The censored one is probably Niger

UPDATE - special thanks to @dditty@lemm.ee for making a map showing the countries without access to PSN:

  • RBG
    1031·
    6 months ago

    Oh man, even all the small European ones are fucked. Andorra, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Monaco. Hilarious!

    Wait, Luxembourg is not on this list? Wow.

  • Nobody@lemmy.worldEnglish
    87·
    6 months ago

    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.

    • huginn@feddit.it
      473·
      6 months ago

      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.

      • Empricorn@feddit.nlEnglish
        168·
        6 months ago

        It launched 4 months ago. How are you assuming people who bought it and could play it are still in the 2-hour refund window?

        Edit: I hear you. I hope Steam allows a special exemption refund for this issue…

          • LordOfLocksley@lemmy.worldEnglish
            51·
            6 months ago

            OK, maybe I’m missing something in all this, as I have both Steam and PSN accounts already, but wasn’t it always on the Steam page, in a gold box, that a 3rd party (PSN) account was needed to play the game?

            • ColeSloth
              621·
              6 months ago

              Yes. I also haven’t seen any confirmation that any of those countries listed had the game available to purchase without spoofing their location.

              The bandwagoners are all getting upset over the implementation of the requirement that was always there, and now that they’ve been given like a month’s notice that they have to actually make a PSN account that was always a listed requirement, they’re all in a tizzy.

              • just2look@lemm.ee
                202·
                6 months ago

                The requirement was a small bullet on the Steam page. And Sony’s own website says a PSN account is not required. So Sony has said both things, and for three months it was not required. There is also no actual functional need for the account. Additionally the game studio has said that the countries where the game was sold, but PSN was not available is an issue they are looking into. I don’t understand why anyone is defending this move from Sony. The users gain no benefit, and there is an obvious negative impact. So maybe stop sucking off corporations?

                • ColeSloth
                  212·
                  6 months ago

                  A small bullet? Really? It’s gold/bronze highlighted in the same spot they’re always placed in, in some of the largest font on the page.

              • krashmo@lemmy.world
                9·
                6 months ago

                People don’t read the TOS, you know that. I didn’t read them either. If you want to say that’s my fault then that’s fine but I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect people to pay attention to something like that in this context. It’s a video game. Any restrictions or conditions like this are arbitrary and unnecessary.

                I don’t have a Playstation, have no interest in one, and will not be creating a PSN account. I probably won’t refund the game but I’m not going to keep playing it if they keep this requirement, which is a shame because I’ve really enjoyed my time with it. If this is the hill they want to die on then my interest will die on that hill with them.

                • ColeSloth
                  58·
                  6 months ago

                  It’s not buried in a TOS. It’s in a big gold/bronze highlighted area right on the purchase page.

        • Rinn@literature.cafe
          291·
          6 months ago

          The 2 hour refund window is for automated refunds, you can still make a request if you’re past that - it’s just going to need a human to take a look at it. I’ve once succesfully returned a game I’ve played for about 5 hours because it had game-breaking bugs and ran like crap for no reason, and it got accepted within a day without an issue.

          So Helldivers owners have a chance. I’m assuming that Steam’s Customer Support department is having some kind of an internal discussion right now on how to handle this case.

        • Red_October@lemmy.world
          53·
          6 months ago

          You’re assuming Steam will just completely ignore a situation where players are flat out incapable of playing the game they paid for.

          • Woozythebear@lemmy.world
            62·
            6 months ago

            Boy are you in for a surprise if you think Steam is about to offer 30k refunds if they aren’t legally obligated.

    • ColeSloth
      411·
      6 months ago

      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?

  • umbraroze@lemmy.world
    73·
    6 months ago

    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.”

  • mlg@lemmy.worldEnglish
    692·
    6 months ago

    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”.

    • snowadv@lemm.ee
      27·
      6 months ago

      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.

      • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        2·
        6 months ago

        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.

        • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
          5·
          6 months ago

          I mean… Saying that it doesn’t result in lost sales at all is disingenuous.

          They aren’t losing 70 dollars for every download, but they also aren’t losing zero.

