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Original PC relase of Horizon Zero Dawn is "removed" from unsupported PSN regions despite not having any PSN requirements

dex3108

dex3108

Member
Oct 26, 2017
23,904
Sony continues to do stupid things and most recent one is removing option to buy original PC release of Horizon Zero Dawn on Steam and Epic Store. You still get it as part of the bundle with Remastered version but that bundle is now region locked as all other recent Sony releases and not available in over 170 regions.

So now people can't even get version of the game that has nothing to do with PSN. Sony was supposed to use PC to expand their userbase and that includes countries where consoles are not available but they are doing their best to make that expansion minimal and with a lot of pissing off of the new potential userbase.
 

ATXAlchemy

Member
Nov 1, 2017
577
This definitely feels weird to me coz Sony has official PlayStation presence in some Asian countries that literally don't have PSN.

Is this due to some law in one of the countries involved?
 
danm999

danm999

Member
Oct 29, 2017
18,413
Sydney
This must be a legal thing?

Maybe when the Helldivers 2 stuff happened someone pointed out what rotten ground they were on basically encouraging people to create fake accounts on PSN and now they're locking everything down until they fix roll out PSN globally.
 
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dex3108

dex3108

Member
Oct 26, 2017
23,904
ATXAlchemy said:
This is definitely stupid coz Sony has official PlayStation presence in some Asian countries that literally don't have PSN.

Is this due to some law in one of the countries involved?
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No, this is again Sony forcing people to buy new thing.

danm999 said:
This must be a legal thing?



Maybe when the Helldivers 2 stuff happened someone pointed out what rotten ground they were on basically encouraging people to create fake accounts on PSN and now they're locking everything down until they fix roll out PSN globally.
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Original PC release doesn't have PSN requirement.
 
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dex3108

dex3108

Member
Oct 26, 2017
23,904
danm999 said:
Yeah I realize that, I'm speculating they are might be making changes to that and where PSN is available and taking this down might be a sign of that (as in when it comes back up, it has a PSN requirement).
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It won't, Remaster is separate game that will require PSN. They are not touching original relase.
 
Kickfister

Kickfister

Member
May 9, 2019
2,314
I honestly think this is about having one product actually available on the store. Their intent is to not sell that old version anymore (but they still let you have access to it if you buy the new one). It sucks that they are effectively removing the game from regions that previously had access, but for whatever reason Sony just doesn't care about doing business in those regions.

I get why people in those regions are angry, but the outrage from people who are only affected enough to have to make/sign in to an account feels incredibly manufactured. I get not liking it, but the anger that some people have for this is hard to wrap my mind around.
 

Atom

Member
Jul 25, 2021
13,182
You should still be able to activate a cd key but who knows how long those will be available on official retailers for.

Sony's handling of this is utterly awful. They should just create a dummy Playstation PC account system and then let you link that to a PSN account or sth in the future as they expand coverage.

At a bare minimum they should have region free cd keys available through third parties for people who are fine with making a PsN account in an unsupported region, but even though they do make cd keys they still region lock them to a subset of unsupported regions.
 
Raysoul

Raysoul

Fat4All Ruined My Rug
Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,098
Of fucking course. And they won't even care or release any fucking official statement on this fucking bullshittery.

Sorry for the language, but I think it is appropriate given they got away with this.
 
PLASTICA-MAN

PLASTICA-MAN

Member
Oct 26, 2017
25,943
Like I said in the other therad I see the original in a remaster package with upgrade path costing the same as just the new remaster.
So that bundle is blocked too in those PSNless regions? That sucks.
 
nsilvias

nsilvias

Member
Oct 25, 2017
26,513
Kickfister said:
but the outrage from people who are only affected enough to have to make/sign in to an account feels incredibly manufactured. I get not liking it, but the anger that some people have for this is hard to wrap my mind around.
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because the login literally gives no benefit to the person unless they already have a playstation and care about trophies more than steam achievements which are literally the same thing under a different name which the pc versions of sonys games already have. these games run perfectly fine without a login as the psn bypass mod showed. theres no reason why single player only games should require a seperate account. this requirement literally only exists so sony can pump up their psn numbers so they can tell suits that they have tons of engagement on psn and to sell your data. sony already has a bunch of data availible to them using steam stats so its redundant even besides the selling your data part. all they did was add another annoyance for paying customers and those who dont know what a mod is. if sony was doing it for drm its a pretty useless way to do it when you can just pay for denuvo which doesnt get cracked anymore anyways.
 
