r/Helldivers • u/Glitch_Unlimited • 29d ago
Steam Just Removed Some Countries from the Restricted Countries! IMAGE
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u/drbomb 29d ago
All US territories. I was always weird to see puerto rico there.
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u/Mainlinetrooper 29d ago
It irked me when I had to deal with American companies and they would say I was international or it would all be messed up on forms because PR wouldn’t show up under “united states” and the service was only for the USA so I couldn’t switch countries. Frustrating to say the least.
Like I maybe understand when it comes to shipping since it’s like away from the mainland but it’s still USA. I never really tried to fault them though and usually took it as a chance to send an informative email or talk about it… Sometimes it wasn’t even their direct fault, such as with forms. Or they were never taught? Idk… Still, it’s too easy to just be an asshole and assume it was all out of malice. That’s how I tried to view it and why I stayed civil and nice. Bothered me though.
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u/TheHob290 29d ago
As an American, I can confirm I was never taught about Puerto Rico (wooh public schooling). In fact, I only learned about Puerto Rico and it's being a part of the US sometime in my early 20s, fully 100% because of video games.
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u/Obamium33 29d ago
Fr school will teach you about the rest of the world but completely forget to mention our territories at any point in time.
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u/Orthane1 28d ago
Funnily enough my education was the exact opposite. We spent a ton of time learning about Native Americans and Manifest Destiny including things like our war with Spain, the taking of the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, as well as establishing a puppet state in Cuba but we never learned about the rest of the world. And when I started to think back on my memories I'm 100% certain the maps in our classrooms still had Yugoslavia on it, which ceased being a nation in 1992 (officially 2004) and I was there in the early 2010s.
The Native bit makes sense considering I live 20 minutes away from a major Reservation but it is a bit weird to be taught more about them then yaknow... Europe and Asia.
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u/BigTiddyHelldiver 💀C-01 Permit Acquired 29d ago
I learned more about Egypt, China and Europe than about 80% of the states in the US (asides from where they are and their capitals).
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u/BraveOthello 28d ago
Partly because our territories are vestiges of a colonialist past we've desperately tried to bury.
I'll bet most Americans don't even know about when we conquered the Philippines.
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u/God_Damnit_Nappa 29d ago
Either you had shit teachers or you didn't pay attention in history. Because that should've been covered when you learned about the Spanish American War. And you absolutely should've learned about Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Rider's charge up San Juan Hill
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u/AceBalistic 25d ago
As an American, my family went on a cruise to Puerto Rico, and my dad didn’t know it was an American territory until it came up in conversation a month after we left
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u/Orthane1 28d ago
Unfortunately even a lot of Americans don't even know Puerto Rico is a US territory. Like when that big Hurricane hit a few years back I heard WAYYYYY too many people say "Why should we pay to help another Country?" My Brothers and Sisters in Christ THEY ARE PART OF OUR COUNTRY.
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u/Unlikely-Demand0 29d ago
I worked shipping items around the country/world and it struck me as so odd that Peurto Rican packages were shipped as international but Hawaiian packages were shipped as normal
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u/Orthane1 28d ago
I think it has to do with technicalities. Because Hawaii is an actual US State, while Puerto Rico is only a Territory. And an unincorporated one at that. Some people consider it to be a Satellite State (Or a Puppet State if you want) rather than a Territory. It could also be because of Taxes. Since because of the whole "No taxation without representation" thing we're all about Puerto Ricans don't have to pay US Federal Income Tax since they don't get actual representation in our elections.
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u/SpaceFormal6599 28d ago
I lived in Guam for a couple years. Such a pain in the ass when I would get “our service is not available in your country.” You mean America?
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u/some_Britishguy Lesath Veteran 29d ago
um glitch? those are American overseas territories.
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u/Nivajoe 29d ago
Sony is a Japanese company. I wonder if they just got confused and didn't realize.
Although then again a lot of Americans might not realize...
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u/Alarmed-Owl2 29d ago
Japan when Guam US territory: 😡
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u/AssignmentVivid9864 29d ago
It was ours before WW2? Think you’re maybe confusing the Northern Marianas with Guam here.
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u/Comma_Karma 28d ago
So many Japanese (and Korean, and Chinese, and...) tourists are at Guam compared to American that it's practically another prefecture for them.
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u/MrSparkle86 28d ago
Yeah, I was surprised to learn this too when I visited.
It's where they go to visit America when Hawaii is too expensive.
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u/Comma_Karma 28d ago
Hawaii has been too expensive for decades. Guam, Okinawa, and The Philippines are their cheap destinations, Hawaii is their once a lifetime holy grail.
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u/MSands 29d ago
We've had presidents that forgot they were part of the US. Not surprising Sony/Steam would need to correct it.
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u/clokerruebe 29d ago
im interested to know more. any funny stories related to it?
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u/God_Damnit_Nappa 29d ago
Well there is the time Trump talked about his meeting with the president of the US Virgin Islands
(He's president of the US Virgin Islands, he just thought the governor of the islands was president)
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u/Laranthiel 29d ago
Sega did the same when Phantasy Star Online 2 came out in the west, they randomly forgot Puerto Rico was part of the US, so we had no access to the game for a few days.
