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this post was submitted on 04 May 2024
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If this is about the new PSN requirements, I don't even think Arrowhead should take the blame. That was obviously something that came down from the publisher.
Arrowhead, as the developers and artists who worked to create the game, deserve little to none of the blame. Arrowhead, as the business entity who voluntarily entered into an agreement with Sony to have this requirement in their game in the first place, definitely deserves the blame. Whatever project lead thought this was an acceptable concession to make in order to secure funding from Sony was definitely not on the same page as the rest of the team who actually made the game.
Seeing a lot of parallels to the Cyberpunk 2077 launch; beautiful game created by a passionate team who loved their craft, massively damaged by short-sighted, greedy decisions by studio execs.
I believe Sony owns the Helldivers IP, so they may not have had much choice in the matter.
Oh, that is a great point. It’s possible their hands were 100% tied on this simply due to who controls the IP.
They may not be to blame, but they are responsible.
For instance if they knew this was coming down the pipeline as a requirement, this should have been in place on day one.
So they should’ve delayed the release until Sony got their shit together with the PSN API?
If they wanted to make PlayStation networks 100% hard requirement for the game, that should have been there on day one. The enforcement should have been there. Even if the API servers were having issues the enforcement should have been there.
The software's behavior is the social contract with the user. If steam says a PlayStation network account is required, and you load the game and it's only needed for cross play or it's optional. That is the defacto contract. And that has existed for about 4 months.
It's entirely possible to buy the game, without seeing the PlayStation button. If you just click buy now, or get it from your wish list or whatever, you're not presented with anything indicating PlayStation is required. So the common use case for a steam user, is to run the game, oh it needs this network That's not cool refund. This program has broken that pattern.
So yes it is entirely the developers fault, if this is a hard requirement it should always be hard requirement, not after 4 months. That is changing the lived gamer experience.
The devs hate the requirement too: https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjyll7/some_discord_updates/
This is 100% a Sony thing
It was. PSN linking was available day one, and they disabled it temporarily when the traffic was too much for the auth server to handle. Not reading doesn't mean the requirement wasn't communicated to you.
100% it wasn't communicated to users as the experience did not require it. For 3 months.
This is a policy CHANGE. Hence the need for an announcement
Quite literally was talked about in patch notes and mentioned on the storefront pages where it was available.
If it wasn't a change, why the need for an announcement?
The service was decoupled when auth servers couldn't handle traffic the first few days. A good number of people, myself and my static included, DID already link PSN accounts. Mine is registered from the bahamas. I do not live in the bahamas.
This is a lot of words to say "I'm angry and I want to blame a hardworking creative studio, instead of the massive, famously consumer unfriendly, publisher that's actually at fault".
Does the game on Steam deserve the downvotes? Yes. 100%. The game on Steam is a direct result of the developers work and Sony's publishing. But it's not the developer's work that is causing problems, but Sony's publishing decisions that have negatively impacted the experience for huge numbers of people.
So does the developer Arrowhead deserve blame for accepting a contract to produce a game for Sony's IP? No, they did that and did their jobs as contracted. Sony is the only party here that deserves blame for enforcing an asinine account policy that they're competitors (i.e. Microsoft), do not.
This might be true but this one title's success will have a bigger impact on the developer's (≈100 staff) future prospects than Sony (≈113k staff).
Sony could simply ignore the issue and they wouldn't be losing any sleep.
On the other hand this game is the only title the studio has released since Helldivers in 2015, they have the most incentive to protect the reputation of the new title, the IP, and the studio.
They might not be the at fault party, the guilty party but they are the responsible party. It's their game, their interface with people, their reputation.