Penny Arcade - Comic - Back Into Hell

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Penny Arcade - Comic - Back Into Hell

Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.

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Quid

The true signs of a healthy game.

Overkillengine

Pretty much. Also, the lighting effects in panel two were especially well done....much like those bratwursts.

/rimshot

palidine40

They tried to, and did, the right thing in this one PSN case. And yes, there's a bunch of other pain that may also contribute to player login losses, but hopefully the experience will teach Arrowhead that listening to some of the complaints and fixing the big ones may actually increase player happiness. ... ... but that won't stop any forum of complaints from existing. There's always pain that must be shared anonymously to the world XD

Vontre

E: This is about the Microsoft layoffs in the news post, whoops. News post stuff go here too?

This fuckery reminded me to go cancel my Game Pass subscription, which I think was only running for Sea of Thieves anyway.

And my MS Office subscription cuz like... I dunno. I don't want to be a part of this really.

The Wolfman

People are saying that Sony "did the right thing". But as far as I can see, they're still requiring Ghost of Tsushima's PC release to require a PSN account. And from what I heard, Helldivers 2 never "hid" the fact it wanted a PSN account, they were always up front with it and said that disabling it was a temporary issue because of their launch problems. And curiously nobody seemed to have a huge issue with it. Only when they said they were turning it on did people pitch their fits. Though to be fair, it was really the selling in countries without PSN and that shit that was the real problem.

Seems like the only thing they've learned is to be more upfront with this account requirement in future. It reminds me of the free PS4-PS5 upgrade situation. They said it was coming to an end, starting with Horizon: Forbidden West. But they were caught on record months earlier saying Horizon specifically would get the free upgrade. So they honored it... and made damn sure to say God of War and Ghost of Tsushima would not, because "luckily" they never officially said those games ever would.

dennis

I'd say most gamers don't follow this inside baseball bullshit. We have someone in the thread that didn't even know the game existed until the comic. So the first time most of those masses that bought it will find out for sure that it requires a PSN account is when they install it and play it the first time. And if that happened on Steam, they could just refund it if they didn't like that.

That seems a bit different than selling a game, and then after so many people's return window has closed putting a new login requirement on it.

Satsumomo

dennis wrote: »

I'd say most gamers don't follow this inside baseball bullshit. We have someone in the thread that didn't even know the game existed until the comic. So the first time most of those masses that bought it will find out for sure that it requires a PSN account is when they install it and play it the first time. And if that happened on Steam, they could just refund it if they didn't like that.

That seems a bit different than selling a game, and then after so many people's return window has closed putting a new login requirement on it.

The game had the login requirement initially, but they disabled it when the servers started to crash and burn.

dennis

Satsumomo wrote: »

dennis wrote: »

I'd say most gamers don't follow this inside baseball bullshit. We have someone in the thread that didn't even know the game existed until the comic. So the first time most of those masses that bought it will find out for sure that it requires a PSN account is when they install it and play it the first time. And if that happened on Steam, they could just refund it if they didn't like that.

That seems a bit different than selling a game, and then after so many people's return window has closed putting a new login requirement on it.

The game had the login requirement initially, but they disabled it when the servers started to crash and burn.

So lots of people bought it when it had no login requirement, in other words.

Edit: Also, what do you mean by "initially"? Checking google, it seems like the PC version launched without the requirement.

Tofystedeth

The Wolfman wrote: »

People are saying that Sony "did the right thing". But as far as I can see, they're still requiring Ghost of Tsushima's PC release to require a PSN account. And from what I heard, Helldivers 2 never "hid" the fact it wanted a PSN account, they were always up front with it and said that disabling it was a temporary issue because of their launch problems. And curiously nobody seemed to have a huge issue with it. Only when they said they were turning it on did people pitch their fits. Though to be fair, it was really the selling in countries without PSN and that shit that was the real problem.

Seems like the only thing they've learned is to be more upfront with this account requirement in future. It reminds me of the free PS4-PS5 upgrade situation. They said it was coming to an end, starting with Horizon: Forbidden West. But they were caught on record months earlier saying Horizon specifically would get the free upgrade. So they honored it... and made damn sure to say God of War and Ghost of Tsushima would not, because "luckily" they never officially said those games ever would.

I think part of the problem is that from the player's perspective, there was 2 months of evidence that it worked fine without it. While Sony might have some legitimate points about things like being able to do moderation and bans using their own processes, most of those things aren't really a concern to most players. If you mostly play solo or with the same group of friends, it might be completely irrelevant.

If the integration had been enforced from the start most people (who could) would probably shrug and grumble and do the linking, or move on.

dennis

And, once again, it should be noted that they sold the game in countries that aren't allowed to create PSN accounts.

Yes, they're were going to refund them when they said they were turning it back on. But... WTF? Why even sell it there to begin with if it was "the plan all along" to enforce it?

All the egg on Sony's face is completely and totally earned.

And for Ghosts of Tsushima, the developer has even come out to clarify that you won't need a PSN to play single-player:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/you-wont-need-a-psn-account-to-play-ghost-of-tsushima-single-player-devs-reassure-after-helldivers-2-fallout
Ghosts is primarily a singleplayer game.

They were planning on requiring PSN for singleplayer HD2, btw. Even though the entire excuse for needing to add it - being able to ban players for griefing/abuse - doesn't apply at all in singleplayer, and they've already demonstrated that the network architecture doesn't require a PSN account at all.

This was Sony doing Sony bullshit, as usual. And it's great that the players didn't just say "oh well, I guess I can't complain."

Kane Red Robe

dennis wrote: »

Satsumomo wrote: »

dennis wrote: »

I'd say most gamers don't follow this inside baseball bullshit. We have someone in the thread that didn't even know the game existed until the comic. So the first time most of those masses that bought it will find out for sure that it requires a PSN account is when they install it and play it the first time. And if that happened on Steam, they could just refund it if they didn't like that.

That seems a bit different than selling a game, and then after so many people's return window has closed putting a new login requirement on it.

The game had the login requirement initially, but they disabled it when the servers started to crash and burn.

So lots of people bought it when it had no login requirement, in other words.

Edit: Also, what do you mean by "initially"? Checking google, it seems like the PC version launched without the requirement.

Ayup, when I bought it there was no requirement and no pop-up or whatever to warn me there might be one in the future. Maybe it was buried in the fine print of the steam page somewhere but literally nothing I'd heard or seen about the game mentioned PSN.

Hevach

The whole "it was there to begin with and we turned it off" was a lie to try and retcons reality. Tellingly, they sold it in territories where the login would make it unplayable, which Steam doesn't allow, and only stopped doing so several days after the announcement (with Valve actually stepping in and delisting it in at least three countries Sony forgot). Also very few counties allow you to sell a product that is by design nonfunctional, so doing so would be illegal under one doctrine or another basically everywhere with semi functional courts.

And here's an example of how Valve would have handled it if Sony were actually telling the truth on this point:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/11/24154412/steam-refunding-ghost-of-tsushima-preorders-psn-network-unavailable

Ghosts of Tsushima has been delisted in non-PSN countries and pre-orders refunded.

The article points out that because this happened across three storefronts its plausible Sony did this... But on the flip side it happened over several days, with Steam's delisting happening in waves and refunds going out a day after the final wave. And it's still being sold in non-PSN counties on venues with worse rules enforcement on sellers than even Steam, and the refunds are all addressed from Valve, Epic, and GMG, referencing Sony as a third party, so it looks much more to me like this is storefronts protecting themselves from the consequences of Sony's actions.