(EDIT: as of May 6 Sony appears to have reversed course on the PSN link reuqirement)
I'll be giving Sony until Tuesday to announce a change of course as probably management doesn't want to do anything until Monday at least. Yes it's their fault for announcing shitty news right before a weekend, so anyone who wants a refund should request one.
It really sucks that Sony has to come in and ruin what would have been a shining example of how to run a live service game.
Sony and Arrowhead thought they could do a Friday night bad news dump like they do in politics but executives, having no pulse on the common gamer, failed to realize Friday nights are gamer's prime time.
I'm with you, going to give them a business day or two to respond before I pull the trigger on a refund attempt.
Exactly. Such an insane misunderstanding of the world around them.
And I think we’re going to start seeing more and more massive fuckups like this. Because the general mood of people is that we’re being taken advantage of…because capitalism is a base of exploitation that people somehow were conditioned to accept, but now that people can discuss things across time, borders, etc., everyone is collectively tired of being fucked over for money. Even from companies. They gave us small “opiates of the masses” to placate us. But then they came for our opiates.
It's golden week in japan, if Japanese management has any say it won't be til at least Tuesday.
It really sucks that Sony has to come in and ruin what would have been a shining example of how to run a live service game.
I have no love at all for Sony but let's be honest, Arrowhead signed up with Sony as their publisher to get the benefits Sony would provide as a publisher, specifically their support apparatus for dealing with tickets. Arrowhead wanted that from Sony but failed to list the game properly in Steam with region locks to prevent Steam users from buying it in countries with no PSN support, and didn't enforce the PSN requirement at launch.
It's easy to point the finger at Sony because it's Sony and they suck, but Arrowhead pulled the bait and switch. They could have updated their Steam listing for the game a week after it came out to add purchase restrictions and avoid the future mess, but I'm sure they were drunk off the sales numbers and said, fuck it, let it roll.
Arrowhead wanted that from Sony but failed to list the game properly in Steam with region locks to prevent Steam users from buying it in countries with no PSN support, and didn't enforce the PSN requirement at launch.
Isn't that the publisher's job? Also Sony owns the game, not Arrowhead. Like if you buy a Toyota and hit someone with it, that's not Toyota's fault.
Sounds like someone on the verge of burnout
I would be if all I built was reduced to ashes in an instant.
Noob question: Pilestedt is the CEO of Arrowhead?
This is Arrowhead's fault entirely as I see it: they signed an agreement with the publisher, Sony, which they needed to get PSN's support apparatus to deal with tickets, but Arrowhead couldn't get linking setup on launch, didn't enforce the requirement from launch, and couldn't be bothered to edit their Steam listing so it was only for sale in countries with PSN. Steam doesn't pay out money to publishers and devs for 3 months, so the way this will work out is Arrowhead is going to eat the loss on Steam refunds, and any additional costs suffered by Sony will also be taken out of Arrowhead's payout.
Sony is incredibly shitty, but Arrowhead made this agreement when they signed with their publisher for their own benefit, but then decided to cut a major corner at launch. This could just as easily happened with any other publisher, and Arrowhead aren't going to reverse course even if Sony let them out if their contract, because Arrowhead doesn't want to hire a team of hundreds or thousands of support agents across the world: that's why a studio signs up with a publisher in the first place.
From what I've read, Arrowhead doesn't control selling the game, Sony does. So it's on Sony's head for selling the game in regions that don't have PSN access, knowing that account linking would be a requirement even though it was temporarily disabled. The whole situation is a complete clusterfuck.
Do you have any links you can share so I can learn more about the agreement between Arrowhead and Sony? Everything on Google is either a news article or a reference to "the agreement", but I can't find a primary source for the agreement.
No, that agreement is probably private, but Arrowhead's head of support has been all over Shitter discussing how they need PSN to handle the growing pile of support tickets. It's the same reason any studio signs with a larger publisher: the dev gets the benefit of the publisher's support apparatus, servers, advertising, etc., and the devs get to work on the game, rather than building their own support organization and infrastructure.
Borderlands is a good example of this: Gearbox makes the game, but if you click a support link, it takes you to 2K Games' help desk, since they publish the game
Honestly this sucks. I like the game, and while I wanna hold firm on my desire not to use a PSN account, I don't want to kill this game over it. I really enjoyed it, and it did a lot of things right.
Edit: Sony just tweeted they won't require PSN account linking.
They capitulated. I honestly didn't think they would.
feels like someone should be able to jailbreak the code and set up private servers, maybe with leaks from the inside
Sony and Arrowhead thought they could do a Friday night bad news dump like they do in politics but executives, having no pulse on the common gamer, failed to realize Friday nights are gamer's prime time.
I'm with you, going to give them a business day or two to respond before I pull the trigger on a refund attempt.
