The difference is that Helldivers 2 was already a released game; people had paid for a product which was going to be taken away from them. After all the controversy, Sony decided not to follow through with that plan and let people keep what they already had.

This is still scummy, but with Ghost of Tsushima, no one has received anything yet. People put in an order, the order was canceled, and money refunded, so in practical terms there is no loss...other than not being able to buy the game.

It may be possible to set your account to a different region and purchase anyways, but in my opinion, piracy is absolutely justified in this case when the vendor literally refuses to make a product available to you. If there's no legal option for obtaining it, then there's no harm in pirating it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Piracy is always justified.

You want my money, you need to earn it, shiti business doesn't get rewarded.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I pirate myself but if you play the game in some way how haven't they earned your money?

If you want to boycott do it with some backbone at least. Don't play the fucking game and don't talk about it whatsoever.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

If they would have put up a banner in the game or a popup every log in stating ..

"Sony account requirement temporarily suspended.

Please note that in a future update this will be a hard requirement and you will not be able to play Helldivers without a PSN account".

Then this would not have been an issue. The question is if their game would have gotten as big as it did. I'll bet 'no'.

Also how fucking lame is the playstation network that they still cannot handle proper game launches.. ffs this should be a non issue by now. The servers that handle this should be setup to spin up and down clones when needed... But nooooo that costs extra money.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

It would have still been an issue because the root of the problem is that there are a lot of regions where PSN is not supported and you can't make an account even if you wanted to. The game was being sold on Steam in those regions, and so in practice it would have been like saying:

Please note that in a future update we will take away your ability to play with no recourse unless Valve is willing to refund your purchase. Take it up with them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Absolutely. The region not being limited is a big indicator on intent. Or it's the dev that "forgot" and got more sales.

I'm curious how many copies are sold in regions no longer supported.