So there was some speculation whether Valve delisted the 177 (now 180) countries to protect itself legally or if Sony had done it for Sony reasons. It appears that Sony has been confirmed to be the one who delisted it

So in a first for my group, we were hit with three bugged and failed missions tonight.

1st was a defense missions where bugs stopped spawning and missiles stopped shooting.

2nd what the extraction vehicle left immediately when one person entered it.

3rd what no one could get in the shuttle.

This was a serious WTF night, we lost so many samples. While I appreciate the devs, stop trying to balance and fix some bugs.

Edit: Interestingly there are 3 unknown country codes in the list of deisted regions previously, so optimistically it might just be them correcting it and they would start selling world wide again.

Also some people say this might put them in violation of EU laws, but I'm no law expert nor an EU resident.

Edit 2 [update]: screenshot from someone who got denied a refund. Looks like it's confirmed to be Sony's decision.

Things that happen in game differently from my headcanon:

• During a dive, destroyers just hang around over player heads
  • Even worse, there's an actual game mechanic that causes orbital stratagems to have an AoA at 90° at the center of the map but lower it at the edges, like the ships were actually hovering over the center (realistically, all orbital stratagems calls would have roughly the same AoA)
    • I say "even worse", because I have to actively ignore a decision the devs made for the sake of realism rather than just tell myself "eh, they didn't think about this too much"
• Orbital stratagem timings make no sense, and are strictly a gameplay balance issue that cannot be realistic: the loading screen shows the first helldiver drops well outside the atmosphere and take several minutes to reach the ground, but turrets take 3 seconds to deploy? This game sucks, literally unplayable
• Surely Eagles must be capable of atmosphereless flight, if the cheap ahh shuttle is?
• At the beginning of the loading screen, the destroyer doesn't have an atmospheric re-entry fire effect which would be countered by shields or whatever

Things that oddly do make sense:

• Hellpods do have the atmospheric re-entry fire effect immediately after launching, which wouldn't make sense in the absence of (less than extremely thin) atmosphere
• ... that's it, actually

The reason I made this nerd emoji of a post:
I've played KSP and my suspension of disbelief towards games or shows with spaceships is completely broken.

Replying to a player on Twitter who said recent patches have made the game "unplayable," Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt conceded that he's not satisfied with his studio's current balancing approach.

"Hey, yeah I think we've gone too far in some areas. Will talk to the team about the approach to balance," he wrote. "It feels like every time someone finds something fun, the fun is removed."

For those that have a twitter account, there's a poll from Johan Pilestedt asking if they should delay the new warbond.

Fixes

Crashes

• Fix for common crash related to damage over time use
• Fix for very common crash related to hot joining quickplay session that become full

This unfortunately means that hot joining players won't show up in the recent players list until they drop down to the planet, or not at all if they leave from the loadout.

tl;dr - Helldivers 2 was removed for purchase on Steam for countries unable to create PSN accounts. This was not reverted.

tl;dr Steam Console command - Replicable results by performing: Run > steam://open/console > Execute command: package_info_print 137730

As many are aware, on May 6th Sony has rescinded their mandatory PSN account linking that was scheduled for May 30th. Although this is a big win, many are not aware that the same countries that were going to be restricted due PSN limitations have already been restricted on Steam as of May 4th (SteamDB - Change 23416542 - https://steamdb.info/changelist/23416542/). This was not reverted.

You can find current information regarding this through Steam console:

• Open Steam console (Run > steam://open/console)
• Execute command package_info_print 137730 (This is the command to print current information for 137730, which is the sub/package for Helldivers 2)
• Here's the current output for that as of this posting:

] package_info_print 137730
PackageID : 137730, change number : 23416565/23416565 
"137730"
{
	"packageid"		"137730"
	"billingtype"		"10"
	"licensetype"		"1"
	"status"		"0"
	"extended"
	{
		"allowcrossregiontradingandgifting"		"false"
		"AllowPurchaseFromRestrictedCountries"		"0"
		"PurchaseRestrictedCountries"		"AF AG AI AL AM AN AO AQ AS AW AX AZ BA BB BD BF BI BJ BL BM BN BQ BS BT BV BW BY BZ CC CD CF CG CI CK CM CU CV CW CX DJ DM DO DZ EG EH ER ET FJ FK FM FO FX GA GD GE GF GG GH GI GL GM GN GP GQ GS GU GW GY HM HT IM IO IQ IR JE JM JO JP KE KG KH KI KM KN KP KY KZ LA LC LK LR LS LY MA MC MD ME MF MG MH MK ML MM MN MO MP MQ MR MS MU MV MW MZ NA NC NE NF NG NP NR NU PF PG PH PK PM PN PR PS PW RE RS RW SB SC SD SH SJ SL SM SN SO SR SS ST SX SY SZ TC TD TF TG TJ TK TL TM TN TO TT TV TZ UG UM UZ VA VC VE VG VI VN VU WF WS XD YE YT ZM ZW"
	}
	"appids"
	{
		"0"		"553850"
		"1"		"2506210"
		"2"		"2506220"
		"3"		"2506240"
		"4"		"2506250"
		"5"		"2506260"
		"6"		"2506280"
		"7"		"2506300"
	}
	"depotids"
	{
		"0"		"553851"
		"1"		"553853"
		"2"		"553854"
	}
	"AppItems"
	{
	}
}

