HOLY SHIT, I can play Spiderman 2, I was not going to get it for this reason! I literally made a blog post about not playing it.
this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
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Marvel's Spider-Man 2, God of War Ragnarok, The Last of Us Part II Remastered, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered.
Saved a click, thank you!
Huh... Did not have money on Sony blinking on this. Happy to be wrong. Guess that Steam revenue was getting threatened.
Currently the games are still only for sale in regions where PSN is available. I won't relent until that goes away too.
Me neither. Glad to see it. Of course they still require it for multiplayer games like Helldiver's, which is what set this whole thing off in the first place.
Put that shit on GoG and maybe I’ll consider buying it.
DRM is still drm, be it one layer like steam or two layers with extra 3rd party account requirements.
Playing the game used to be the requirement to get content out of it, and no account needed.
Still region-locked unfortunately, at least for now.
Is there any argument for region locking games? Doesn't even need to be good.
I did kind of understand why they region locked dvd players back in the day (if we can make them pay twice why shouldn't we, after all we are despicable morons who can only look a line that goes up). But for games, I can't make sense of it.
It all started with PAL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL the short version is that old cameras were tuned to work with the electromagnetic frequency, your camera either worked in Europe or in the US. This effected the frame rate of the end video (4%) and meant that tvs, video players and consoles ran at a different frame rate which lead to 2 standards NTSC and SECAM.
As trade expanded publishers created trade routes and business partnerships that created a patterns of distribution. Later when we resolved those 2 standards with modern technology, we are still were using those methods to get the physical copies to the stores and those same stores are still handling digital distribution, using the same laws and regulations. It might seem simple to click download, but that's built on a monolith of history and automation to deliver a good user experience.
To actually get rid of it, I'm not a lawyer but I imagine we have internal trade treaties to visit? I don't think it's legal to sell PAL versions outside of their region unless you are also doing business there. I know Japanese pokemon games were hard to buy as a kid. Disclaimer: I know tech stuff.
If a game is illegal in a region, you don't want to sell it in that region.
That's the only good reason I can think of.
I hadn't thought of that, thanks!
Well it was kinda logical when the PSN account was required, in the sense that you can't activate it in the country it's sold in because PSN doesn't work in that country (another question is why it doesn't but let's not focus on that). But since there is no more PSN requirement then there's nothing stopping people from activating it so it makes no sense to region lock it now.
I can finally buy some of these games now. Gee, thanks Sony you stupid pricks.
I guess they are learning not to fuck with PC gamer...
too much