This is half the fucking interweb, right now. JESUS, YOU DON'T HAVE TO GIVE THEM YOUR REAL EMAIL ADDRESS. Fucking calm down.
Yes, I realize how much hate I will get for this. I don't give a shit. Seethe away, kids.
In the UK, you have the choice between giving them a picture of your ID or doing a facial scan to complete the age verification requirement.
Lolz just give them a fake email...
LOLOL no.
Prove that shit. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that Sony can demand a photo ID from you. I mean, the Allies fucking won the war with Japan. Did you not get that memo, somehow?
Get out of here with your lying nonsense.
For sure, there's no need for any fuss, just keep quietly taking all the corporate bs as always. Next time when you'll need to submit an income form just to access a microtransaction-riddled single player game - just use your parents bank account statement, no need to use your own. And when you'll need to enter a fingerprint id to unlock your multiplayer account - just ask your friend to help out.
It's a modern day privacy, apparently. Someone think of those poor companies barely getting by just by selling you the game, the least you could do is share your personal data for them to sell too, better yet get locked into their ecosystem for a long term milking.
I read all the way up until "next time." I read nothing after that. Slippery slope fallacy. Thanks for playing.
Username does not check out
For a while now, I've been telling people that this screenname is aspirational.
That's basically the truth of the matter.
The simple reality of the situation is it was a business decision by Sony. They saw this groundswell of potential players to add to their huge database of people to market to, and said "we're getting those email addresses". If I had to venture a guess, the higher-ups at Arrowhead are probably livid and pushed back. They get zero out of this change and they have to deal with the fallout. It's likely part of the publishing agreement.
That said Sony knew this would happen, if probably not to this degree. Maybe they post a solemn jpeg talking about how they "fell short of expectations". Being Sony it's likely that they just ignore the backlash. Their projections say they'll make more money with all that new data than they'll lose on some half-hearted boycott. Gamers are notoriously horrid at sticking to that shit. And you know what? That next battle pass is gonna sell just fine even if the vocal folks don't buy it.
Yes, it sucks and it's reasonable to be annoyed. Yes, many loud people on the internet are acting like a helldiver kicked down their door and demanded a kidney. Yes, only one party gains from this and it's Sony. These things aren't mutually exclusive. No need for argument imo.
They saw this groundswell of potential players to add to their huge database of people to market to, and said “we’re getting those email addresses”
See, this is the salient point, right here.
The correct response to this action is "LOL, sure. You can have my protonmail account that I only use to sign up for free shit, anyway."
Checkmate. Internet 1, Sony 0.
But instead, we get all this shit-flinging, foot-stomping, childish nonsense.
EDIT: Now that I think about it, signing up for all the shit they ask us to sign up for, in an ORGANIZED WAY, could actually change the whole situation, for the better. Here's the plan that should be enacted:
You sound like a kid whining about other kids. The people complaining are mostly adults who are reasonably upset that their data is being harvested. Yes the steam page did say a PSN account was required. Except it wasn't and the game worked fine for months just to have sony come back and tell us that it's suddenly required now. Kids don't give a fuck about making a new account.
I don't get why the self proclaimed chill dudes are always the least chill. Honestly if I see you in my game I'm booting you. You sound like an ass.
their data is being harvested
WHAT DATA??? They don't have any power to mine your data, here! They will only get what you give them. AND YOU DON'T HAVE TO GIVE THEM ANYTHING VALUABLE!
As I keep saying: the correct response isn't getting mad. The correct response is to give the corporation a throwaway email address.
The smart move isn't taking your ball and going home. The smart move is STUFFING THEIR CORPORATE MAW FULL OF THROWAWAY PROTONMAIL ADDRESSES THAT WON'T BE WORTH A PENNY TO ANYBODY!!!
Kids don’t give a fuck about making a new account
You say that, but look at what various people are asking, in this situation.
Sony is asking for any email address, HOPING you give them a real one, but without any power to make you do that.
I'm asking for people to give Sony nothing but throwaway email addresses that you don't care about.
Others are asking THESE KIDS TO STOP PLAYING A GAME THEY LIKE.
Can you look me in my faceless, digital cyber-persona and tell me that these kids will continue to boycott a game they enjoy?
You know they won't. They're hyped up and mad, right now. They won't be, in a few weeks, and they'll start crawling back to that game they already bought.
BUT MAYBE WE COULD USE THEIR ANGRY MOMENT, RIGHT NOW, TO CONVINCE THEM TO CREATE NEW EMAIL ACCOUNTS.
Once they do that, and they give Sony those accounts, it's done! The damage has been done to the godforsaken corpo data mining machine.
I don't think I'm wrong, here.
You're not a very chill dude and your girl tells me you don't even 69 so what's up with that username
Give them a burner account
Someone steals your account
Gread idea OP. Real smart lol
Someone steals your account
...and?
Who gives a shit? They're going to get my 0 dollars worth of Playstation Bucks that I'm never going to put in there?
They're going to play my other PSN games that I have on there? Except I don't have a single one of those?
