For sure, there's no need for any fuss, just keep quietly taking all the corporate bs as always.
Next time when you'll need to submit an income form just to access a microtransaction-riddled single player game - just use your parents bank account statement, no need to use your own.
And when you'll need to enter a fingerprint id to unlock your multiplayer account - just ask your friend to help out.
It's a modern day privacy, apparently. Someone think of those poor companies barely getting by just by selling you the game, the least you could do is share your personal data for them to sell too, better yet get locked into their ecosystem for a long term milking.
The simple reality of the situation is it was a business decision by Sony. They saw this groundswell of potential players to add to their huge database of people to market to, and said "we're getting those email addresses". If I had to venture a guess, the higher-ups at Arrowhead are probably livid and pushed back. They get zero out of this change and they have to deal with the fallout. It's likely part of the publishing agreement.
That said Sony knew this would happen, if probably not to this degree. Maybe they post a solemn jpeg talking about how they "fell short of expectations". Being Sony it's likely that they just ignore the backlash. Their projections say they'll make more money with all that new data than they'll lose on some half-hearted boycott. Gamers are notoriously horrid at sticking to that shit. And you know what? That next battle pass is gonna sell just fine even if the vocal folks don't buy it.
Yes, it sucks and it's reasonable to be annoyed. Yes, many loud people on the internet are acting like a helldiver kicked down their door and demanded a kidney. Yes, only one party gains from this and it's Sony. These things aren't mutually exclusive. No need for argument imo.
They saw this groundswell of potential players to add to their huge database of people to market to, and said “we’re getting those email addresses”
See, this is the salient point, right here.
The correct response to this action is "LOL, sure. You can have my protonmail account that I only use to sign up for free shit, anyway."
Checkmate. Internet 1, Sony 0.
But instead, we get all this shit-flinging, foot-stomping, childish nonsense.
EDIT: Now that I think about it, signing up for all the shit they ask us to sign up for, in an ORGANIZED WAY, could actually change the whole situation, for the better. Here's the plan that should be enacted:
Nobody gets screeching mad. Angry people behave predictably.
Everyone reminds each other to ONLY USE THROWAWAY ADDRESSES TO SIGN UP FOR CORPORATE SHIT.
Everyone reminds each other to NEVER ENGAGE WITH ANY MAILING LISTS OR OTHER BULLSHIT THAT YOU GET, ON ANY OF THOSE THROWAWAY ADDRESSES.
Stick to that shit, for EVERYTHING. Don't try and stop people from asking for your stupid throwaway email. Don't threaten anybody with boycotting. Just continue giving out the completely worthless email addresses.
Sooner or later, it becomes apparent that the majority of email addresses that are being collected in this manner are basically worthless.
Consequently, the value of these email addresses plummets, both as a tradeable commodity and as a means of mining further data.
Corporations slowly stop trying to track people via email.
You sound like a kid whining about other kids. The people complaining are mostly adults who are reasonably upset that their data is being harvested. Yes the steam page did say a PSN account was required. Except it wasn't and the game worked fine for months just to have sony come back and tell us that it's suddenly required now. Kids don't give a fuck about making a new account.
I don't get why the self proclaimed chill dudes are always the least chill. Honestly if I see you in my game I'm booting you. You sound like an ass.
WHAT DATA??? They don't have any power to mine your data, here! They will only get what you give them. AND YOU DON'T HAVE TO GIVE THEM ANYTHING VALUABLE!
As I keep saying: the correct response isn't getting mad. The correct response is to give the corporation a throwaway email address.
The smart move isn't taking your ball and going home. The smart move is STUFFING THEIR CORPORATE MAW FULL OF THROWAWAY PROTONMAIL ADDRESSES THAT WON'T BE WORTH A PENNY TO ANYBODY!!!
Kids don’t give a fuck about making a new account
You say that, but look at what various people are asking, in this situation.
Sony is asking for any email address, HOPING you give them a real one, but without any power to make you do that.
I'm asking for people to give Sony nothing but throwaway email addresses that you don't care about.
Others are asking THESE KIDS TO STOP PLAYING A GAME THEY LIKE.
Can you look me in my faceless, digital cyber-persona and tell me that these kids will continue to boycott a game they enjoy?
You know they won't. They're hyped up and mad, right now. They won't be, in a few weeks, and they'll start crawling back to that game they already bought.
