Can you imagine a PS5, Switch or XBOX game that required a Steam account in order to play?
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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Half Life required an account at a time no game required accounts. Most PC games of the 7th gen required GFWL, so much so, without piracy, many are unplayable today. Microsoft still does this I.E. Doom Eternal where you're required to enter a Bethesda account or the absolute shitshow minecraft has become. Most rockstar games on PC of the last decade required rockstar launcher, including steam releases.
Other than GFWL, there has been very little pushback on these types of requirements. Funnily enough, sony is the last one to arrive and the one that gets the most pushback... People are weird.
I mostly agree with you but third party launchers and accounts have gotten pushback on PC for a long time.
Half Life required an account at a time no game required accounts
Not disagreeing but it was at least a first-party account and there was a legitimate purpose. PS has none.
Not disagreeing but what was the legitimate purpose other than growing a platform with a popular game? You know, same as Sony.
The Steam Account is used to distribute updates etc. to the client. The PSN account has no such advantage, it doesn't help me. How are they the same?
There were often patches for games that you could download from the developers website a the time. Yes, it is a bit more convenient to have a client that will automatically do that for you but it wasn’t necessary.
People hated steam at the time because it took like 80mb of ram when 256mb of total system ram was not uncommon.
And how does the developer verify that you actually bought the game before letting you download the patch? Through an account.
Sure, there were reasons to dislike Steam. That does not mean that PSN account requirements and Steam account requirements are comparable. Unless you can show me where I can use the PSN account to download updates for the games without requiring a Steam account?
The patch was only the files related to the patch not the entire game. It varied but often the developers required a cd key and the disk to be in your drive in order to play the game. Most often patches were just on the open web free to download. There were counter-examples to this but they were the exception rather than the norm.
They’re not comparable now. They are comparable for steam early on to PSN now. PlayStation may be planning to eventually launch a competitor to steam. You would then need a PSN account to download updates.
I’m not defending it I don’t want yet another launcher I have to have on my PC or another account I have to keep up with. I probably won’t buy this game unless it has a steep discount and there is a no PSN patch.
I know how patches used to work, I used to download them myself. But those were times with far smaller file sizes! Today patches can easily reach 20-100 GB. That's not just expensive, it's also not something companies want to provide for free for pirates. So patches would be locked behind an account no matter what.
That still leaves the criticism of Steam not being necessary as a running program, and it's a valid criticism. But PSN doesn't give me any advantage, while Steam at least increases convenience. PSN only has downsides for me. That's why it's not a comparable requirement.
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Just went to login to my dedicated minecraft Microsoft account just for it to force me to add a secondary email before it would log me in. Enshitification at it's finest.
I think if I wanted to play EA games online back in the day on PS3 I had to make an account and sign in and I remember how annoying as shit it was trying to type in a password and email with a controller.
I could, it's not that difficult to imagine. Lots of companies have mandated their own account systems for console games, too.
Bunch of pc games out there force you to set up an account with the studio, what are you talking about? This studio happens to be Sony. If HL3 ever releases for console i guarantee that you will need a steam email
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Probably safe to assume every new PS title will.
Another game to not buy.
They really are helping my wallet... so much less temptation
I've already waited for years, I can wait some more for the no login pirate version
Yep. No thanks. Games without online components should have one account to verify and store a copy of the game including saves, etc. That is Steam in this case. If you buy through Steam other accounts should be optional when you want to play online. I'm through with this garbage for offline games.
Sony's white-knuckle grip on their platform is an exciting hint of things to come.
They've been cosplaying the PS2 era since about 2005. That's when it became evident to everyone that games can just exist, and be for every platform, so long as the studio has a bit more money and time. Previously your game was for one gizmo, and you might hire some third party to follow up and coerce it onto another gizmo. Nowadays everything's a computer and all computers work basically the same way. There's details. There's exceptions. But anything that doesn't work the normal way becomes irrelevant.
This nonsense is the only thing Sony can do to pretend Playstation is anything more than a brand name. Microsoft has stopped pretending and it's weirding people out. Nintendo had a unique feature for their gizmo, as they do, but now they're competing with Valve - on hardware - and their follow-up is probably a merely numeric upgrade.
There are no platforms anymore. To consumers, there is nothing but software and obstacles.
Curious how the version you download for free doesn't have this requirement...
They never learn.
Yar har fiddle dee dee
Yeah I think we all saw that coming after God of War.
And all the other games. HD2 is the only one where they ended up going back on it, a few days later it was announced that it would be a requirement for Ghost of Tsushima but no one cared anymore because "Not a requirement for HD2! Yay!"
A lot of the pushback on HD2 was because they initially didn't require an account, then tried to force it on everyone. It would have locked out a lot of players who had already bought the game, but PSN wasn't available in their region.
Is anyone surprised by this? Really? At this stage, after we've seen the lenghts that Sony has went to stuff PSN account requirements on even their offline singleplayer games?
I always play Doom Eternal offline so I don’t have to sign into some bullshit account I don’t want.
And rockstar games require a rockstar account. Ubisoft requires an Ubisoft account. Microsoft requires an Xbox account ... For single player games too, at least one login.
Sony is late to the game but this complaint rings hollow to me when we only target them.
They all want the social side, and to various degrees add social and other features. With varying degrees of success too.
the half of us
Already have one.
Otger than needing to sign into an additional account, why does everyone hate this so much? Halo makes me sign into a Microsoft account, but i havent seen nearly the amount of hate for that. Is there somerhing worse about PSN accounts? Not trying to start shit, just wondering what I'm missing.
Otger than needing to sign into an additional account, why does everyone hate this so much?
- It's completely unnecessary
- Sony has a long history of leaking personal information
- Sony is most certainly selling your information for profit
- Sony's servers suck ass. I literally can't even make an account. It gives me some kind of generic error.
- Sony stopped making the game available in countries where they don't allow PSN accounts. Makes you wonder what's so valuable about account linking that they would pass up sales in all of those countries.
Halo makes me sign into a Microsoft account, but i havent seen nearly the amount of hate for that.
That's because it's old. Everyone complained about it when it came out with this requirement as well. The frogs have all been boiled on that front.
Not just leaking data, outright installing rootkits.
Sony music, in the CD music era.
Not good or acceptable, but also kind of lime blaming Amazon pharmacy for something azon logistics does. Could not be a more different part of the company.
Everything you listed is true of all the other companies frankly. That's just how it is. As you said, the frogs have been boiled, and Sony is almost the last to do this now. They need the analytics info all their competitors have, ostensibly. Sadly this is the landscape we are in.
For me it's just about account fatigue. It's just yet another fucking one-off account that will eventually get hacked the next time Sony has a cyber security breach.
Games that assume I want to play online or be "connected" are the problem. I don't want any of that. I want to pay for a game with my Steam or Microsoft account and play it offline with that one service I bought it from. At first it was annoying to make one new account but OK well not that bad. Now every developer has some sort of required "get connected". F that. It provides no benefit only added barriers for a game they should be happy I even bought in the first place. Online games sure I get it, mixed should be optional but offline. No absolutely not.
It's unnecessary data harvesting.
I have one, but remembering the password and all that is too much effort.
I will refuse to buy any game that is PSN or windows only.
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