        • localhost443
          1·
          6 months ago

          I often took the same approach back when buying a game was a financial consideration. But even though now 4/5 times I already know hat I’m buying and just pay, there are still the 1/5 times I’ll pirate first as I’m really on the fence. Due to this I have a few games I ended up completing on pirate, but bought the game (and DLC if relevant) with 0 hours in my library because good work deserves recognition.

          Otherwise we risk losing those good developers to other careers or into the AAA meat grinder.

          For clarity I’m talking Indy titties here, I doubt I average much above 0.5/year AAA purchases anymore

          Edit: actually I’ll go one step further. If I pirate your game and hate it, then its delete and forget. If I buy your game and hate it that’s a potential negative review, maybe even though me and that title we just a bad fit. This is why demos need to become ubiquitous again

    • Zuberi 👀@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      191·
      6 months ago

      100% true. India is (or was?) also big for games just not being sold there.

      Game companies shooting themselves in the foot? Never heard of it.

  • ditty@lemm.eeEnglish
    58·
    6 months ago

    Now if only I could see this on a map

    Edit: I made a map

      • ditty@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        6 months ago

        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. :)

      • daniyeg@lemmy.ml
        1404·
        6 months ago

        as someone who is in a country where services are regularly blocked and you need to use a VPN,

        fuck off.

          • daniyeg@lemmy.mlEnglish
            802·
            6 months ago

            since you didn’t fuck off let me explain.

            i don’t play nor care about helldivers 2 but i can certainly emphasize with people that have had their favorite game linking to a service that is blocked/not supported. you either use a free VPN which good luck with shitty connectivity, high packet loss and ping, or use a paid VPN which basically converts all your games into a subscription that is most certainly not affordable for many 3rd world users, and at the end you are still probably dealing with the issues mentioned before since you are adding extra hops in your route. and that’s if you can get your hands on a working VPN which since most companies have their IP addresses known you get forced into shady VPNs automatically.

            plus you are massively risking your data since you can’t trust the person at the other end, especially with free VPNs that could be loaded with viruses and spyware. in addition in most cases using a VPN can and will trigger false bot flags, causing either a temporary block or worse a ban, not to mention lying about your region when creating an account is in most cases is against TOS (although it’s unlikely you get banned for it).

            for example i wanted to play titanfall 2 when it came out but couldn’t due to it being linked to EA account system which is definitely blocked here. never bothered with the official Ultima Online because EA. wanna play the free copy of GTA V? can’t download shit off Epic Games. wanna play any games made by Riot? you better get that DNS service ready cause otherwise you can’t get in. wanna update warframe? too bad the CDN service they use blocks your region (this was a long time ago i remember being pissed off about it).

            so stop being an asshole online. we deserve to play games like other people without resorting to hacks in order to have a worse experience that was forced upon us. even ignoring all of my rant this decision is still against privacy of most users by handing their data over to yet another big company. i cannot imagine what would compel someone to make an ass out of themselves to call people that are against this cry babies.

              • daniyeg@lemmy.mlEnglish
                10·
                6 months ago

                well nice job ignoring literally everything else i said but alright. my rule of thumb for comparing my purchasing power vs an american is to multiply the product’s value by 15. so you tell me that you wouldn’t feel annoyed if you had to pay 375$/year (ignoring the increased data cap costs that comes with using a VPN of course) for a service that might get blocked at any moment? never mind the scammers that are absolutely littered everywhere.

                and the regions that are not supported by PSN probably don’t have regional pricing in steam as well, so we also have to pay that fuck you fee if we want to buy our games legit, unless of course you are willing to risk a ban (which actually isn’t that unlikely) in order to region hop, or get a CD key that was most likely bought with stolen gift card money of scam victims. and steam recently has been cracking down on both region hopping and the price disparity seen between different regions.

                yes it’s not the most earth shattering issue on the planet, but at least we get to complain about it online right?

              • force@lemmy.world
                241·
                6 months ago

                Paid VPNs are dirt cheap worldwide… If you can already afford a PC capable of playing HD2, you can afford a few bucks a year for a reputable VPN.

