Sounds like someone on the verge of burnout
I would be if all I built was reduced to ashes in an instant.
(EDIT: as of May 6 Sony appears to have reversed course on the PSN link reuqirement)
I’ll be giving Sony until Tuesday to announce a change of course as probably management doesn’t want to do anything until Monday at least. Yes it’s their fault for announcing shitty news right before a weekend, so anyone who wants a refund should request one.
It really sucks that Sony has to come in and ruin what would have been a shining example of how to run a live service game.
It’s golden week in japan, if Japanese management has any say it won’t be til at least Tuesday.
It really sucks that Sony has to come in and ruin what would have been a shining example of how to run a live service game.
I have no love at all for Sony but let’s be honest, Arrowhead signed up with Sony as their publisher to get the benefits Sony would provide as a publisher, specifically their support apparatus for dealing with tickets. Arrowhead wanted that from Sony but failed to list the game properly in Steam with region locks to prevent Steam users from buying it in countries with no PSN support, and didn’t enforce the PSN requirement at launch.
It’s easy to point the finger at Sony because it’s Sony and they suck, but Arrowhead pulled the bait and switch. They could have updated their Steam listing for the game a week after it came out to add purchase restrictions and avoid the future mess, but I’m sure they were drunk off the sales numbers and said, fuck it, let it roll.
This is Arrowhead’s fault entirely as I see it: they signed an agreement with the publisher, Sony, which they needed to get PSN’s support apparatus to deal with tickets, but Arrowhead couldn’t get linking setup on launch, didn’t enforce the requirement from launch, and couldn’t be bothered to edit their Steam listing so it was only for sale in countries with PSN. Steam doesn’t pay out money to publishers and devs for 3 months, so the way this will work out is Arrowhead is going to eat the loss on Steam refunds, and any additional costs suffered by Sony will also be taken out of Arrowhead’s payout.
Sony is incredibly shitty, but Arrowhead made this agreement when they signed with their publisher for their own benefit, but then decided to cut a major corner at launch. This could just as easily happened with any other publisher, and Arrowhead aren’t going to reverse course even if Sony let them out if their contract, because Arrowhead doesn’t want to hire a team of hundreds or thousands of support agents across the world: that’s why a studio signs up with a publisher in the first place.
From what I’ve read, Arrowhead doesn’t control selling the game, Sony does. So it’s on Sony’s head for selling the game in regions that don’t have PSN access, knowing that account linking would be a requirement even though it was temporarily disabled. The whole situation is a complete clusterfuck.
I think that the whole “temporarily disabled” thing is bullshit in itself. When I first launched, it asked me if I wanted to link a PSN account. No mention that it was temporary at all. I said no.
I’ve played since day one and I don’t even remember it being a requirement. Fortunately, Sony has reversed course. Hopefully things return to normal over the next few days.
Do you have any links you can share so I can learn more about the agreement between Arrowhead and Sony? Everything on Google is either a news article or a reference to “the agreement”, but I can’t find a primary source for the agreement.
No, that agreement is probably private, but Arrowhead’s head of support has been all over Shitter discussing how they need PSN to handle the growing pile of support tickets. It’s the same reason any studio signs with a larger publisher: the dev gets the benefit of the publisher’s support apparatus, servers, advertising, etc., and the devs get to work on the game, rather than building their own support organization and infrastructure.
Borderlands is a good example of this: Gearbox makes the game, but if you click a support link, it takes you to 2K Games’ help desk, since they publish the game
Noob question: Pilestedt is the CEO of Arrowhead?
Correct
feels like someone should be able to jailbreak the code and set up private servers, maybe with leaks from the inside