Helldivers 2 now delisted in 177 countries

What a disaster this is for absolutely no reason.

Just corporate greed for more of you data to sell.
- This one made me wonder if they don't get telemetrics about how people are playing the game to improve the game (or build a new game) from without doing this. And if that same data would be valuable to data brokers in general or if it's more valuable as an internal trade secret.
- Well now it seems they've become the dog with two bones
- I expect media companies to be greedy. What feels absurd is when they act out of blind, unmonetized efforts of control that seem to hurt their bottom line - like forcing employees to commute instead of work from home.
Wym no reason? Exec bonuses will be great this quarter

The accounts are so important that you're willing to lose sales in that many countries?!

While 177 countries sounds like a lot, it's not where the majority of players are. PSN operates in the top 15 countries by GDP and the top 4 by population.

Of course there's still the question of why they work in so few countries when literally none of their competitors (that I know of) have those limitations.
- It's because it's a Japanese company. I'm not saying this out of racism but because they're known for being archaic in how they do certain things. Like game modding and work schedules. Their public transit is top fucking notch though.
- some huge countries on that list, philippines, pakistan, nigeria, egypt
  
  pretty embarassing
- This is accurate. I work at a international company. We will tell a bunch of countries to go fuck themselves since combined, they make like 1% of sales.
  
  I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm just saying it's a thing many companies do.
- I don't doubt what you're saying, but you have to admit that this is terrible PR for them.
- PSN (PlayStation Network) is available in 73 countries.
  
  It was PSNow (PlayStation Now, their game steaming service) that was only in 19 countries. PSNow was merged into PlayStation Plus as the Premium level package, and is in 30 or so countries.
To be fair, the game wasn't supposed to be sold in those countries to begin with. Sony and Valve screwed up the region settings.
- But it was, so who is going to take responsibility for it? Is Sony going to back down from the requirement? Is Valve going to refund all those users?

Holy F, what a smooth brain move. They had an IP with incredible goodwill that would have been printing money forever (think about DLCs and merchandise, maybe even a TV series), and they chose to destroy all that to increase the active PSN account numbers by <1%. Which doesn’t even have a direct financial benefit, just something they can peacock in their quarterly reports, trying to boost the stock price.

Adding all those helldiver's players into the "Sony account to PlayStation now subscription service" sales funnel is the financial goal here, likely along with selling any data they collect about you to any bidder.

This does make Sony money, but it likely doesn't make them more than an indie becoming the 7th most successful game this year, but here we are anyway.
- I understand that sales funnel logic, but I would still argue its actual financial impact would be marginal. It’s wishful thinking from Sony that just because you got your claws into a PC player by making a PSN account, they will start buying PS stuff. The data monetization is much more direct, but still, not much additional money to be made by a few (tens of / hundred) thousand extra registrations (especially as they had to be aware of refunds happening). These are definitely valid upsides, but I don’t think they are big/certain enough to make this call, and compensate for the negative consequences.
  
  My gut / experience tells me this is mostly about the PSN account numbers, and some execs getting a gazillion dollar bonus if they can push it above certain target by the next report, even if they damage the revenues in the process.
A boasted stock price is a financial benefit?

Lmao, this was such a panic reaction by sony that they've banned all US territories as well multiple countries where PSN is active.

They are so cooked that this isn't even funny.

Will...that was fun.

RIP Helldivers 2.

Imagine if palworld devs create a copy of this one among all the ruckus

I'd be down to give Hellpals a try.
- Paldivers?
The actual answer is that everyone should play Earth Defence Force (they just announced EDF 6), which I feel was a big inspiration for helldivers 2 bugs.
- You don't think Starship Troopers may have had an influence on either of those games?
  
  Because there's actually a couple Starship Troopers games now.
Isn't that just Deep Rock Galactic?
I dunno, I don't think the game would benefit from flat combat and meanigless crafting grinds.

Delisted in Puerto Rico, part of the US. Amazing.

Also delisted in parts of loads of EU countries like the Netherlands and France.
- Yeah french people are down voting it in mass. I asked for a refund in my steam wallet coin too. I don't want to hurt steam, only psn

First their drm is based around the assumption that you're a criminal, and now this. I'm kinda glad I didn't buy it.

Yeah same, bunch of my friends had been playing it for a week or two, but between the in game story, the season passes and the utterly intrusive DRM, I figured I'll wait for a good sale at least. Well, guess I'll be saving 100% on this, now!

To be fair there is a lot of speculation that the delisting is actually entirely from steam's side not sony or arrowhead. Nothing is confirmed of course but the thought is that steam is throwing the kill switch on selling in these countries right now because obviously the publisher hadn't thought this out and just straight up doesn't have a plan for it. Valve may be doing this to put extra pressure on the situation drying up sales a little prematurely and more importantly to protect Valve from legal repercussions. Again this is entirely speculation but it makes a lot of sense, Arrowhead and Sony have been pretty quiet.

Same old shit with everything. A company makes a move that users don't like. The company just ignores all the flak they are getting online. The uproar calms down and then things continue.

We're seeing this more and more. Windows with ads, Amazon adding ads to their prime video account holders. Spotify moving lyrics to their premium subscription. The past couple of years are shit and companies continue to do whatever the fuck they want.
~~The cm's have literally said it's Sony. Why would there be speculation that it's steam?~~

Edit: I misunderstood. I meant that the whole initiative was from Sony. Kroxx was talking about the delisting in specific. I don't have any info on that.
- Yeah I've not seen them address the delisting anywhere yet, if you have a link or anything please add it I'm trying to stay as updated as possible on this.
  
  Edit: I also edited the first line, I had written "this" originally and I replaced it with "the delisting" because I can see how it was a little ambiguous before.
- The delisting is possibly steam. The idiocy of the PSN account requirement is Sony. He's saying it's possible that Steam delisted it to avoid the incoming mass of refund requests.
- Did they say it is specifically Sony that delisted it in those countries? Where did they say that?
If Valve did it, which I would expect, that's a smart move.

I wonder how many times I will have to see a publisher significantly harm their reputation in the PC market in a yolo bet to set up their own ecosystem and store.

I thought Sony had been conservative and decided against it when their first steam releases hit but with this move it seems possible that a Sony PC ecosystem was always in the works and it just wasn't ready for those original releases. Oh well.

Its also wild how much Stockholm syndrome console players have for their corporate overlords, where they think that having a purchasing decision affecting level change forced on them after purchase is an ok move to make, just because the possibility of it was nestled in the fine print

They should start working on a helldivers 3 and self publish it, barely change anything. (assuming they own the ip ofc)

I'm sure they don't.
- Screw it, go make the actual Starship Troopers game not suck. That thing is in dire need of help.
- DellHivers

I didn't buy it before because it had kernel level anticheat which is incredibly invasive and unnecessary for a PVE game, and now I'm really glad I didn't buy it.