I've always found it ridiculous that Sony is allowed to sell their consoles and games in my county without allowing me to create a PSN account. They even sell the digital PS5, which REQUIRES a PSN account to get any games.
And then, even if you break their TOS and create an account in another country, you're still constantly inconvenienced - you can't pay for games using your local payment method, for example, and a useful Playstation mobile app is not even listed in the local app store.
IMO they should either provide the same level of service in all countries, or be forced to charge significantly less when selling their hardware in unsupported countries.
Is it actually Sony selling their games or consoles in your country or is it 3rd party sellers who import them from elsewhere because there's demand? It is still shitty and annoying that stuff is geoblocked, be it games, movies, books, etc. But the two are pretty different.
I'm not sure about the actual hardware, but physical copies of helldivers 2 are on sale in the Philippines, where you can't make a PSN account. You can find them on Playstation's website which makes me think they are authorized copies https://www.playstation.com/en-ph/games/helldivers-2/
Assuming it's actually sold by unauthorized third party sellers, every step in the chain seems pretty straightforward. People in [country where PSN isn't available] want PS5s. Enterprising people see an opportunity. Sony (or their authorized resellers) in those other countries sell PS5s to the importers because to them you don't need to fill out a KYC form to buy a PS5 so they're they're indistinguishable from someone who's buying one for domestic consumption. The end result is not ideal and the OP acknowledges this, but I'm not seeing where the "rather twisted conception of property" is coming from.
> The end result is not ideal and the OP acknowledges this, but I'm not seeing where the "rather twisted conception of property" is coming from.
I'm just noting the continued slide from wholly owned property to buying property but only leasing the use of it. I'm sure there are many rights-owners worldwide that are thrilled with this concept.
Yes, it is becoming likely that we are just “renting” hardware since the software needed for many consumer products is closed source and you can’t run your own software.
Counterpoint is that jailbreaking is legal so you do technically own the hardware. Issue is that John Deere, Apple, Sony, Microsoft make it impossible to jailbreak hardware nowadays.
> IMO they should either provide the same level of service in all countries, or be forced to charge significantly less when selling their hardware in unsupported countries.
Who would force the price change though?
It seems more reasonable for anyone in a country that doesn't have access to PSN just wouldn't bother buying a PS5 regardless if the price.
Totally fair. That's definitely a Sony problem if it isn't clear what countries are supported. I have to assume I'd return the PS5 if I got it home and couldn't make an account.
It's reasonable to ask for that and it would probably be up to a local government agency to enforce such a rule.
(In fact Meta's Quest was not available in my country for a few years until Meta changed their mind and removed the need to have a Facebook account as well).
To make Sony care about small countries it would be best for them to band together and act as a group on that. It must hurt them economically
If Sony doesn't have any presence in those countries, as evidenced by the fact that you can't create PSN accounts for those countries, do those countries even have jurisdiction over Sony? More practically, what leverage do they have to enforce compliance? Meta (Facebook) doesn't have any presence in China, so they can safely ignore any takedown requests from them, even if they are actually violating Chinese law.
A game is just a game. There is nothing vital to it.
It's the easiest thing in the world to boycott.
And yet, players consistently fail to make the editors pay for their bad behaviors. EA is still craping on their clients. Blizzards fails forward. Loot boxes, DRM, crippling anti-cheat mechanisms, buggy games with expensive DLC and micro payments are everywhere. Sony even infected their customers with a rootkit once.
If you keep giving them money despite this, then they have correctly noted they can charge you for their fun system despite the inconvenience.
Already more games have been created and published than a human could finish in an entire life. And that's games, not music, movies, series or books.
You could just stop buying any new game forever and have an entire life of wonderful gaming experience.
Hell, I'm still playing old snes games, or the flash version of isaac.
That's not how this market works. There is no homogenous group of gamers that can act together. Each year there is a new cohort of 11 years old that knows nothing of past publisher behaviour and wants the latest EA game for their birthday. For FIFA with the lootboxes etc there is the added factor that people buying those are for a big part a distinct group to other gamers, there are many guys that only play FIFA or their favorite sport game and nothing else. So bad behaviour in that area does not affect other game sales as much as it should.