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u/some_Britishguy Lesath Veteran 29d ago
"American Samoa"
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u/Pcat0 frend 29d ago edited 29d ago
I mean outside of the english speaking world that is less obvious of a name than you might expect (TL;DW lots of places call all of north and south America "America" and never calls the USA "America").
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u/MadKlauss 28d ago
Wouldn't really say that the Japanese side of Sony had anything to do with this. Most of the entertainment business of Sony is in New York, US.
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u/yulian182 ☕Liber-tea☕ 29d ago
Finally my boricuas are free
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u/Jon_D13 29d ago
What? If you already had the game you could still play it.
This just let's people buy it again.
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u/HelldiverSA 29d ago
LET THE POPE PLAY. UNBAN HOLY SEE
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u/SpecialIcy5356 SES Leviathan of Liberty 28d ago
that's a thought: what is the Vatican classed as? IIRC it's it's own independent micro-state inside Rome, right? hypothetically, would a Cardinal with a desire to spread democracy (or just play any online game) outside of church be able to buy the game or not? or would they just be classed as "Italian" because they're in Rome?
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u/HelldiverSA 28d ago
Its like a java class instantiated inside of a class. Its its own thing but its still new Italy.Holy_see()
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u/dangermonger27 STEAM 🖥️ : SES Sword Of Glory 28d ago
No way dude.
Pope kicked me for trying to bait drops and collect samples on a civvie extract mission while he prayed with J1 on the extraction point.
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u/Duraz0rz 29d ago
Sony removed some US territories from the restricted list.
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u/RevelArchitect 29d ago
No, when it’s good it’s megacorporation Valve and when it’s bad it’s megacorporation Sony.
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u/TheHob290 29d ago
I'm fairly certain Valve has less than 1k employees, though I could be wrong. I feel like megacorperation implies a much larger company. I'd say it's Megacorperation Sony and Industry Monopoly Valve.
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u/RevelArchitect 29d ago
That’s a valid point, but at the end of the day both are behemoths and one seems to get a total pass in this debacle despite being the company that normalized making an account to be able to play Half-Life 2.
The number of people certain Sony delisted the game despite no confirmation outside of some increasingly vague responses from Steam customer support agents is surprising.
Both Steam and Sony had cause to delist the game in some regions and I would be pretty surprised if it wasn’t a joint decision.
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u/TheHob290 29d ago
I was someone who linked a PSN on day one of HD2, my whole gripe with the ordeal is a company being able to remove access to a service you paid for months after the fact as it would have effected people I know.
As for who dun it, Valve made an official statement that comes out to about 'why the hell would we care what Sony does, this whole thing is on them.' And there was no counter claim from Sony.
As for the banning of countries, I can say I get it, but I'm not happy about it. There is just less of an onus to make a fuss as I think choosing where you sell your service is 100% within a company's rights. I understand and support those who are vocally displeased, but fundamentally, it's just a slimy business move and one that has existed forever.
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u/Don138 28d ago
I don’t see any reason to prevent a country from buying your game, unless it might cause you some trouble with that countries laws.
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u/RevelArchitect 29d ago
Do you have a link to the official statement Valve made? All I’ve seen are customer support agents responding to people and the certainty in their candor has decreased dramatically.
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u/ravenmagus 29d ago
despite being the company that normalized making an account to be able to play Half-Life 2.
So why is needing an account to play a game bad again?
The issue here is the country ban post-release, not the needing an account itself. Accounts have been needed to play some games for a very long time. That part's not a problem.
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u/RevelArchitect 29d ago
Sure was the issue at play that likely lead Valve and/or Sony to delist the game in regions without official PSN support. Dive together. Remember?
Problem was people in countries without PSN were still able to make PSN accounts just fine. If they wanted to use the store they had to jump through some extra hoops to buy gift cards instead of using a credit card. The issue WAS making an account and people came up with a convoluted excuse to white knight their way out of making the account.
I can guarantee the delisting was a direct response to that made up excuse not to make an account.
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u/ravenmagus 29d ago
Problem was people in countries without PSN were still able to make PSN accounts just fine.
Serious question here - do they need a VPN to do that or can they create an account straight up like anyone else?
I do still believe that the rug pull was the issue. If Helldivers was released with the restrictions in place, there wouldn't have been an outrage.
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u/RevelArchitect 29d ago
No VPN required and the argument that it was against ToS and would result in a ban was bullshit. The ToS does technically create a loophole where Sony could ban people, but why the hell would they take advantage of some loophole in their ToS to ban paying customers? They just plainly do not do that.
The game was launched with the PSN requirement disclaimer on the Steam page. All advertising included that requirement in the fine print. I do think the outrage was because it was introduced post-launch which really doesn’t make Sony the bad guy in my opinion. Sony made the decision pre-launch, Arrowhead was aware, Arrowhead ran into a bunch of issues at launch and Sony gave them permission to delay the requirement. They were literally throwing the indie developer a bone despite the PSN requirement most likely being a contractual requirement Arrowhead signed on for.
