PC modder removes annoying PSN account requirement for God of War Ragnarök | Hacker News Reader

PC modder removes annoying PSN account requirement for God of War Ragnarök

arstechnica.com

13 pointsBender11 comments

The joke is you need a NexusMods account now because it’s protected behind a login wall.

I don’t want a PSN account -or- a NexusMods account.

Get it from Github: https://github.com/iArtorias/nopssdk

Wish this was more common because I also don't want a NexusMods account, but it's hard to avoid because so many modders release exclusively on NexusMods. I believe it's because they pay them a few pennies per million downloads.

PC gamers have been crying a river for years about PS5 exclusives, and when they get their shit they cry another river about Denuvo, anticheat, account creation, not on Steam, whatever.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What is wrong with protesting ridiculous anti consumer practices? What is the point of requiring a mandatory 3rd party account to play a SINGLE player game? Or crappy launchers that do absolutely nothing except prolonging the start of the game?

The player didn't risk lots of millions on developing something and payrolling 100s of people. So it's none of the player's business. Like people don't have 123 useless accounts here and there over the web, why this one hurts?

99.9% of gamers do not even have a firewall, and they don't care that their usage stats are shoveled out of their PC by the truckloads.

I don't have 123 accounts, frequently delete unused accounts and send GDPR requests for websites that won't comply. And I know people who also refuse to play something because of a shitty account requirement. But I agree that it's certainly a minority.

I don't get the argument of the risk though: by adding a PSN account requirement, all you bring is bad press with 0 added value. On top of that, you do that for a game that was already released years ago, sold well and was well liked. It's not exactly a major risk to expand it to the PC platform.

I just hope that one day it becomes illegal for companies to add unnecessary requirements like that.

Honest question… what PS5 exclusives? PS4 had numerous exclusives, but the only PS5 exclusive I can think of is Astro Bot, which was just released.

Demons Souls and Returnal immediately come to mind. I know there are more but not sure which other ones weren't also dropped on PS4.

Returnal is on PC. Demon souls is just a PS3 game… I don’t really count remakes.

I think it's worth noting:

* Denuvo/Anticheat software tends to hog performance, introduce security issues. See also CrowdStrike, see also CAPCOM.SYS.

* Account creation is an issue because most gamers are buying their games through a storefront (Steam, Origin, Xbox, etc.) and at least for Steam/Xbox, these systems provide a clean 1:1 interface for account data. PC folks are a stodgy bunch and tend to not want to create multiple accounts unless there is a very good reason. They generally have come to expect crossplay between Steam/Xbox/etc. Steam has become the dominant force because it just gets the fuck out of your way, and if I want to give a friend a copy of a game, I can just Do that.

What really chafes folks about the PSN requirement is that PSN is the only account/storefront which isn't global, and moving can result in a ban. Sony has worked for nearly two decades to get things rolling and still, most people don't know about PSN outside of areas that focus on Playstation games; PSN focuses on the core demographics of Fortnite/CoD/Tekken players.

If I move from San Francisco to London, here's what it looks like to buy games on the various storefronts or use their account systems:

* Steam: update your billing info.

* Xbox: update your billing info to an address in an officially supported country.

* Origin: update your billing info.

* GOG: Update your billing info.

* PSN: Pick one: Find a billing address in the US that I can maintain with a bank (e.g. "moving" to a friend's house/relatives house) and make sure to only use that address, bank account, and carefully shovel money into that account when I want to buy games on PSN and maybe commit some tax fraud in the process, making sure to shovel my PSN account devices through a VPN that pops out in the US; Buy local gift cards to PSN in order to get games and pay a 10-15% premium to do so, doing the conversion in my head; Create a whole new PSN account for the UK, not logging into my US PSN account too often, and being careful to never buy games on the old PSN account using a UK billing option.

If I pick the first PSN option, there's a good risk I'll be banned under the TOS. The UK happens to be somewhere that PSN is supported, but in places where it isn't, I risk being banned; the list of places that you can't open a PSN account legitimately is pretty large [1] and has some really odd places (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lichtenstein, Kyrgyzstan, Estonia) that can't open or use a PSN account without risking a ban.

[1] https://insider-gaming.com/countries-that-dont-have-psn/

You are regurgitating the ever present, trumped up nonsensical bullshit in the gaming industry landscape.

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