I’m a PS5 player, so I can’t make an impact, but if you did write a negative review (thank you, you made this happen ❤️) please consider taking the time to change it! This was clearly not AH decision and the game deserves an accurate review, it’s easily one of the best games I’ve ever played and definitely the best game as a service!
Edit: woke up to new comments, this post reminded… Lemmy is just the same as Reddit.
Edit2: Christ I need to turn off Lemmy notifications, I’ve left this community and this was a stark reminder for me… don’t engage with a specific game community, just enjoy the fucking game!
I’m not convinced AH was unaware of what account linking would lead to. In the 6+ months they knew about it, not one person realized PSN access wasn’t available in all the countries they were selling to? I think AH did a good job appearing shocked and betrayed by Sony, and sure there are plenty of devs that likely didn’t stand by that decision, but erasing all of the reviews that warn potential buyers of the bad practices doesn’t seem like a smart idea. I think they are capable of regaining genuine positive reviews and community trust, but it shouldn’t be overnight
Localization and regional sales are typically some of the very last tasks in a game’s development cycle, and six months is a lot of time for a memo to get misplaced. Configuring the Steam page’s region settings for the game very likely happened in the last couple weeks before release, and somebody very likely applied the wrong default settings (likely using settings Sony would normally use for games that don’t require PSN).
Not that that makes it okay, but it’s not like there was some secret conspiracy at AH/Sony to hide PSN linking and intentionally sell to users they’re guaranteed to issue refunds to. This was a combination of bad business decisions, poor communication, and most likely a dash of human error.
You’re probably right, thanks for the reply
Shoutout to you, thanks for being a reasonable Lemmy user and not losing your cool despite receiving a few downvotes!