Sony self sabotage their success

Earlier this year Sony published one of the most successful games ever to be released in the last decade, Helldivers 2.

The game was not only published on PlayStation 5 but also on computers through steam, even though the game featured microtransactions, It was very popular and loved by both fans and critics, scoring “mostly positive” reviews on steam. but everything changed on May 3rd when Sony announced that all computer players should link their accounts to a Playstation network account to be able to play the game, this move infuriated most of the players for a lot of reasons.To begin with, players hate linking multiple different accounts together because it is an unnecessary step and it was not required before Sony changed their terms of services silently.

Secondly the game is sold in more than 150 countries where the playstation network is not supported, therefore players who made money and purchased the game in this 150 country cannot create a Playstation network account therefore they will lose the game they paid for.

Finally, what made the gamers angry is that the community managers of the game dismissed players complaining and even challenged them to download the game if they don’t like it.

after that hundreds of thousands of player downloaded the game the game gathered more than 100,000 negative review in less than one day, and at some point 57% of all the views were negative this game has more than 14 million players on PC alone.

The huge backlash made Sony retaliate by unlisting the game in more than 150 countries where PlayStation network is not supported, moreover Sony deleted some free cosmetics from the game as a punishment.

the CEO of the game developing company “Arrowhead” explained his sadness to what is happening stating that he only wanted to create good games

After 3 days off downvoting and thousands of refunds, Sony gave up on the PlayStation Network linking requirements.

but the damage is already done, a lot of  players refunded their games, other players cannot purchase the game because they live in countries not supported by Sony, in some countries to activate your Playstation network account you should buy PlayStation 5 like Ukraine.

Despite everything, many players considered this a positive change in the situation.