• stardust@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    This shows the power of steam reviews with it being driven by the actual community. People tried to downplay and belittle its effectiveness, but it being front and center on the store page does have more impact than there would be without steam reviews. If there were no steam reviews the PSN requirement would have been pushed through with it being easier to ignore some random internet comments on social media than a store page.

    • Ech@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Reviews aren’t pointless, but their impact only goes so far. I am assuming the massive amount of refunds had more to do with it, tbh.

      • Glide@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        I suspect someone in accounting ran the numbers and decided they stand to lose more to reduced microtransaction sales than they would have gained via selling scraped data.

        Though I agreed with you. It’s still a win, but we have to be careful not to conflate this with Sony “caring”.

        • BruceTwarzen@kbin.social
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          6 months ago

          I still think the biggest reason why they wanted to push their shitty platform is to artificially push player numbers. “Look how many people use our scam network, see?”
          Now the hilarious part is that hopefully someone has to explain why people go these lengths, just to not join their shitty service.

          • CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            That isn’t why. PlayStation doesn’t view this as a problem and in fairness, I don’t either. If the game had shipped with this requirement, it would’ve been fine. Many people put up with Ubisoft and they have a whole separate account plus launcher.

            What Sony actually wanted was to make it easier on their server side to authenticate purchases and then to use the same PSN account systems to matchmaker for easier cross-play.

            Would they collect data? I guess. They can already do that if they want as a publisher. So yeah it’s purely just to use their ecosystem, which makes sense.

            • Glide@lemmy.ca
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              6 months ago

              Insane take imo. How does purchase authentication or cross play suddenly become “easier” with this change? Either it works or it doesn’t; having PC players connected to a PSN account doesn’t alleviate server load.

              • CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                Did I mention server load? What I mean is that having a PSN account means that whatever game is processing your account details doesn’t have to deal with Steam accounts, it just deals with a PSN account the same as it would if you were on PS5.

                What I’m saying is it streamlines the code on the developers side of the games they’re publishing and again if Sony is using systems already to authenticate purchases or whatever that can be collected in systems they already have.

                This isn’t rocket science, PSN may just be a translation layer.

                • Glide@lemmy.ca
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                  6 months ago

                  It absolutely has to deal with a Steam account every single time I log in to confirm ownership of the title. And then again every time I make a purchase from my Steam wallet. And again every time I connect to a friend through my Steam friends list.

                  It’s literally adding another potential point of failure and removes none of the necessities of dealing with the other service. I only suggested the server load bit because I can’t for the life of me understand how you can think it’s “easier” to insist that these two systems interact in a new way when they’re already up and functioning, and the original reason account linking was disabled was to make the game more stable.

                  • CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world
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                    6 months ago

                    Because those systems already exist for the console players. All they’re doing is switching it over to steam but they likely had a translation layer there before to do all the things you’re saying but through PSN instead. Why? Because that system already exists for consoles.

                    So their options here are that they can take the netcode for consoles and modify it to utilize SteamIDs and fetch data from Steam or they can just turn your Steam ID into a console ID and treat all of the inputs to their systems exactly like they would on the PS5 while fetching them from Steam.

                    I’m not saying it’s a good idea, I’m saying you’d think that just trying to match the console and the way it handles players would be simpler. Especially when you’re trying to make cross play work. Clearly it wasn’t so they temporarily ditched it. Maybe Sony does just want your data but if that’s true, why would the telemetry gathering be such a big deal? And they also could just use your SteamID for that data gathering. So clearly PSN used to be more integrated than people here are suggesting

                • David_Eight@lemmy.world
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                  6 months ago

                  But… that’s the exact opposite of what actually happened. The PSN requirement was so buggy they had to disabled it for the game to work.

                  • CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world
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                    6 months ago

                    Correct, I never said it wasn’t buggy either. I’m just pointing out that if you have cross play and you already have console support with console user IDs then it makes sense to just convert PC players into that same console user system.

