivers fans — we’ve heard your feedback on the Helldivers 2 account linking update. The May 6 update, which would have required Steam and PlayStation Network account linking for new players and for current players beginning May 30, will not be moving forward.”
“We’re still learning what is best for PC players and your feedback has been invaluable,” they asserted. “Thanks again for your continued support of Helldivers 2 and we’ll keep you updated on future plans.”
As an aside, it is important to note that while Sony’s capitulation is welcome, the positive resolution of the Helldivers 2 situation is absolutely a case of ‘winning the battle, not the war’.
Per recent history, between their ongoing censorship of various titles to their lack of hesitation in revoking customers’ access to digitally purchased media, Sony has proven that they are not to be trusted in any regard when it comes to consumer rights.
To this end, it is unlikely that this lone incident will foster any real or significant change in Sony’s business practices – in fact, an educated guess suggests that were the Helldivers 2 not as massive as it is, Sony would have bulldozed forward with this requirement regardless of customer sentiment.
Ultimately, players should absolutely take their well-deserved victory lap – after all, it’s not every day that they’re able to convince one of the most anti-consumer companies in the entire video game industry to actually walk back such a blatant, money-grabbing move (with so many players being forced to use the PSN ecosystem, it is inevitable that a small percentage would eventually find themselves spending more and more time, and thus more and more money, on it).
But when they’re done, rather than kick back and consider everything well and done, they should, unfortunately, be ready to fight back with just as much fervor against Sony’s next inevitable attempt to screw them over.
And let’s be honest: We all know it’s coming sooner rather than later.