• Notable fields: AllowPurchaseFromRestrictedCountries=0 (Meaning do not allow from Restricted Countries); PurchaseRestrictedCountries={List of Countries}

You can also find a better formatted version of these limitations on SteamDB here: https://steamdb.info/sub/137730/info/

Hope this helps put things into perspective. Come to your own conclusions regarding this.

This is the Discord FAQ archive, I recommend reading all of it https://lemmy.ca/post/20577314

**Steam Announcement 5/2/24 **

This announces the return of PSN forced logins

“Due to technical issues at the launch of HELLDIVERS™ 2, we allowed the linking requirements for Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network account to be temporarily optional. That grace period will now expire. See details below in this post.

Account linking plays a critical role in protecting our players and upholding the values of safety and security provided on PlayStation and PlayStation Studios games. This is our main way to protect players from griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of players that engage in that type of behaviour. It also allows those players that have been banned the right to appeal.”

**Playstation Announcement 5/5/24 **

Backing out the PSN account changes, some corpo BS basically

"Helldivers fans—we’ve heard your feedback on the Helldivers 2 account linking update. The May 6 update, which would have required Steam and PlayStation Network account linking for new players and for current players beginning May 30, will not be moving forward. We’re still learning what is best for PC players and your feedback has been invaluable. Thanks again for your continued support of Helldivers 2 and we’ll keep you updated on future plans.”

**Some Analysis **

Basically from the information I gathered here’s how I see it went down. The notice requiring PSN connection was always there where all the EULA requirements are (right side of the store page next to the game features. You have to scroll past the buy button to see it. I never look at those. “Requires 3rd-Party Account: PlayStation Network (Supports Linking to Steam Account)” The PSN connection requirement was —active— on launch for a short amount of time. Due to the massive server lag this was causing they paused the feature. They then reenabled, leading to the previous 2 announcements.

**Problems I see with Sony **

1. They should never have sold to the 177 countries that it is illegal Corporate BS from the FAQ basically says go to a country that supports PSN, make an account, and go back.

Comment from @jet@hackertalks.com “Basically if you don’t live in a PSN country, they want you to lie to make a PSN account, making you in breach of the TOS. But they don’t want to say it directly. So they only answer in that mealy mouthed if you’re traveling scenario. What this means is if you live in one of the 66% of the world countries that doesn’t have access to PSN You’re going to lose access to the game. Unless you lie. And if you lie you could get banned.”

2. They needed to make it absolutely clear in-game that they were having server issues and that PSN login would be required once they got that sorted.

This was a fuck-up on their part not keeping their users informed. If they had put in that simple notification in-game none of this would have happened.

3. After one or two months of the feature not working and having huge success with the servers, amount of users, and player engagement, they should have just scrapped the feature.

4. Anyone being gifted the game would not have been aware of this, ever.

**Good things that happened: **

1. Steam offered full refunds to anyone that played, regardless of hours, which is extremely rare

2. After much collaboration from the gamers, PSN is no longer required

3. Gamers were able to push a corpo to not do some BS. Huge win

**To summarize: **

I didn’t notice the 3rd party login that was present when I purchased. That’s on me. Early gamers knew about the PSN connection. Any one of them that thought it was bad would have just returned it. Any one who didn’t care kept playing and didn’t bring it up because they didn’t care. Sony probably made the assumption people pay attention to those things. I will continue to play. For Democracy!

If you did leave a negative review consider taking it down. It is still a very great game. I’m going to delete mine but am not going to give a positive one due to the fuckery.

Welcome back, Helldivers.

Edit:

@IncognitoBlazer The team is taking about a good name for it right now.

https://x.com/Pilestedt/status/1787379765441085890

Late night tweet from the official PlayStation X account confirms they will no longer force the linking of your PSN account to your PC copy of Helldivers 2.