List of countries that cannot make a PSN account, following the Helldivers 2 controversy.
The censored one is probably Niger
UPDATE - special thanks to @dditty@lemm.ee for making a map showing the countries without access to PSN:
I want to live in ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️.
Looks like they censored the country Niger in their own post.
Niger is a known intentional misspelling of the n-word used to circumvent censorship. So this is an evolution of the Scunthorp problem.
The hearts are how steam censors things it believes to be swears
love country
luv me wife, simple as
You might not. It's very hot desert weather all year around.
I live in Australia. I take this as a challenge.
There was also an anti-French Wagner/Russian backed military coup d'etat. The US had to closed down a drone base that kept eyes on terrorism suspects there. Even if it was perfect weather, probably not a great place to be right now.
That was immediately how I read it
Oh man, even all the small European ones are fucked. Andorra, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Monaco. Hilarious!
Wait, Luxembourg is not on this list? Wow.
I'm more surprised with the three baltic states
Sony still salty about USSR dissolution
This
Luxembourg is small but it's not a microstate like the other you listed. It's not limited to a single city.
That is true.
Poor Niger can't be mentioned on Steam apparently.
We’re always making plans for Niger.
Countries whose exchange rate likely made the game even more expensive, and you’ve taken it from them just to dox PC gamers on the PlayStation network.
This isn’t even enshittification. It’s outright fraud.
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.
I haven't seen anyone actually confirm the game was for sale in any of those countries. I know people from some of those countries have been playing, but did they buy the game by spoofing their country, or was the game ever actually available in any of them?
They can only remove what was previously available.
I'm in Finland and peering toward Estonia and wondering what the heck did they do to annoy Sony so much that you can't make a PSN account there.
My instant guess would be that Estonians are in possession of a Sony tape deck from the 1980s that still works (being a Sony product from the 1980s), and Sony is like "No! We refuse to do business there until they join the modern time planned obsolescence club."
Probably Sony won't comply with some sort of regulation.
Liechtenstein as well lol
Wasn't Valve the one who pointed out that Russia was always pirating games not because they were inherently pirates but because the game releases had zero support for Russia lol. Hence why Valve was the first foreign developer/publisher that gained an actual foothold in the Russian market.
This is kind of like the same thing. Sony will just say something dumb like "we don't allow PSN accounts in these countries because they're full of pirates".
The second problem is absence of regional prices in other markets but Steam.
They are selling games two (!!) or so times cheaper in RU region. For example, AAA game might cost 60 dollars or 6000 rub in US but it will costs 35 or 3500 rub in russian steam.
Even though I couldn't afford games in the past and pirated them - at some point I started buying stuff just because it gives much better, hustle -free experience.
If I’m low on cash, I pirate. When I have cash, I buy up the games I want. If it’s a game I enjoyed years ago and it’s on sale, I grab it.
The idea that piracy results in lost sales is flawed. No one I know who pirates can purchase the game to begin with.
Is a library piracy? No? Cool, discussion over.
That rings true for me. Only stopped pirating once steam was an option, myself.
They're about to be full of pirates.
Only playable in countries with DEMOCRACY!!! HELL YEAH!!!
Like undemocratic Republic of Estonia.
Edit: oh Latvia and Lithuanian is also on the list, has Sony taken the country list before collapse of USSR.
The baltic states are a no fun zone.
Ah yes, the very democratic Russian Federation
"We held elections. You don't like? Window is over there."
Now if only I could see this on a map
Edit: I made a map
Sri Lanka and Suriname are pictured though?
Good catch! Just a typo on my part. I used mapchart.com to make the map, and it was unfortunately an entirely manual process and the map builder I used didn't include most microstates; the rest of the ones I listed weren't on the map. Sri Lanka and Suriname are pictured though. :)
Isn't this illegal according to EU law? It's a common market but the Baltic states are excluded.
Yes it is
Overseas territories like French Guyana too. It's fully part of France so you can't exclude it like that.