BUT MAYBE WE COULD USE THEIR ANGRY MOMENT, RIGHT NOW, TO CONVINCE THEM TO CREATE NEW EMAIL ACCOUNTS.
Once they do that, and they give Sony those accounts, it's done! The damage has been done to the godforsaken corpo data mining machine.
What's the fucking problem? Like I said to someone else, I have probably made 300 email accounts since 1997, and I've probably used them to make ACTUAL TENS OF THOUSANDS of free web accounts, for shit on the internet.
Why would it bother me to make some more? It's literally part of my culture. What is there to be so fucking mad about?
Uh-huh. How many is "a lot," in this context? More than 500? Because the Fortune 500 list of companies only has 500 companies on it.
That means there are 500 CEOs out there, who could make the argument that their time is so valuable that they can't spare a few seconds of it, to create some free accounts for some shit that they're using.
Let's be honest: you're NOT one of those people. Just shut up and create the free fucking accounts. You've already wasted SO much more time, throwing a fucking tantrum over this shit.
Like enough to make a big ruckus about it online. It's just unnecessary dumb shit so of course people find it annoying. Seems simple enough tbh.
Let's be honest: you're NOT one of those people. Just shut up and create the free fucking accounts. You've already wasted SO much more time, throwing a fucking tantrum over this shit.
You're not wrong. If the concurrent player count had dropped by 99% on announcement and stayed there for a week with no new sales it would have sent a message at least. But you remember the "shitstorm" around Hogwarts Legacy? 850 million in the first two weeks regardless 🤷♀️ that's the kind of shitstorm most would weather gladly, I'd bet.
But hey, you need blameless developers doxxed and threatened, gamers are your best option every time! Heheh yeah up top 🙌
And I mean, unlike the Hogwarts Legacy situation, this shit has a simple and 100 percent effective remedy.
Sony's asking for everyone's email address? Okay. EVERYONE give them throwaway email addresses, and NEVER interact with any of their mailing list garbage, or do anything else with those PSN accounts.
Let them have a huge list of completely worthless email addresses. There is no downside to letting them choke on that shit.
Like I said in another comment, there should be a continued campaign of everyone ALWAYS giving out throwaway email addresses that they never use to do anything other than sign up for the free shit, and nothing else.
Keep that up for long enough, and eventually the value of these bulk lists of email addresses will plummet to functionally zero. And that will mean less corporate nonsense, at least of that kind. And less attempts to hack companies for their email lists. I mean, why commit a federal crime, to obtain worthless data?
The funniest thing to me is that this lot will even admit that the Steam page said a Sony account was required from the beginning, even though it actually wasn't initially. Nobody got bait-and-switched, they either didn't pay attention or they think the temporary reprieve should have been permanent with absolutely nothing to justify that position. "It's not necessary!" is a shit argument, they said it would be and the game got bought anyway.
Though I'd say Hogwarts Legacy had an equally simple solution: people could have just not fuckin bought it. At least, waited a year. Fuck it, a month would have been enough. One month, zero sales. Fuckin ow, right? But no, kiddos gotta have their shinies. I still haven't bought that game, so I guess I accidentally did a better job of protesting than all the people screaming who went and preordered it 🤷♀️
Screaming is cathartic but doesn't effect change; you need action for that.
There's a huge back-and-forth going on right now, with people claiming Sony changed the fine print, and so it is bait-and-switch, and it just devolves into absolute fucking nonsense. It's like on South Park, when the crowd of townspeople are all yelling "RABBLE-RABBLE-RABBLE-RABBLE."
Screaming is cathartic but doesn’t effect change; you need action for that.
Exactly. And in this case, we can all have our cake and eat it, too. My point about Hogwarts was that people would still have to make a decision about buying it or not. But with Helldivers 2, there's ABSOLUTELY NO REASON FOR A BOYCOTT.
We all just have to give Sony email addresses that we don't care about. That will harm Sony's PR bullshit-artists, while continuing to reward the ACTUAL ARTISTS who made this game.
I mean, I saw people on Reddit talking about how Sony's response will be to make sure Helldivers 3 never happens. Well, if these people succeed in organizing a boycott of Helldivers 2, that IS TOTALLY WHAT WILL HAPPEN. Do they think Sony will give another dumptruck full of money to this studio, if they know the next game won't sell?
