That brings up an interesting topic. The other day someone in the Steam forums talked about how they think it’s unfair Russians have access to Steam, what’s with the war and all that. And that made me realize how open and global Steam actually truly is.
We live in a world of lipservice Globalists. Valve seems to be one of the few companies who truly have embraced their stated mission goals, distanced themselves from politics and bridged a gap few others have.
Doesn’t matter whether you’re in the USA, China, Russia or South Africa. You can play with your local authorities consent.
That makes Valve more diplomatic than any actual government, payment processor, bank or company in the current world.
Does it make my brain feel big and foldy like Darktide melee combat? Nope.
But it feels like far less of a slog than Darktide’s ancillary systems do. I can just log on, kill bugs or bots for a half hour, buy a weapon or cosmetic I might be interested in with major order/minor order medals, and vibe.
That said, looks like it was always supposed to be there, but was disabled after initial release on day 1 for technical reasosn. Sounds like this should have been something brought up regularly by Arrowhead ever since as impending as opposed to dropped for months and allowing most players to never notice until it became imminent. Reimposing that requirement post-facto is going to be extremely uncomfortable.
Nah, even if you live in a country where a PSN account would be available, the complaint is still valid. Forcing their datafeelers into a product to collect juicy consumer stats & deciding 3 months down the road without having had a giant banner on the game that says “IF YOU DON’T MAKE A PSN ACCOUNT YOU CAN’T PLAY WITH OUR BALL ON STEAM’S COURT” is absurdly anti-consumer.
Honestly, not really an excuse. If the intention was there, they should have laxed the requirement but still had disclaimers EVERYWHERE telling players this was a 100% hard requirement… But they didn’t.
EDIT:
The notice requirement is indeed there… a third of the way down the steam store page… in of course the tiniest location possible. Does a great job of covering Sony’s ass legally, but does a terrible job of appropriately informing anyone purchasing the game.
I am guessing not many PS5 players here. But you should see the decisions they made for PS5 players. The amount of cash grab is insane from hardware, software, subscription, design decisions on services.
If i understand it correctly, Helldivers 2 now requires you to link your steam account with your PSN account (which you have to create unless you already have one), or else you can’t play the game at all.
Yeah, between the botched launch of the PS5, their continued reticence to engage with crossplay (obv HD2 excepting since it’s wildly popular and Sony clearly wants to have their hand all in the pie) numerous data breaches leaving my information vulnerable, etc, etc. I’m very unlikely to purchase nor engage with another Sony product. Maybe GoW: Valhalla once it’s finally ported to PC…
Honestly i have no idea. I always thought PSN (playstation network) is Sony’s own version of distribution platform for their games, just like Blizzard has Battle .net, Ubisoft has U Play, EA has Origin etc etc.
But like i said, i can’t say for certain, could be wrong. I don’t use anything else other than Steam, and occasionally battle. net.
