this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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Half Life required an account at a time no game required accounts. Most PC games of the 7th gen required GFWL, so much so, without piracy, many are unplayable today. Microsoft still does this I.E. Doom Eternal where you're required to enter a Bethesda account or the absolute shitshow minecraft has become. Most rockstar games on PC of the last decade required rockstar launcher, including steam releases.
Other than GFWL, there has been very little pushback on these types of requirements. Funnily enough, sony is the last one to arrive and the one that gets the most pushback... People are weird.
Just went to login to my dedicated minecraft Microsoft account just for it to force me to add a secondary email before it would log me in. Enshitification at it's finest.
I mostly agree with you but third party launchers and accounts have gotten pushback on PC for a long time.
Not disagreeing but it was at least a first-party account and there was a legitimate purpose. PS has none.
Not disagreeing but what was the legitimate purpose other than growing a platform with a popular game? You know, same as Sony.
The Steam Account is used to distribute updates etc. to the client. The PSN account has no such advantage, it doesn't help me. How are they the same?
The only difference between the two is that you despise PlayStation, that’s why you can’t see your bias. Steam gamers think the billionaire who runs steam is THEIR billionaire so they somehow think the company is moral, it isn’t. Steam is every bit as unethical and the rest
Are you a Sony shareholder, or a small child? I clearly formulated my criticism: Steam offers me something (downloading of patches, Linux compatibility etc.), while PSN only offers incompatability. They deliberately make their games harder to play than necessary without giving me anything in return.
Would you like to take your ridiculous straw man back and try again?
There were often patches for games that you could download from the developers website a the time. Yes, it is a bit more convenient to have a client that will automatically do that for you but it wasn’t necessary.
People hated steam at the time because it took like 80mb of ram when 256mb of total system ram was not uncommon.
And how does the developer verify that you actually bought the game before letting you download the patch? Through an account.
Sure, there were reasons to dislike Steam. That does not mean that PSN account requirements and Steam account requirements are comparable. Unless you can show me where I can use the PSN account to download updates for the games without requiring a Steam account?
The patch was only the files related to the patch not the entire game. It varied but often the developers required a cd key and the disk to be in your drive in order to play the game. Most often patches were just on the open web free to download. There were counter-examples to this but they were the exception rather than the norm.
They’re not comparable now. They are comparable for steam early on to PSN now. PlayStation may be planning to eventually launch a competitor to steam. You would then need a PSN account to download updates.
I’m not defending it I don’t want yet another launcher I have to have on my PC or another account I have to keep up with. I probably won’t buy this game unless it has a steep discount and there is a no PSN patch.
I know how patches used to work, I used to download them myself. But those were times with far smaller file sizes! Today patches can easily reach 20-100 GB. That's not just expensive, it's also not something companies want to provide for free for pirates. So patches would be locked behind an account no matter what.
That still leaves the criticism of Steam not being necessary as a running program, and it's a valid criticism. But PSN doesn't give me any advantage, while Steam at least increases convenience. PSN only has downsides for me. That's why it's not a comparable requirement.