They're going to fuck with my Helldivers 2 account? OH WAIT, THEY CAN'T DO THAT EITHER, BECAUSE THEY'D STILL ALSO NEED TO HAVE ACCESS TO MY STEAM ACCOUNT. The two accounts get linked. You still do all the game shit through Steam.
There is NO RISK, here. The only thing that could possibly happen would be someone spams my throwaway Protonmail account with nonsense spam. And I don't care about that.
Plenty of ways to fuck with you, getting the account banned, deleting it etc. Sorry friend but using a throwaway email for any accounts you actually use is a terrible idea.
You know what would solve this all? If there wasn't a dumb requirement for a PS account. See why people are annoyed with it now?
Your anger about the people that are upset by this is way more irrational than the anger of those people. Like it literally doesn't affect you at all if people stop playing the game.
Technically true, since I don't play that game. But I actually understand that the game in question is designed to have a lot of crowd-directed gameplay. If the player-base hollows out, it actually will negatively affect a lot of the people who are playing it.
Just buy your own website and boomski 10000 emails you can randomly set up. Myfirstname@myfullname.com primary Bills@myfullname Admin@myfullname Fuck@myfullname Bullshitspam@myfullname
It's awesome, plus never get emails like hey fuck@myfullname there are hot horny people in your area code...viagrxxxxa etc.
Ahhh, but that's just UNACCEPTABLE CORPORATE SHILL BEHAVIOR, according to all these other clowns.
According to these assholes, the only reasonable response is to throw a shit-tossing tantrum, until the children of these particular game developers have all actually starved to death. That'll teach 'em to mildly inconvenience some people.
So if I'm being honest the only reason I learned this was because Gmail was putting work email to spam....as a freelancer...so I got a website I use for email...0 spam. It's amazing.
You're not wrong. If the concurrent player count had dropped by 99% on announcement and stayed there for a week with no new sales it would have sent a message at least. But you remember the "shitstorm" around Hogwarts Legacy? 850 million in the first two weeks regardless 🤷♀️ that's the kind of shitstorm most would weather gladly, I'd bet.
But hey, you need blameless developers doxxed and threatened, gamers are your best option every time! Heheh yeah up top 🙌
EXACTLY.
And I mean, unlike the Hogwarts Legacy situation, this shit has a simple and 100 percent effective remedy.
Sony's asking for everyone's email address? Okay. EVERYONE give them throwaway email addresses, and NEVER interact with any of their mailing list garbage, or do anything else with those PSN accounts.
Let them have a huge list of completely worthless email addresses. There is no downside to letting them choke on that shit.
Like I said in another comment, there should be a continued campaign of everyone ALWAYS giving out throwaway email addresses that they never use to do anything other than sign up for the free shit, and nothing else.
Keep that up for long enough, and eventually the value of these bulk lists of email addresses will plummet to functionally zero. And that will mean less corporate nonsense, at least of that kind. And less attempts to hack companies for their email lists. I mean, why commit a federal crime, to obtain worthless data?
The funniest thing to me is that this lot will even admit that the Steam page said a Sony account was required from the beginning, even though it actually wasn't initially. Nobody got bait-and-switched, they either didn't pay attention or they think the temporary reprieve should have been permanent with absolutely nothing to justify that position. "It's not necessary!" is a shit argument, they said it would be and the game got bought anyway.
Though I'd say Hogwarts Legacy had an equally simple solution: people could have just not fuckin bought it. At least, waited a year. Fuck it, a month would have been enough. One month, zero sales. Fuckin ow, right? But no, kiddos gotta have their shinies. I still haven't bought that game, so I guess I accidentally did a better job of protesting than all the people screaming who went and preordered it 🤷♀️
Screaming is cathartic but doesn't effect change; you need action for that.
It's perfectly reasonable for PC gamers who use the Steam platform, which provides copy protection, to be annoyed by having to sign onto services they otherwise would never use. There is no purpose to it aside from marketing and data collection.
Common in some games when they add cross platform play.
A lot of shitty policies are common. It doesn't make them less shitty.
Once.
You only have to sign in ONE SINGLE TIME, to link that one game to your PSN account.
And then you never, ever, ever, EVER have to do anything with that account again, until the sun burns out.
But people will cry their entitled fucking eyeballs out, regardless. Whatever. Like I said, seethe away. It just makes me erect.
EDIT: Also, what data collection? If you're fucking stupid enough to give Sony an email address that you actually use, you truly, actually deserve to be tracked. Scientists track dumb animals all the time. Nothing wrong with that.
EDIT: Also, it WOULD be fine for people to "be annoyed." But that's not what's happening, is it? These people are throwing a five-alarm, heart-attack-inducing, cringe-o-riffic, shit-smearing tantrum about it.
It's against the TOS to use false information to make a PSN account. So now you're banned and can't play the game on steam.
Sony has an atrocious record of being hacked as well.
Some of the countries the game was sold in don't allow PSN accounts to be created. So those users can't play the game on steam.
if its such a tiny simple meaningless thing, why even need it in the first place?
check m8 shill