Arrowhead kind of messed up by not just implementing the PSN requirement from the start, and avoiding this confusion. It’s not like Sony suddenly made this requirement, it has been there all along.
Arrowhead and/or Sony also messed up by not having the country restrictions setup on the Steam store. Arrowhead knew they were going to be reliant on PSN to handle support tickets well ahead of launch.
Bare minimum idea: have a sticky post on all the forums reminding people that PSN accounts will be required in 6 months. Maybe a little sticky note after you load up the game that goes away after you link.
Leaving it till now was kinda not the best possible choice.
They are pulling the reverse Hello Games. Sony’s contract with Hello Games (No Man’s Sky) forced them to ship an unfinished game, met with hundreds of thousands of bad reviews, but they turned it around by not only delivering what was originally promised, but continuously adding huge DLC level free updates to the game, effectively nulling the effects of their contract with Sony. Arrowhead Studios shipped an incredible game, but ignored Sony’s contractual requirements to ride the wave of sales, and is now being hit with the effects after finally enforcing what they signed up for.
How did they ignore it when it’s both on the store page and the first thing you see ingame since day one? They didn’t add that in later. It’s always been there. It wasn’t optional for a period of time on launch day, before the servers were overloaded. It was then temporarily made optional, and they said as much (though obviously not clearly enough for people to realize that).
They expected an active userbase of about 10k. They didn’t know how popular this game was going to be.
More likely, they didn’t know that PSN accounts are only available in select regions. They followed the stipulations on all fronts except selling the game in places that can’t make accounts, and everything else is the result of the PSN account requirement being made optional while Sony rolled out more infrastructure to handle the player load.
I might be wrong about this, but if I remember right, the PR team for NMS and the dev team had pretty much zero communication. Sony kept hyping the game up, very much making promises that the devs were trying to keep. However during development it became increasingly that they either need to push back on the release date or drop some features, neither of which Sony was ready to do. At that point it was already too late: the hype was built.
So instead of trying to do damage control Sony just pushed Murray in the focus, probably hoping he and his company would take the fall. Honestly it feels hard to blame him for what happened. He, at the time, was just an incredibly ambitious indie dev with no idea on how to manage expectations.
I feel like with Sony as your publisher, you don’t need enemies.
It was listed on the store page from day one. It was put in front of your face the first time you launched the game. It was only made optional temporarily due to the overloaded servers on launch day. This was said, though not clearly enough for people to realize before now that the PSN account being optional was only temporary, it seems.
My money’s on Arrowhead not knowing that PSN accounts are only available in specific regions and countries. Otherwise, none of it makes sense. This was always going to happen if they knew and did it anyway, and why would they torpedo their dev studio with the refunds like that.
Devs (and players) getting majorly shafted by Sony. Make no mistake, Arrowhead doesn’t want this either, but their hands are tied. Fucking Sony…
Arrowhead kind of messed up by not just implementing the PSN requirement from the start, and avoiding this confusion. It’s not like Sony suddenly made this requirement, it has been there all along.
Arrowhead and/or Sony also messed up by not having the country restrictions setup on the Steam store. Arrowhead knew they were going to be reliant on PSN to handle support tickets well ahead of launch.
They literally did do that. My account is old enough that linking it was already required when I started playing. It was off temporarily.
Bare minimum idea: have a sticky post on all the forums reminding people that PSN accounts will be required in 6 months. Maybe a little sticky note after you load up the game that goes away after you link.
Leaving it till now was kinda not the best possible choice.
To be fair, they’re the ones who signed the deal. Hopefully this is something they can learn from for future games.
They are pulling the reverse Hello Games. Sony’s contract with Hello Games (No Man’s Sky) forced them to ship an unfinished game, met with hundreds of thousands of bad reviews, but they turned it around by not only delivering what was originally promised, but continuously adding huge DLC level free updates to the game, effectively nulling the effects of their contract with Sony. Arrowhead Studios shipped an incredible game, but ignored Sony’s contractual requirements to ride the wave of sales, and is now being hit with the effects after finally enforcing what they signed up for.
How did they ignore it when it’s both on the store page and the first thing you see ingame since day one? They didn’t add that in later. It’s always been there. It wasn’t optional for a period of time on launch day, before the servers were overloaded. It was then temporarily made optional, and they said as much (though obviously not clearly enough for people to realize that).
They expected an active userbase of about 10k. They didn’t know how popular this game was going to be.
More likely, they didn’t know that PSN accounts are only available in select regions. They followed the stipulations on all fronts except selling the game in places that can’t make accounts, and everything else is the result of the PSN account requirement being made optional while Sony rolled out more infrastructure to handle the player load.
Please Sean PLEASE NO MORE UPDATES, WE FORGIVE YOU
I just wish I could hide the reticle when the multitool is holstered. That’s all I want at this point lol
I don’t, give me more amazing updates. Infinite updates.
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I might be wrong about this, but if I remember right, the PR team for NMS and the dev team had pretty much zero communication. Sony kept hyping the game up, very much making promises that the devs were trying to keep. However during development it became increasingly that they either need to push back on the release date or drop some features, neither of which Sony was ready to do. At that point it was already too late: the hype was built.
So instead of trying to do damage control Sony just pushed Murray in the focus, probably hoping he and his company would take the fall. Honestly it feels hard to blame him for what happened. He, at the time, was just an incredibly ambitious indie dev with no idea on how to manage expectations.
I feel like with Sony as your publisher, you don’t need enemies.
deleted by creator
And apparently they knew about the requirement, and ignored it.
ESH
It was listed on the store page from day one. It was put in front of your face the first time you launched the game. It was only made optional temporarily due to the overloaded servers on launch day. This was said, though not clearly enough for people to realize before now that the PSN account being optional was only temporary, it seems.
My money’s on Arrowhead not knowing that PSN accounts are only available in specific regions and countries. Otherwise, none of it makes sense. This was always going to happen if they knew and did it anyway, and why would they torpedo their dev studio with the refunds like that.
They signed the contract