How Are They Still in Business?

If you hear that a game publisher is doing something and user hostile, what name comes to mind?

For me, it's Sony, between their inflicting rootkits on users, massive data breaches, price fixing, shutting down libraries which were promised to be eternal, lame proprietary technologies, etc.

The latest case is the Steam game Helldivers 2, which stunned many people, including Sony executives when it became a breakout hit.

So, Sony decided to require players to join the players to join the Play Station Network so that they can upsell all their new customers.

Well, in response to massive player outrage, Sony has reversed this decision.

Helldivers 2 PC players can continue doing their part for Super Earth, sans Sony logins.

Sony's plan for its surprise hit co-op squad shooter—now the most successful launch in Sony's nascent PC catalog—Helldivers 2, was to make its players sign in with PlayStation Network (PSN) accounts before it launched in early February, even if they purchased the game through the Steam store.

Sony and developer Arrowhead didn't enforce PSN logins during its frenetic launch and then announced late last week that PSN accounts would soon be mandatory. Many players did not like that at all, seeing in it a sudden desire by Sony to capitalize on its unexpected smash hit. Some were not eager to engage with a network that had a notable hack in its history, others were concerned about countries where PSN was not offered, and many didn't take Sony at its word that this was about griefing, banning, and other moderation. Because of the uneven availability of Steam and PSN, Helldivers 2 was delisted in 177 countries on Steam over the weekend as Steam worked through refund requests.

The pushback made an impression, and now Sony has announced that account linking "will not be moving forward." In a post on X (formerly Twitter) Sunday night addressed to Helldivers fans, the official PlayStation account wrote that the publisher had "heard your feedback" and was "still learning what is best for PC players and your feedback has been invaluable."

Translation:  We tried to f%$# our users, and the users f%$#ed us back harder.

This seems to happen fairly frequently with Sony.