People are acting like it's the principle of the thing, because "Sony lied to us." Even if that's true, it doesn't matter. Corporations are always going to lie to you. When the lie is "maybe we technically said we didn't need you to give us any random email address, but now we've decided we do need an email address," just give them the stupid email address.
Take the win. It will literally cost them money to store that worthless data.
Prove that shit. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that Sony can demand a photo ID from you. I mean, the Allies fucking won the war with Japan. Did you not get that memo, somehow?
I'll be goddamned. Now that I think about it, this must be because of that anti-porn law that you've got, over there. They're somehow applying it to game services, too.
But then, like, don't blame Sony for following your laws. How is that fair? If you gave your freedom away, that's your own fault. Sony can't change what the UK government requires.
EDIT: lol, ask your king to fix it, peasant
EDIT 2: I live in Texas, and they just enacted an anti-porn law, here. I don't like it. It's objectively stupid, and won't protect anyone from anything. But it's not worded in such a way that you have to present an ID to Sony, to make a gaming account. So, again, your stupid law is your own fault. It's incredibly dishonest to blame Sony for problems you created for yourselves.
Who gives a shit? They're going to get my 0 dollars worth of Playstation Bucks that I'm never going to put in there?
They're going to play my other PSN games that I have on there? Except I don't have a single one of those?
They're going to fuck with my Helldivers 2 account? OH WAIT, THEY CAN'T DO THAT EITHER, BECAUSE THEY'D STILL ALSO NEED TO HAVE ACCESS TO MY STEAM ACCOUNT. The two accounts get linked. You still do all the game shit through Steam.
There is NO RISK, here. The only thing that could possibly happen would be someone spams my throwaway Protonmail account with nonsense spam. And I don't care about that.
Plenty of ways to fuck with you, getting the account banned, deleting it etc. Sorry friend but using a throwaway email for any accounts you actually use is a terrible idea.
You know what would solve this all? If there wasn't a dumb requirement for a PS account. See why people are annoyed with it now?
using a throwaway email for any accounts you actually use
When I say "throwaway," I don't mean "I forgot about it, and I no longer have access to it, and I picked a really stupid name and password."
I mean: "this is not the same email that I use to do my primary banking and contact my grandmother."
I have two-factor authentication set up for everything that supports it. I just looked it up, and PSN supports it. Yes, that doesn't mean it's immune to being hacked, but my use of a "throwaway" email address doesn't do ANYTHING to increase the odds of my account being hacked, for anything.
If you won't admit that, I don't care to discuss this with you, any further.
That's an even bigger pain in the ass than creating a throwaway account. At least throwaway would've been two second and forget it, now you're having to create an actual account.
Your anger about the people that are upset by this is way more irrational than the anger of those people. Like it literally doesn't affect you at all if people stop playing the game.
Technically true, since I don't play that game. But I actually understand that the game in question is designed to have a lot of crowd-directed gameplay. If the player-base hollows out, it actually will negatively affect a lot of the people who are playing it.
Just buy your own website and boomski 10000 emails you can randomly set up. [email protected] primary
Bills@myfullname
Admin@myfullname
Fuck@myfullname
Bullshitspam@myfullname
It's awesome, plus never get emails like hey fuck@myfullname there are hot horny people in your area code...viagrxxxxa etc.
Ahhh, but that's just UNACCEPTABLE CORPORATE SHILL BEHAVIOR, according to all these other clowns.
According to these assholes, the only reasonable response is to throw a shit-tossing tantrum, until the children of these particular game developers have all actually starved to death. That'll teach 'em to mildly inconvenience some people.
So if I'm being honest the only reason I learned this was because Gmail was putting work email to spam....as a freelancer...so I got a website I use for email...0 spam. It's amazing.
Someone went around asking women which they would pick to be stuck in the woods with. Almost all of them picked the bear. This resulted in a bunch of men harassing the woman who wrote it... Fully proving why people keep picking the bear.
This reminds me of a meme that originated on somethingawful.com, you don't know who you could be talking to online, and its a bear. Man I miss that site.
A women wrote an article about how women are afraid of the possibility of male strangers attacking them, comparing it being stuck in the woods with the bear.
And, as is tradition, instead of actually reading the article a bunch people took it to mean that she would literally rather be attacked by a bear rather than a man.
lemmynsfw.com
Oldest