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I thought this might be a similar situation to Ghost of Tsushima where a PSN account is only required for online play, but Ragnarok has no multiplayer.
I don't understand why Sony is so insistent on this. PSN is still unsupported in 170+ territories; this requirement is just going to turn most of those "would-be" buyers in those territories into pirates.
At this point I'm convinced that companies intentionally reduce access to their properties because making examples of a few pirates by making them pay millions of dollars is more profitable than legitimately selling games to a few thousand people
Would bet my life that that is why you can't legitimately buy most old Nintendo games online
Are there any cases of such payout actually happening...? I'm not buying it. (Literally and figuratively.)
No.
Commercial pirates or the people who initially leak a title might be targeted, consumers are not expected to pay significant damages.
Well famously Nintendo owns 1/3rd of every dollar Gary Bowser makes for the rest of his life
I suspect it's more about tracking users. By requiring psn accounts they can see who also has a ps4/5 but is also buying for PC. In addition gives them more insight into the different markets, etc.
I mean, the whole point of a PSN account is to collect data on you and have greater control over their software.
My theory is that it's middle-mamagement nonsense. There are too many execs running around with nothing to do, so they come up with little projects to justify their jobs, and it always defaults to stuff like requiring PSN accounts that will fuck up their brand on PC long-term, but will make the numbers go up for this quarter so the one exec stands out. Or like you say, going after a pirate which generates a bunch of headlines but ultimately makes no real difference to piracy in general.
Sony's not set up to do business in those countries to begin with, so they're not really losing anything to piracy from those users. They've already had to issue refunds to buyers from those regions with the Helldivers fiasco, so it's pretty clear that there is something blocking Sony from selling games in those countries. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the required account linking is why Sony can't sell to those areas.