They know they’ve won the console war this gen and are reverting back to their late-PS2, early-PS3 form.
Nah. This is way worst than anything from those eras. Decisions from late PS2/early PS3 didn't have this tinge of excessive, bean counter & shareholder-driven greed attached to them. Sony just genuinely wanted to make an awesome, powerful, future-proof 7th gen system but overestimated how much people were willing to pay for it at launch, while underestimating the 1-2 punch of Gears & Halo 3 for 360 at around the same time.
This right here? It's like they genuinely looked at the worst way to roll out a change that would've been contentious, then decided to make it twice as bad. All so they could bloat some numbers to shareholders. It's a damn shame.
The hyperbole Jesus. The communication is bad but come on.
It's not just the communication; it's the intent behind it. And IMO that makes this worst than any of the silly stuff with early PS3. At least then it was SIE still clearly pushing their console and putting that front and center.
This mandatory PSN thing is probably so they can focus even more on PC ports and accelerate the porting times for non-GAAS titles while still making the GAAS stuff Day 1 (with PC gamers getting the better deal due to more performance options, cheaper prices and free online). So in a way I'm a bit glad this fiasco is happening because who knows how further behind a priority console owners would've became for SIE had none of it happened.
Unfortunately Arrowhead are catching a lot of strays over it, they clearly didn't want to do this to their community. And now I worry that SIE have just soiled a perfectly good partnership out of corporate greed. I'm starting to agree with others: get SIE out of California and back in Japan. Or at least out of California; that place is cursed.
Well done guys, from the post:
I think the problem is if you do that, the TOS clearly mention that it's against the terms to do so. If SIE decide to then enforce the TOS and find out you've made an account from a region where you don't reside, there goes your content.
Also, a lot of places now require IDs or passports to be scanned to verify age & identity online; those would give away a person's country of residence if they tried spoofing with a place not of their residence. There's also the thing that while you can make an account outside of your residence, you're restricted to only using cards and currency of that particular country for buying content. There are probably a lot of teens and young adults not savvy enough to do that type of thing, or people who might be worried that trying to buy with a different currency could lock up their online banking accounts.
I actually had that happen to me when trying to buy a foreign film (On a Silver Globe) from a website based in Russia. My card got declined multiple times and then my bank account was locked. Had to go through hell to get access to it again, re-scan my ID and social security card, put up with their horrible wait times on the phone, all of that. And that was with a reputable website (at least I
think it was reputable).
All you need to do is create a psn account (even with fake shit), save the credentials on your browser and login with it on your steam? This modern gaming community love some fucking drama these days, always looking for something to boost twitter likes and youtube views, it's actually getting worst because now you can make money with twitter. Also, the slow gaming news season...
It's not necessarily that simple, since this involves accounts being used with real debit & credit cards to buy content. There's a risk if the TOS is enforced and those doing this trick are banned, banking accounts tied to their cards could be locked/frozen under suspicion of fraudulent activity. And depending on the banking account, it could be a pain in the ass to get your access back to it.