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dex3108

dex3108

Member
Oct 26, 2017
23,904
PLASTICA-MAN said:
Like I said in the other therad I see the original in a remaster package with upgrade path costing the same as just the new remaster.
So that bundle is blocked too in those PSNless regions? That sucks.
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Again point is that by doing that they removed game from non PSN regions. You can see it and buy it, people from over 170 unsupported regions no longer have that option.
 
GrantDaNasty

GrantDaNasty

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,402
Kickfister said:
I get why people in those regions are angry, but the outrage from people who are only affected enough to have to make/sign in to an account feels incredibly manufactured. I get not liking it, but the anger that some people have for this is hard to wrap my mind around.
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Here's the thing though: It was TRIVIAL to make a PSN account before, but now you are literally geo-blocked from even seeing these games on Steam Store unless you're on a "PSN officially supported" country IP.

My PSN account is from 2010 when I signed up as being from Finland (I'm from Estonia in reality), but only now Sony has made it so I literally cannot even buy their games without a VPN.
 
Tolby

Tolby

Member
Sep 24, 2019
799
Eastern Europe
They could be taking advantage of Steam being officially available in places they're not. Instead they're being backwards and stubborn about these PC releases.
This is due to backend changes with the new release, isn't it?

What kind of investors are okay with decisions like these.
 
PLASTICA-MAN

PLASTICA-MAN

Member
Oct 26, 2017
25,943
dex3108 said:
Again point is that by doing that they removed game from non PSN regions. You can see it and buy it, people from over 170 unsupported regions no longer have that option.
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I suppose even that bundle will start vanishing too for the regions that can buy it and in the near future only the remaster will be available to purchase.

Edit: I see why you wrote "again" (cus I was curious why you did), I missed your reply about this in the other thread. XD
 
bob1001

bob1001

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May 7, 2020
1,730
nsilvias said:
because the login literally gives no benefit to the person unless they already have a playstation and care about trophies more than steam achievements which are literally the same thing under a different name which the pc versions of sonys games already have. these games run perfectly fine without a login as the psn bypass mod showed. theres no reason why single player only games should require a seperate account. this requirement literally only exists so sony can pump up their psn numbers so they can tell suits that they have tons of engagement on psn and to sell your data. sony already has a bunch of data availible to them using steam stats so its redundant even besides the selling your data part. all they did was add another annoyance for paying customers and those who dont know what a mod is. if sony was doing it for drm its a pretty useless way to do it when you can just pay for denuvo which doesnt get cracked anymore anyways.
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Also in my experience Sony's account system is a bit of a shit-show. Tried to log in to my PS account to buy the anniversary Dualsense but forgot my password and it took them an hour to send me the reset password link to my email, of course the thing was sold out by the time I got in. A lot of people in the UK couldn't verify their phone number on GoWR's release date because Sony wasn't sending the 2 factor Auth codes (ridiculous that you even need to link a phone number when it's basically a burner account for PC gamers, the alternative to a phone number is to send a scan of your passport which is arguably worse).

Lastly, and idk if they fixed this, you can't play GoWR offline on the Steam Deck because of the PSN requirement.

It's such an unnecessary hassle, legitimately easier to drag and drop the PSN bypass mod into the game files than to have to deal with that BS.
 
DeadlyVenom

DeadlyVenom

Member
Apr 3, 2018
3,053
God they are fucking dense. You'd think after the Helldivers thing they'd be working on this instead they seem intent on making it worse
 
Kickfister

Kickfister

Member
May 9, 2019
2,314
nsilvias said:
because the login literally gives no benefit to the person unless they already have a playstation and care about trophies more than steam achievements which are literally the same thing under a different name which the pc versions of sonys games already have. these games run perfectly fine without a login as the psn bypass mod showed. theres no reason why single player only games should require a seperate account. this requirement literally only exists so sony can pump up their psn numbers so they can tell suits that they have tons of engagement on psn and to sell your data. sony already has a bunch of data availible to them using steam stats so its redundant even besides the selling your data part. all they did was add another annoyance for paying customers and those who dont know what a mod is. if sony was doing it for drm its a pretty useless way to do it when you can just pay for denuvo which doesnt get cracked anymore anyways.
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I don't disagree with any of this, however the barrier to entry is completely trivial in a supported region that I can only really muster a "that's annoying" response. For some reason no other company gets flak for extra logins the same way Sony has (except bethesda with the required login for doom), it feels like a cultural anomaly. Again, not calling out people that wish it wasn't there, I'm calling out people that are acting like Sony just shot their dog by asking for a login (which tbh isn't the response that's been on this forum for the most part).
GrantDaNasty said:
Here's the thing though: It was TRIVIAL to make a PSN account before, but now you are literally geo-blocked from even seeing these games on Steam Store unless you're on a "PSN officially supported" country IP.

