I'm currently on the Steam page for Helldivers2. A search for "PSN" delivers 8 results, all of them in the reviews. A search for "Playstation" allows you to find "Playtation PC LLC" as the publisher, a ad link for "all the games by Playstation Studios", two more links for Publisher and Franchise, a link to the data protection shrink-wrap blurb on playstation.com, an epilepsy warning link on playtation.com and finally, in the area nobody would be looking for a line saying "requiring third party account Playstation Network (supports linking to Steam account)".

Emphasis mine.

What would the average user expect? That he may link to his Steam account for convenience.

What "supports" does not exactly convey is that such a link is mandatory.

Time to kick a game off the wishlist. It's way too long already anyway, a little cleanup is in order.

Well, 2 reasons.

First, the obvious one: Ubisoft tells you about this right out the gate. No Ubisoft-account, no playing. It was possible to play Helldivers2 'til now without a PSN account.

Second, and a direct result of the first one, people who don't want to jump through these hoops already don't buy Ubisoft games because they already know what's in store for them. They used to complain back when Ubisoft started this practice, and they don't complain anymore now. They just don't buy the junk, and I'm pretty sure a year from now, nobody will complain about Sony doing this anymore either. People will just add another company to the blacklist.

Which is why I almost exclusively play indie games. They let me launch their games via GOG (or just run the binary) just fine without having the infect the machine with some ridiculously overblown launcher.

It's similar to why I prefer Brother printers, they allow you to just install the driver without having to install their overblown "printer manager" and the kitchen sink.

This is exactly the problem. The publishers of the game compete with "free". Because that's the price the average user of a cracked version pays. You can of course compete with free. By giving a "better" product. Either because it's more compatible or something the user already is used to (this is why Windows is still so popular despite everything) or by offering more convenience and better accessibility with a lower learning curve (what Steam and Apple offer, click and "it just works").

If you go out of your way to make using your product more complicated and less accessible than the free product, and if you then wonder why people prefer the free version, you're an idiot.

I absolutely check the "please send me your newsletter" box.

Then again, I also use a new mail address for every place I have to sign up for and run a job that checks which companies sell your mail address to spammers.

You enjoy it when the other party unilaterally changes contracts you enter?

We should meet, I have quite the business proposal for you!

I tend to generally get "pissy" about sudden changes in a contract I entered that inconveniences me. Bay you're into getting baited-and-switched, personally, I consider it abusive.

But hey, if you're the kind of person who enjoys being abused, I sure don't want to kinkshame anyone.

We managed to get rid of about 90% of the bots recently? Wow.

New Zealand.

It has by far the highest chance of not getting hit by a nuke and eventually survive.

Nuclear war is not about being right. It's about being left.

These countries lack either the delivery vehicle to threaten the US with nukes or their nuclear weapons arsenal is not able to overload the defense screen of the US, so why bother with them?

Who would believe them? Their word has demonstrably no value, their signature is worthless.

You're getting soft. I'd have a far more interesting fate for them.

Very simple. Don't comply? Don't make international calls to my country. Which in turn means you're not gonna make any kind of business deals with anyone here.

As far as I know, Russia didn't even comment yet.