[sh79]

This is not a hot take, but uninformed one. They sold a game with PSN requirement in the countries where PSN was not available at all. You would just lose access to your game after 4 months, how is that a slight inconvenience? It's a pretty big legal mess they almost got themselves into.

There are probably times when you could make an argument like this, but this isn't one of them. A company pulled something very anti-consumer, and the review system was instrumental in holding them accountable.

[johnnyanmac]

>You would just lose access to your game after 4 months, how is that a slight inconvenience?

Unless you were physically unable to make a PSN account, this is the exaggeration I fear from such review bombs. And yes, I know PSN supports less countries than Steam, but how many people on the internet really reside in one of those non-supported areas? I would bet it is less than 84,000 people.

>There are probably times when you could make an argument like this, but this isn't one of them.

I don't think it's a good thing to only point out a systematic issue when it's inconviient. That's how these "but it worked here" sorts of issues become abused. I'd rather point out how this snowball is rolling before it becomes a boulder later on, especially when boulders have already formed and gone not nearly as mentioned.

>A company pulled something very anti-consumer,

Pet peeve: "anti-consumer" has lost all meaning. Paying $10 more was "anti consumer", downloading a store of your own preference is "anti-consumer". Now making an account you don't like is "anti-consumer"? You see how this word has gotten diluted in the gaming community, no?

I miss when inconveniences were just that, inconvient. Not a declaration of war for capitalism.

[zettabomb]

>And yes, I know PSN supports less countries than Steam, but how many people on the internet really reside in one of those non-supported areas? I would bet it is less than 84,000 people.

It was delisted from 177 regions [0]. This apparently includes the CIS region [1], which has a population of nearly 240 million. You might be underestimating a bit.

[0] https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/sony-doub...

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1ckd0w7/sony_removed...

[johnnyanmac]

>You might be underestimating a bit.

Steam reviews (and the ones review bombed) are predominantly English, so I don't think they affected as much as this implies.

[zettabomb]

There's so many confounding variables that there's no way to know if that's true or not. People often speak English on the internet, despite it not being their first language. Not every one of these regions may have heard about this in the few days it was active and so may have not participated in the reviews. And some people will just suck it up and say oh well, despite being affected. Regardless of the number affected (which is not insignificant), it completely prevents them from using a product which they purchased, and that's simply not acceptable.

[johnnyanmac]

>Regardless of the number affected (which is not insignificant), it completely prevents them from using a product which they purchased, and that's simply not acceptable.

I'd agree with refunds on a core level, yes.

I think my main issue here is that people who very much can access PSN are the ones making the most fuss. So it feels like a deflection rather than a core inability to play from players.

Also, the fact that this isn't the first time these regions had to deal with PSN. I bet some of them simply made accounts on a nearby, supported country. I'd bet the number of accounts being banned for such situations is multiple magnitudes less than the review bomb.

[int_19h]

I don't think there's any evidence that this is the case, but even if it is true, so what? If anything, it's good to see American gamers standing up for those from other countries. An injury to one is an injury to all, and solidarity is the only way you can make large companies pay attention.

[theshrike79]

> And yes, I know PSN supports less countries than Steam, but how many people on the internet really reside in one of those non-supported areas?

Countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Åland islands (a part of Finland) are excluded from PSN for some technicality.

As is the whole country of Philippines. (110 million people).

I'm kinda suspecting this is some weird Sony thing where they want to have a legal entity in each country with PSN and don't want the hassle - or more stupidly don't want to offer service if it's not translated to the native language.

[sh79]

>And yes, I know PSN supports less countries than Steam, but how many people on the internet really reside in one of those non-supported areas? I would bet it is less than 84,000 people.

I don't think it's a very good point to make. "I'm a consumer, but it doesn't affect MY bottom line, so it's not anti-consumer". Well, sure, I guess.

>I don't think it's a good thing to only point out a systematic issue when it's inconviient. That's how these "but it worked here" sorts of issues become abused. I'd rather point out how this snowball is rolling before it becomes a boulder later on, especially when boulders have already formed and gone not nearly as mentioned.

That's how you appear tone deaf. You're making your "hot take" under a legitimate case of review systems working as they were intended, it's not part of the systematic issue.

>Pet peeve: "anti-consumer" has lost all meaning. Paying $10 more was "anti consumer", downloading a store of your own preference is "anti-consumer". Now making an account you don't like is "anti-consumer"? You see how this word has gotten diluted in the gaming community, no? I miss when inconveniences were just that, inconvient. Not a declaration of war for capitalism.

I'm not sure what war you think anyone is declaring, this is merely a bunch of frustrated paid customers voicing their opinion. There are many things in gaming, and well everywhere else, that are indeed anti-consumer. I think it's why it may appear to you that the word is diluted. Ultimately, it's down to communication between the company and their customers: if the market views something anti-consumer as "acceptable", then those things would not cause a negative reaction of this scale. I'm not saying Sony was unjustified in requiring a PSN link, but it was communicated poorly and after the game has already been sold to people who would be losing their access a result of it. It's not a new practice either: many games do require you to create an account with their or someone else's service to enable different online features, like crossplay. It's not really a problem until it's handled in a way that it becomes one.

[johnnyanmac]

> "I'm a consumer, but it doesn't affect MY bottom line, so it's not anti-consumer". Well, sure, I guess.

That's my point. If "anti-consumer" means "whatever inconveniences me personally", nothing is pro-consumer once you have more than a dozen customers.

https://xkcd.com/1172/

We can't really define economic philosophy in this fashion.

>That's how you appear tone deaf.

So when a broken clock shows the corect time and you point out how the clock is broke, you're "tone deaf"? Maybe others need to widen their perspectives instead of cherry-picking the times it happened to work in their favor.

As far as I'm concerned, if you support a review bomb now, you support it when people use it to pretotest pro/anti-Taiwan, or when bigots protest some LGBT game, or when some personal drama happens and fans retaliate. It's all "their opinion", right?

But I've seen dozens of these and gamers pretend they can pick and choose when to open and close pandora's box. They chose poorly.

> There are many things in gaming, and well everywhere else, that are indeed anti-consumer. I think it's why it may appear to you that the word is diluted.

It's diluted because no one can even define what "anti-consumer" means. That's how buzzwords become created. If you use the same word to define needing an account to play on an online server and literal fraud, you only dilute the latter meaning by comparing a trivial issue with a serious (and illegal) one.

>if the market views something anti-consumer as "acceptable", then those things would not cause a negative reaction of this scale.

Yeah, because the market is a really good arbiter of morals. So what I get out of this is that releasing a broken game without promised content isn't "abti-consumer" because enough people bought it anyway. Aka "becsuse it's still fun".

If you don't understand how the above can happen and why I'm frustrated by how fickle the market is, we won't see eye to eye on this issue. I know nothing here will change with Steam or review bombs or the next gaming drama. But if they can rant on a place that impacts user decisions, I can rant at the bottom of a social media post on a technical forum, one that used to have more nuanced discussions of such issues.