My PSN account is from 2010 when I signed up as being from Finland (I'm from Estonia in reality), but only now Sony has made it so I literally cannot even buy their games without a VPN.
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That's valid and that sucks. I hadn't thought about how the two layer approach makes it harder to bypass for those regions.
 
Igniz12

Igniz12

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,691
Tries to expand to new markets....by not selling in any market. Galaxy brain stratagem from Sony.

Are they like trying to make a point after the PSN fallout or something? So bizarre.
 
andshrew

andshrew

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,341
It's pretty clear after the Helldivers incident (that is still region restricted despite not having the PSN requirement), that whoever is managing internal PC publishing is under a lot more scrutiny than they were before.

The only surprising thing at this point is that there are any Steam listings that remain available world wide, and haven't been locked down to PSN countries only.
 
squall23

squall23

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,059
Kickfister said:
For some reason no other company gets flak for extra logins the same way Sony has (except bethesda with the required login for doom), it feels like a cultural anomaly.
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Did you not see the EDF6 thread? It was immediately review bombed on release because people were forced to make Epic accounts and/or login to it before being able to play online. Well guess what? They fixed it and game no longer has those requirements.

Sometimes, complaining works.
 

Atom

Member
Jul 25, 2021
13,182
Kickfister said:
For some reason no other company gets flak for extra logins the same way Sony has
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This is very not true. Go to any Ubisoft connect thread or EA app thread and its people trashing them. People will even leave negative steam reviews for those login requirements.

Honestly basically only Rockstar gets away with it and that's probably because their games are once a generation cultural events at this point.
 
ConflictResolver

ConflictResolver

Member
Jan 1, 2024
2,652
Midgar
Atom said:
This is very not true. Go to any Ubisoft connect thread or EA app thread and its people trashing them. People will even leave negative steam reviews for those login requirements.

Honestly basically only Rockstar gets away with it and that's probably because their games are once a generation cultural events at this point.
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Rockstar doesn't get away with anything. Their launcher is trash and makes playing their games I have bought through Steam stupidly difficult because it doesn't just play locally normally, it begs for me to log in and it begs for internet. I was on holiday recently and fancied playing a bit of GTA4 and at that moment in time I didn't have stable internet and I couldn't play the game. Just baffling. If a game is downloaded bypass all this internet nonsense.
 
fourfourfun

fourfourfun

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,277
England
Service was always the one aspect that Sony were always terrible at. Felt less over the last years and now it has come out to play again now they've gone multiplatform.
 
Arukado

Arukado

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,607
The original version is also gone from my region, and it is a supported region.

This is the same shit they tried to pull way back when, hiding the promise of a free ps5 version for ps4 owners.
 
HellofaMouse

HellofaMouse

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,136
ngl, im only here because im curious to see the arguements the sony defense force will pull out of a hat this time.
 
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Askherserenity

Askherserenity

Prophet of Truth - Chicken Chaser
Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,271
It's funny how hard some people still defend this or cry about people being upset about this. Bonkers.

Dude saying no one complains about other external logins is hilarious.
 
bob1001

bob1001

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May 7, 2020
1,730
ConflictResolver said:
Rockstar doesn't get away with anything. Their launcher is trash and makes playing their games I have bought through Steam stupidly difficult because it doesn't just play locally normally, it begs for me to log in and it begs for internet. I was on holiday recently and fancied playing a bit of GTA4 and at that moment in time I didn't have stable internet and I couldn't play the game. Just baffling. If a game is downloaded bypass all this internet nonsense.
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Rockstar has, for years, treated PC gamers like crap. Delayed ports, shit ports, issues with R* Games Launcher, issues with GFWL, hostilities towards mods and allowing cheating to run rampant in GTA Online are the big ones off the top of my head.

Despite all that every single time they release a game people line up in droves to buy it no matter what negative PR surrounds it, there is no sign of their PC fan base diminishing. That is 100% them being given a pass.
 
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