Sony Removes PlayStation Account Requirement From 4 Single-Player Steam Games (arstechnica.com) 16
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Sony's game publishing arm has done a 180-degree turn on a controversial policy of requiring PC players to sign in with PlayStation accounts for some games, according to a blog post by the company. A PlayStation account will "become optional" for Marvel's Spider-Man 2, God of War Ragnarok, The Last of Us Part II Remastered, and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. Sony hasn't lost hope that players will still go ahead and use a PlayStation account, though, as it's tying several benefits to signing in.
Logging in with PlayStation will be required to access trophies, the PlayStation equivalent of achievements. (Steam achievements appear to be supported regardless.) It will also allow friend management, provided you have social contacts on the PlayStation Network. Additionally, Sony is providing some small in-game rewards to each title that are available if you log in with its account system. You'll get early unlocks of the Spider-Man 2099 Black Suit and the Miles Morales 2099 Suit in Spider-Man 2, for example -- or the Nora Valiant outfit in Horizon: Zero Dawn. Some of these rewards are available via other means within the games, such as the Armor of the Black Bear set for Kratos in Ragnarok.
Logging in with PlayStation will be required to access trophies, the PlayStation equivalent of achievements. (Steam achievements appear to be supported regardless.) It will also allow friend management, provided you have social contacts on the PlayStation Network. Additionally, Sony is providing some small in-game rewards to each title that are available if you log in with its account system. You'll get early unlocks of the Spider-Man 2099 Black Suit and the Miles Morales 2099 Suit in Spider-Man 2, for example -- or the Nora Valiant outfit in Horizon: Zero Dawn. Some of these rewards are available via other means within the games, such as the Armor of the Black Bear set for Kratos in Ragnarok.
but what would be nice (Score:1)
but what would be nice is a verision of wine or crossover that actually played the games on the wine list. Directx implementations ontop of opengl or vulkan aren't actually complicated so why complicate it more than it's worth, that's stay on staff for you, never bother to finish what they have started and always want to start another one. clean clear cut, what was the renaissance of pc gaminging on linux under wine, directx 8, 9 , 10 or 11
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What are you babbling about?
There are multiple Direct3D compatibility layers available to you on Wine. If one doesn't work, try the other one.
Graphics compatibility is almost never the problem since DXVK was introduced, it's very rare you need to use WineD3D any more. The problem is almost always somewhere else, usually in the DRM. Lots of games also support Vulkan directly now, and then you don't have to fuck with Microsoft's fucked over "standard" at all.
How the slippery slope has gone. (Score:2)
I still remember that people got mad at Half Life 2 for the at the time unheard of move of requiring online activation for a single player game without accessing online content, and now people swallow up always-online d.r.m. for single player games like it's nothing.
Re:How the slippery slope has gone. (Score:5, Insightful)
one might suggest that if people did it like it was nothing, Sony wouldn't keep backpedalling like this. They'd have those users using their service already, rather than trying to incentivise its use.
In practice what we keep seeing is very public objections to these kinds of customer acquisition and retention strategies. Consumers have generally dealt with one or two inconvenient or pushy systems before in their life, and maaaaybe that is an implicit disincentive.
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This is one step further than always-online d.r.m. though. Which is definitely swallowed up with no issue now because all major games do it because everyone has the internet for it nowadays I suppose. They wouldn't if dial-up were still a thing and they would loose too many customers over it.
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You can resolve this issue simply by not playing overhyped triple A games, and instead looking at the vast amount of indie titles that are released every year.
Yes the marketing of those triple A titles exists, but it's not very hard to look past it... especially when there are better gameplay experiences in a large variety of places.
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People bitch and moan and then ultimately accept. But only when they can. The unique thing here is that PSN is not available in places where Steam is. The result of a hard requirement for a PSN account means artificially limiting sales all for the sake of an account sign-up, that is the primary reason for backpaddling. Also the most vocal people against a PSN account were those which added it as a requirement retrospectively, or those that couldn't get a PSN account in the first place.
This is not a DRM issu
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Indeed, and while some people might not buy games with d.r.m. or online activation because they thought it was bullshit and they might have lost some sales over it, it was probably just worth it in how much piracy it stopped and extra sales it generated, it's that simple for them.
It's obviously also how much of an inconvenience the d.r.m. is, being always online when one already is is hardly an inconvenient issue but some d.r.m. that say requires a special particular video player to use or doesn't allow one
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one might suggest that if people did it like it was nothing, Sony wouldn't keep backpedalling like this. They'd have those users using their service already, rather than trying to incentivise its use.
In practice what we keep seeing is very public objections to these kinds of customer acquisition and retention strategies. Consumers have generally dealt with one or two inconvenient or pushy systems before in their life, and maaaaybe that is an implicit disincentive.
For the most part consumers don't know.
Steam changes this, there is small but prominent yellow-orange box (that stands out against a blue-black background) that says "3rd party account required" and that is enough for me to hit the X button on that tab... Someone else will get my money and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Not like I don't have options on PC.
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Except in the case of steam it was just to activate it. Once activated you could play the single player Half Life 2 offline as much as you wanted.
Online activation of games was a thing back then with or without steam.
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I still remember that people got mad at Half Life 2 for the at the time unheard of move of requiring online activation
It wasn't just that. It also required that you download the entire game, even at launch. I bought the DVD copy. I was on a fucking modem at the time because I had no other options where I lived. (The next year or so, local wifi-based internet became available.) Here's how the install worked:
If the download fails, the partial download is not retained. This persists to this day; Steam updating itself does not use a res
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Yes, the way you describe it seems like an extreme thing for a modem user.
Also, forced updates that remove functionality due to licencing issues now exist. As in music in the game is licensed not perpetually, but only for 3 years, and then an update remove some of the music.
Sony is a surprisingly American company (Score:2)
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In the sense that you can always count on them to do the right thing after they've done everything else.
More the case of they've been forced to acquiesce due to bad publicity but they'll try again as soon as they think they can get away with it... in that regard they are quite like an American company.