                You have actual clueless first-worlder logic

                If 60 to 160 USD per year is “dirt cheap” to you, you have absolutely no place to speak. Hundreds of dollars over the course of 5 years just to circumvent stupid geolocation restrictions and nothing else – about the same cost to twice the cost of a low-to-mid range gaming PC BTW – is not affordable to most people. How do you compare basically throwing away hundreds of USD yearly opposed to a one-time purchase of an important utility in the modern age? How do you view that as cheap for people in countries where that could be a large chunk or most of their salary? Are people not allowed to buy expensive things for themselves rarely and actually enjoy them without having an unnecessary subscription expense tacked on just because they were born in a poorer county?

                How would you feel if I told you there were a “fuck you” fee of 10% of the cost of your house every year just because you’re American or Canadian or British or some shit, on top of your income & property taxes? I mean you’re a homeowner so you can obviously afford it.

              • rdri@lemmy.world
                81·
                6 months ago

                Did you know that using VPN is against Steam’s terms of service?

          • Umbrias@beehaw.org
            8·
            6 months ago

            Truly a master of empathy. I’m astounded by your compassion for people who have different problems than you and who fall into minority groups.

              • Umbrias@beehaw.org
                3·
                6 months ago

                Why do people expressing frustration deserve your explicit lack of empathy? Why do you care so much? Why is “aha! Gotcha! You’re from Iran, so you’re neglected luxuries in other situations but not this one so your opinion doesn’t matter” sound like a reasonable response to you?

                You sound like a bitter spiteful individual who’s more interested in finding a reason to be contrarian and angry with people than compassionate. Coincidentally with frustrations over corporations.

                Go take a break from the internet if “why does a human deserve my empathy?” Seems like something that is ever reasonable to say or think. Empathy doesn’t mean you have to agree with someone, to preempt that lame excuse.

  • spirinolas@lemmy.world
    491·
    6 months ago

    Isn’t this illegal according to EU law? It’s a common market but the Baltic states are excluded.

    • AlexisFR@jlai.lu
      10·
      6 months ago

      Overseas territories like French Guyana too. It’s fully part of France so you can’t exclude it like that.

      • spirinolas@lemmy.world
        9·
        6 months ago

        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.

  • jaybone@lemmy.world
    30·
    6 months ago

    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?

    • Zoot@reddthat.com
      151·
      6 months ago

      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.

        • Zoot@reddthat.com
          4·
          6 months ago

          Which part? I’m sure it would be fraud to pad their numbers that way. Unless they used a seperate metric which looked favorable to shareholders since number of accounts goes up.

          The data part I don’t think you meant to cast doubt on, thats a given.

    • IvanOverdrive@lemm.ee
      6·
      6 months ago

      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.

    • Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      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.

      • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        1·
        6 months ago

        That isn’t how bans work at all. The only bans which go through steam are VAC bans, and those are not a requirement.

        • MeetInPotatoes@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          6 months ago

          You’re mistaken. If they make you log into PSN to play the game, then being banned via PSN would also lock you out of the game.

          • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            1·
            6 months ago

            That isn’t what they are saying. They claim Sony needs PSN for the game in order to enforce a ban, otherwise it has to go through Steam.

      • AlexisFR@jlai.lu
        12·
        6 months ago

        The only data they can get is what you already share in game. And a little portion of what is on Steam.

        • MeetInPotatoes@lemmy.mlEnglish
          2·
          6 months ago

          You obviously have to give them whatever data is required for a PSN account. You could give them fake personal data of course, but good luck remembering your fake info if you ever need to reset your password.

    • Heavybell@lemmy.worldEnglish
      45·
      6 months ago

      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.

      • Zoot@reddthat.com
        13·
        6 months ago

        But cross-platform worked just fine before this requirement? Or atleast well enough, I’ve been playing with a PS4 friend for the last month.

    • AlexisFR@jlai.lu
      24·
      6 months ago

      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.

      • monsterpiece42@reddthat.com
        1·
        6 months ago

        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.

  • Got_Bent@lemmy.world
    272·
    6 months ago

    I don’t know what a PSN account is, but I’m surprised you can get one in North Korea.