For certain genres and certain games, no amount of negative reviews seems to have any effect on their popularity. I've seen many cases where, on Steam at least, the reviews for a game can be mostly negative, or mixed at best, yet the number of reviews keeps going up like crazy. Meanwhile some very positive and occasionally overwhelmingly positive games can have fewer total reviews a year after release than some poorly reviewed games get in a day.
There's also still an "early access" stigma even though must major publishers are basically treating "full" release day as an open beta test now.
All of this to say that careful consumers can only affect a small proportion of the games industry's revenue. It's enough to keep indie games and their small studios alive but so far it has had near zero effect on the AAAs. I suspect the layoffs we're seeing across the industry reflect a contraction in the spending of the majority segment but a lot of AAAs seem to be doubling down on targeting that same segment.
This makes me so mad. Every time I have to show my nieces or nephews how to play a game, and I have to show them all the fake buttons they have to avoid to manage to play it through the dark patterns. Even Windows, the OS, is full of traps now. You can't buy any software and have it pretend to be yours anymore.
Used to be the case for free mobile games at first, now it's everywhere.
Just to say: This is avoidable. Ofc one can not give Windows to a child anymore, but there is Linux. For games on Android, of course one can't install games from the Play Store anymore, but there is F-Droid. And for regular PC games, there is still a big selection that works without or with very little micro transactions. And besides, the kids system should not be capable to make any purchases no matter where they click.
But I can completely relate that it is infuriating and that it takes a lot of filtering through the mainstream shit to manage this well.
Proprietary/popular games on Linux come with the same monetization strategy on every platform. You want to play Fortnite, you get the Fortnite ads/loot boxes/nudges even on Linux (plus you'll get banned by anti-cheat quick).
Linux is not the recommended choice for the game selection, it's so that the OS is not already a hostile place with ads and spammy news. The games themselves have still to be filtered, as I wrote.
That's what I use myself, but I can't really recommend it to family overseas... And even that is not safe, this will probably be the last Ubuntu release I can use before the "Ubuntu Pro", Snaps, and other integrations become unbearable.
In the same manner one can avoid many bad aspects of modern cars if they are an experienced mechanic and can build their own, but that's not a reasonable burden for an average person.
Feels a bit absurd to try to lay the blame at the feet of 11 year olds, when adults routinely demonstrate the same behavior.
The latest example of KSP2 is imo a great example, announced in 2019 for release in 2020, delayed several times to go on to launch into a $50 'early access' early last year with far less functionality than the original game and worse bugs and architectural issues. Despite all the glaring warning signs, so many people ate up the promises. They delivered one basic feature in 6 months (reentry heating). Yet the 'trust' from otherwise smart adults remained. It seems they only finally noticed this past week, when the studio making the game was shut down. Now they expect refunds despite all the warnings Steam has against buying early access games based on future promises.
Well in this case things changed AFTER the game was bought, so people got screwed.
Besides, you make one of the dumbest point I have ever read on this website. Gas prices going up? Pfeh, I heat my house with a bonfire, wake up sheeple.
> players consistently fail to make the editors pay for their bad behaviors.
This comes across as either gaslighting or refusal of evidence - you have a theory that bad players/companies will be punished by the market, and when it doesn't happen, you conclude that it's the consumer's fault.
Maybe you should consider that your theory is wrong, as it does not match the real world. It appears to me that, these days, most of the time bad players do very well in the market.
There is a screenshot of an email that someone from Ukraine sent to Sony support and their response was that you can create an account using PS5 but not from a PC.
And then, even if you break their TOS and create an account in another country, you're still constantly inconvenienced - you can't pay for games using your local payment method, for example, and a useful Playstation mobile app is not even listed in the local app store.
IMO they should either provide the same level of service in all countries, or be forced to charge significantly less when selling their hardware in unsupported countries.