It's not even an overseas territory, it's a full-fledged department of France. They couldn't exclude it even if they wanted. And it's not excluded in the map, if you look closely, even while Guyana and Surinam are.
"Niger" is a swear according to valve?
They probably pipe all their output text through a filter that was originally intended for user generated content. Might not really make sense but something tells me at some point there was a typo from a valve employee that prompted this decision
The dumbest version of the Scunthorpe problem
I’m not a big gamer so I’m not entirely getting this. It sounds like the issue is they want you to link your steam and PSN accounts, which people don’t want to do. And in some countries it’s even a TOS violation.
My question is, why would they have such a requirement to link the two accounts in the first place?
One RUMOR I've heard is so it looks like more people are registering with PSN, to make up for loss of PS sales? Doesn't make the most sense, but I'm sure its a mixture of that and your data $$$
Edit: I'm sure they are using the increase of accounts to make theirs elves look more favorable. All around, it's shitty, and helldivers will suffer for it. Steam has already allowed refunds from countries that can no longer play.
For me, it was the 2011 Playstation Hack.
Credit card data was encrypted, but Sony admitted that other user information was not encrypted at the time of the intrusion.
After that, I swore I would never give a corporation that lax with personal information my own.
The publishet is Sony. This way Sony can harvest your data and has total control over bans. If they didnt force the links bans for pc players would go through steam and could be challenged over steam in the case of an unfair ban.
The legitimate reason is for crossplay. Sony said in the announcement it was for player "protection", so they could ban people. Plus there is no doubt some data tracking going on.
It's a Sony online game and it shouldn't have worked without an account in first place on PC. But they allowed it regardless due to server issues.
It explicitly said you do not need a PSN account to play, in a number of places. Both on the game page, on the Sony FAQ page, and the Steam page too I believe.
It was bait and switch, which is why so many people are upset.
I don't know what a PSN account is, but I'm surprised you can get one in North Korea.
Sony Account (PlayStation Network account)
I’ve always wondered how much we are lied to about North Korea.
I would imagine, very little
Why can't these countries get accounts? And what was the controversy?
Game is locked to PSN account system now so if you live somewhere with no PSN support, tough shit
Sweet they let the DPRK join in
There's one account there, XxXJongGonnaWunXxX69
I know Sony is a Japanese company but Iran and Cuba not being on there seems odd too.
why is one of them censored
Niger is close to a slur and is probably overwhelmingly used as a way to bypass filters as opposed to actually taking about the African country
Can we get a similar map of Helldivers 2 players, based on location, prior to the change?
Andorra
Someone must stop this cruel oppression against the ethnic group of influencers.
My brothers and sisters in San Marino will have to make that long trek to Italy, sad.
Why are there so many overseas territories in there? No wonder so many people are pissed off
people now have to create a PSN account in order to play. The people in these countries cannot create an account, so they are locked out of a game they purchased.
Serbia is not on the list?! Impossible!
Pretty sure it's possible in Liechtenstein, Andorra and Monaco
Everyone always forgets about Suriname.
The combined estimated total population of those countries would be roughly around 4.6 to 4.7 billion people.
After taking a look at the map, this sounds very, VERY off.
Right? I was too lazy to double check, but yeah, the original claim seems absurd considering it's missing at least the top 5 most populated countries representing nearly 4 billion people.
Only off about 3 billion or so, not that far!
Hehehe
So, literally more than half the world.
But corporations see $$ so it's the half of the world that isn't important.
Counterpoint: no it isn't.
Why Andorra — is Andor a swear now?
I know people are jumping on the “I hate to have to make another account” bandwagon, but uh, does steam itself even operate in these countries?
Stream is available almost everywhere outside of US sanctioned countries.
Its not simply because it's something "Easy". Its because people are sick and tired of not owning what we buy. I'm not sure why you would want to defend someone who would happily take everything they could away from you, and actively do via your rights and digital privacy.