This is good, but I think there needs to be some regulations. Companies keep introducing all sorts of anti-consumer practices to fuck over users (not only in gaming land). Now it got (for the time being) reverted, but the trust has (again) been broken.
Consumers (should) buy something based on what has been presented at the point of time. If that changes in the future with negative effects for consumers, than this should get investigated and ultimately penalized. Companies have become too big and too powerful, which can lead to shit like this
This. I'll forever be mad at Rockstar for removing songs from their games, because their licenses expired. But it's cheaper to just "update" the game so they can continue selling it without the songs, instead of renewing contracts. Oh, you bought the game before that? Too bad, update to continue playing
I've heard that this happened with Scrubs (and possibly other TV shows) leading to the original box set of DVDs having different songs playing in the background than the streaming versions.
Long story short: Sony decided (after sales!) to make it impossible for players to get into their already purchased copy of Helldivers 2 without a PlayStation Network account. Originally, players could just use their Steam accounts.
The problem, aside from bloating and privacy concerns, is that there are many regions in which PlayStation Network isn't even available, meaning hundreds of thousands of gamers would just be locked out of the game they bought.
Now, after immense pressure (players immediately dumped game reviews into oblivion, and bombarded the developers, forcing them to renegotiate with Sony) it was decided not to make PlayStation Network linking mandatory.