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List of countries that cannot make a PSN account, following the Helldivers 2 controversy.
(programming.dev)
The censored one is probably Niger
UPDATE - special thanks to @dditty@lemm.ee for making a map showing the countries without access to PSN:
The silver lining: steam's refund policy is good enough that most of them will get their money back. Hopefully that's painful to Sony.
It launched 4 months ago. How are you assuming people who bought it and could play it are still in the 2-hour refund window?
Edit: I hear you. I hope Steam allows a special exemption refund for this issue...
Steam support usually makes exceptions for situations like this.
OK, maybe I'm missing something in all this, as I have both Steam and PSN accounts already, but wasn't it always on the Steam page, in a gold box, that a 3rd party (PSN) account was needed to play the game?
Yes. I also haven't seen any confirmation that any of those countries listed had the game available to purchase without spoofing their location.
The bandwagoners are all getting upset over the implementation of the requirement that was always there, and now that they've been given like a month's notice that they have to actually make a PSN account that was always a listed requirement, they're all in a tizzy.
The requirement was a small bullet on the Steam page. And Sony’s own website says a PSN account is not required. So Sony has said both things, and for three months it was not required. There is also no actual functional need for the account. Additionally the game studio has said that the countries where the game was sold, but PSN was not available is an issue they are looking into. I don’t understand why anyone is defending this move from Sony. The users gain no benefit, and there is an obvious negative impact. So maybe stop sucking off corporations?
Gamers not sucking of corpos? Unpossible!
A small bullet? Really? It's gold/bronze highlighted in the same spot they're always placed in, in some of the largest font on the page.
A gold bullet amongst other gold bullets, in a section that not everyone is going to look at. For a game that is sold globally when PSN is not available globally. This is anti-consumer behavior strictly meant to increase corporate power in the interest of corporate greed. Why defend Sony and their shitty behavior? This doesn’t help gamers. There is no benefit.
People don't read the TOS, you know that. I didn't read them either. If you want to say that's my fault then that's fine but I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to pay attention to something like that in this context. It's a video game. Any restrictions or conditions like this are arbitrary and unnecessary.
I don't have a Playstation, have no interest in one, and will not be creating a PSN account. I probably won't refund the game but I'm not going to keep playing it if they keep this requirement, which is a shame because I've really enjoyed my time with it. If this is the hill they want to die on then my interest will die on that hill with them.
It's not buried in a TOS. It's in a big gold/bronze highlighted area right on the purchase page.
Same concept. Anything beyond "buy this game and play it" is out of the ordinary and in my opinion unreasonable.
The 2 hour refund window is for automated refunds, you can still make a request if you're past that - it's just going to need a human to take a look at it. I've once succesfully returned a game I've played for about 5 hours because it had game-breaking bugs and ran like crap for no reason, and it got accepted within a day without an issue.
So Helldivers owners have a chance. I'm assuming that Steam's Customer Support department is having some kind of an internal discussion right now on how to handle this case.
You're assuming Steam will just completely ignore a situation where players are flat out incapable of playing the game they paid for.
Boy are you in for a surprise if you think Steam is about to offer 30k refunds if they aren't legally obligated.