                    This is what Xbox used to do when publishing games on Steam and still do with their GamePass stuff. And very similarly, that system also broke things and still breaks things for people.

            • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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              6 months ago

              make it easier on their server side to authenticate purchases and then to use the same PSN account systems to matchmaker for easier cross-play.

              Like fraud prevention?

              Easier cross play?

              • CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                I mean yeah this is especially true for online games as this is a form of DRM for Sony and it gives them control to easily reject or accept keys and ban users using their pre-existing systems.

                Same thing with cross-play, it’s possible that some of these games were designed to use PSN systems and so that makes integration easy. No clue, but if true it makes sense from Sonys perspective on both of those fronts.

        • jaybone@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          It was not “someone in accounting”

          This shit goes all the way to the top. Every manager in the chain will have their take and influence on the numbers.

          • Glide@lemmy.ca
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            6 months ago

            Sure, and I’m not suggesting said bean counter was responsible for the decision. What I am suggesting is that the only thing that influenced the decision was bottom line finances. Someone ran the numbers, and when the suits discovered that they stand to lose more money than they’d gain, they reversed the decision. Never mistake this as Sony “listening” to anything more than their investors and their bottom line.

      • BruceTwarzen@kbin.social
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        6 months ago

        It’s probably a bit of this and a bit of that. I mean the game went from one of the best revied games to one of the worst in a day. There were refunds and a drop in players all at the same time.

        • dustyData@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          My prediction is that the game will rebound, certainly, but will not reach back to the levels it had before. A percentage of people who refunded won’t be buying again and another section probably will quit the game altogether, now or as soon as something newer and shinier shows up. Lots will forget to change their review.

          Sony actively hurt their own game and probably made irreparable damage.

      • Stern@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I’d imagine that there’s math to be done on sales for a mixed review game vs. a overwhelming positive one, and its not favorable.

      • Allero@lemmy.today
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        6 months ago

        Made me imagine a page where everyone everyday can leave 1 vote on how good the government performs

        If the scores are too low for a prolonged period of time, the government is dismissed.

        (Obviously a very first-second concept with millions of flaws - just a thought)

          • Allero@lemmy.today
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            6 months ago

            Two-party system is the enemy of democracy to begin with

            But maybe even they would be more inclined to do better everyday

          • Allero@lemmy.today
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            6 months ago

            Many countries actually have such systems in place today, even Russia (lol) - not that they work too well.

            Normally, there are two sources of issues here: petitions can in fact be declined, and, in cases where the signature count depends on scale of the petition they can be intentionally escalated as to make it impossible to gain enough signatures. Besides, in many cases petitions can be left unanswered for longer than promised.

            Long story short, the system is open to shenanigans and doesn’t make the government truly accountable.

            We need the system that would actually make politicians rapidly lose their jobs when they ignore public opinion.

            • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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              6 months ago

              Good detailed response :)

              make politicians rapidly lose their jobs when they ignore public opinion.

              Under such conditions, would the US have ended slavery or enacted the Civil Rights Act?

              • Allero@lemmy.today
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                6 months ago

                Completely depends on who is allowed to vote.

                If slaves would have a vote, they’d certainly strongly choose one option :D

                Same for the discriminated groups.

                If they don’t have a vote, this depends on the rest of society in the short run, but can cause violent rebellions in the long one. Democratic system does not eliminate possibility of revolt.

    • Default_Defect@midwest.social
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      6 months ago

      The sony communities I saw poopooing the whole thing flipped immediately into “WE DID IT” mode, pretending they actually cared about the people that were going to lose access.

    • Syrc@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      This is why Steam reviews should be taken much more seriously. This was impossible to avoid due to the enormous amount of bad press and devs themselves jumping on the hate train, but I’m betting that a lot of review bombing attempts have been quietly offset by the company just paying people for fake reviews. It’s especially obvious when the game has relatively low reviews for months and months, then suddenly bad stuff happens and along with the justified dump of negative reviews, positive ones also skyrocket (99% of which composed of “good game”, random memes or ascii art).