They devs say the knew of the requirement from Sony and it was also part of the store requirement since it was listed, so why would they list it for sale in those countries? It seems Steam should have some limitation in place on their end, and the Dev picks sales on Steam, not the publisher.

Theres shit to go to everyone here, not just Sony in this case. And no one seems to want to accept personal responsibility for not reading the game requirements and ignoring the splash screen when you first loaded the game. Everyone who bought and missed all the warning flags should also take a look back at themselves before complaining about something that was always going to be required and was at the very start at launch.

[–] reagansrottencorpse@lemmy.ml 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I never even had the option to skip linking accounts. Granted I bought the game within the first few weeks of release.

[–] PrettyLights@lemmy.world -1 points 4 months ago

The option to skip was there 20 minutes after launch until now.

It said required in the popup, but still had a skip button with no consequences.

[–] slaacaa@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

The most depressing thing I’ve seen related to this topic. A small team that worked incredibly hard were lucky enough to achieve the impossible, and now they watch without any control as it is taken from them, for no other reason than greed.

Due to unchecked neoliberal capitalism, big companies like Sony already cover so much of the developed markets, that they have no way to naturally grow more. So they are forced to squeeze more out of what they already have, as stagnation is not accepted in this hellish system.

The line must go up, whatever the cost!

Edit: damn, Sony actually listened

[–] Iapar@feddit.de 0 points 4 months ago (3 children)

The lesson we learn here is that you don't take money from the mob.

Don't go public with youre company.

Don't get involved with the devil.

[–] maynarkh@feddit.nl 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If you don't go public with your company, some other company will go public, and buy your company or your customers from under you with the money they got from Wall Street. There are some companies that can try and resist, but the field tilts against them.

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

When you own something and someone comes to offer you money to buy it, you have this thing called “No” you can say, and then they don't buy it. It's a pretty neat hack. I learned it from Gaben.

[–] maynarkh@feddit.nl 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Epic is trying to IPO and has all kinds of investors. It tried to undermine Valve by buying out its partners by just spraying money at them for exclusives - you know, "disrupt" the industry. Steam prevails because they are real good at what they do, and they had a head start, but it takes a Gaben to not sell out, a good team and a lot of luck to manage that. Steam is playing against a tilted field is what I'm saying, and is one of the few players who successfully are managing it. They are the exception.

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yes, notice how the person who owns the thing gets to decide to sell or not to sell it. Wild concept, I know.

[–] maynarkh@feddit.nl 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The point is that you can say no to selling it, but for that to work you need to:

Actually own a deciding majority of the thing
Have a good enough product to resist your business partners (eg. game developers) being paid with investor money to switch over to you, sapping value from your product.

The point is that if Steam wasn't so much over the competition, Epic could have taken market share over with the exclusive deal shenanigans, or publishers could have started up their own marketplaces. The biggest reason for that is that Steam was early to the party and could get to a good product before others tried to enter the market.

If Steam didn't have that, people would have switched over to Epic and publisher stores, and we'd be bitching over Steam not having any good games on it because of backroom deals.

[–] Iapar@feddit.de 0 points 4 months ago

i think you are right in your assessment but I would argue that consistency also is a crucial factor.

It may be harder because of the things you say but in the end the people who invest money (into everything but the games themselves) are just in to make money.

They will try to squeeze as much money out of the customers without losing them. Or at least without losing Profit. Losing customers and still making more money is a valid strategy it seems.

People will notice that. Some earlier then others but it will get noticed and then they leave. To the next thing.

You are right with the headstart etc. so as a Dev you should accept your limitations and instead focus on the things that you can control (to an extent) and that is planing the budget in a way that you can be consistent.

And when people are looking for the next thing, you will be there better then before. Then you got customers and an image that seperates you from the rest.

And people will remember.

[–] JDPoZ@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Said this in another thread :

First off - yes Sony is in the wrong.

Second - Helldivers ain’t Flappy Bird. Making an online multiplayer game that needs the ability to do reliable matchmaking across multiple platforms with hundreds of thousands of players out there needs MASSIVE network and infrastructure support…

So you may say “don’t take money from the mob,” but this is more a situation of where if they HADN’T taken Sony’s support, they likely wouldn’t have been able to have the resources to have done all that themselves which could have made the difference between their great success and failure.

Remember that the first helldivers game was also a Sony published title where everything worked out fine for everyone then… but mostly because it wasn’t near as big a success story and making headlines but was instead a far more niche title lost mostly in the noise of smaller dev Sony titles.

I’m sure arrowhead has learned its lesson now and it will likely able probably to flex its muscles in the future thanks to its success financially - as I’m sure lots of publishers will be now coming at them with much more lucrative and favorable contract deals going forward, but they probably would not have been able to do what they wanted to do at the scale that they have been able to had Sony not been there to help provide that initial capital and infrastructure support.

This is Sony’s fault fully. The guys at Arrowhead are just wanting to have the means to make good games. They needed the resources to launch successfully and pretending it would have been feasible otherwise without said resources is sadly… naive.

[–] Iapar@feddit.de 0 points 4 months ago

I agree with you that they most likely needed the money to do what they wanted to do at that scale.

But I think my point still stands. Because it is a deal with the devil in the most literal sense that is possible. You get to your goal faster, easier or at all but in the end you have to ask yourself if the price you paid for that was worth it when the devil comes collecting. That is the moral of the fictional Storys, isn't it?

But to add to this. I think we, as consumers, aren't completely innocent either. Buying only the best looking, 1000 hours, other buzzword games. This undeniably sends a message to indie devs which can lead to people making self harming decisions.

One could argue that we got groomed to want that. And I do. All those blockbuster-games that were made under gruesome conditions are unsustainable. But we didn't knew that. We thought that they were the new normal.

But now we know better. This is just normal if you walk over corpses to get to your goal. And if we want developers that value our time and mental health, then we should value developers time and mental health in return.

Which means showing them that we will buy games that are not those 10 million dollar productions. And that we will measure the quality of the game compared to the resources that went into that particular game and not compared to a game that had an unholy amount of resources to burn through.

In the end we need to find a way to cut out all the rich people who came into the gaming industry as it broke into mainstream, who are throwing their weight/money around and bully everybody into submission.

And that needs strength of character. It means not buying the new shiny thing that we have seen an add for the hundredth time today, no matter how much we want that. It means not taking that deal which will make that problem go away quicker.

If gaming has taught us anything, it is how to prevail against overwhelming forces. That it takes compassion, companionship, a bit of anger and sacrifices.

If we haven't learned that, why the fuck are we even playing.

[–] RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

So many threads about Hello Games (No Man's Sky) and other Sony backed titles being "victims". They knew what they were doing,

[–] DogWater@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Highly recommend the Internet Historian video about no man's sky.

Also that game is really awesome now

[–] daltotron@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago

Highly recommend the Internet Historian video about no man’s sky.

I wouldn't, that dude's a nazi