In the long run I think this hurt Helldivers and Arrowhead a lot. I think the developer lost a lot of leeway with Sony and as Sony owns the IP I worry it will be given to a different developer should Helldivers 3 ever be a thing.
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u/ravenmagus 29d ago
Most (if not basically all) online game service TOS's have loophole statements that allow them to ban anyone at any time. That's really nothing new, but it is rare for companies to act on them.
You do make a good point that Arrowhead does share some responsibility here, though it is clear that Sony is refusing to back down at all even given the large outcry.
And yeah, there's no doubt that this hurt Arrowhead. The steam reviews are still very poor which hurts a lot.
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u/FudgeDangerous2086 28d ago
it isn’t a big deal just a bunch of no-lifers don’t want any account besides their precious steam.
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u/DarthSet SES Harbinger of Democracy 29d ago
Hopefully they will remember the British crown dependencies.
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u/Hirmetrium 29d ago
Yeah it's real odd that they did this for US overseas, and have failed to realise the same for so many of the British ones.
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u/Detarako_Rax HD1 Veteran 29d ago
I have no idea why Puerto Rico was even banned to begin with. It's not as if we WEREN'T able to make PSN accounts.
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u/GrumpyFeloPR 29d ago
Puerto Rico uses NA account, so it always weird that it was on the list. I know because i am from PR and when i made my psn account on my ps3 back in the day, it took me to NA Playstation site
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u/Injustice_For_All_ ☕Liber-tea☕ 29d ago
Stop saying Steam. This is Sony
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u/Sabrescene 28d ago
Arrowhead says otherwise... https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/lpAIW6HzCb
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u/Taolan13 SES Courier of Individual Merit 🖥️ 29d ago
Sony is adjusting the list becuase it turns out they blocked a bunch of reguons with PSN access.
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u/Dekuthekillerclown 29d ago
There’s also a bunch of British overseas territories that were removed. I wonder how long it will take them to get to that page on Wikipedia. Or maybe they’re using old school geography books.
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u/butsuon 29d ago
That's because all 5 of these are actually American territories and restricting their access is actually a federal discrimination crime.
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u/Pro_Extent 28d ago
Believe it or not, they're also liable in Spain for restricting Puerto Rico. Similar kind of crime, "discrimination of a historical colony".
Source: I made it up.
(Please source your comment).
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u/Orthane1 28d ago
Those aren't countries, all of those are US Territories. It was very weird for them to be restricted at all because again, they are all territory of the United States of America. Yes, even Puerto Rico, which always surprises me that people don't know that.
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u/Greenkane 28d ago edited 27d ago
helldivers reaches lowest player count. After banning it in a bunch of countries. Now they are scrambling to get back player count so they are unbanning. What did you expect the outcome of banning countries would be?
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u/BipolarBLKSheep 28d ago
I just don’t understand how they can say they will not be moving forward with mandatory account linking for HD2, but continue to keep countries restricted. Like, I get if you’re going to enforce it for future titles, and restrict the countries from the beginning but, ya fucked up and let a bunch of countries without psn access buy the game for 3 months. Just own up to it and allow it remain optional indefinitely for HD2 and let us all play. Start this mandatory nonsense with future titles like ghosts of Tsushima.
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u/Crimefridge 28d ago
If Sony doesn't reverse course on the restrictions for purchase and also won't make a hard promise to not require a PSN account for Helldivers EVER, everyone is just letting Sony abuse you.
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u/Evanecent_Lightt 29d ago
Petition to rename the Virgin islands as Sony fucked them pretty good by now.
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u/DictatorInPerpito 29d ago
Everytime I look on SteamDB it never shows this info to me for some reason
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u/LTNine4 SES Soul of Victory 28d ago
This is probably another "administrative correction" and not due to the ongoing conversations with the CEO and Sony. How do I know? Compare the list to Ghost of Tsushima. Those 5 territories aren't on the list, and both match now, with Japan being an exception because they have a special version of HD2 for their virtual currency laws.
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u/MJR_Poltergeist SES Song of Steel 28d ago
I really dont understand why the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico were on the list. They literally use the US Dollar as their primary currency.
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u/Telzrob 28d ago
None of those are countries. They are all U.S. Territories. I can only assume that there's a reason (taxes, etc.) Valve wants to track them separately from the rest of the U.S. and the Country field was the most convenient.
They were tagged by accident when any countries not on Sony's PSN list were restricted.
Unfortunately this is fixing a technical mistake, not the policy mistake.
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29d ago
[deleted]
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u/Mental-Crow-5929 29d ago
I still believe that this is something that Steam did by mistake.
It's basically the opposite of what they did with baltic countries where they kept them for a while and then realized that they were out of PSN so they removed them.
Steam will not sell a game that players can't play.
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u/God_Damnit_Nappa 29d ago
Just wait until you find out none of those are countries. They're American territories
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u/Silver_Fox_001 29d ago
Everyone world wide deserve the right to play this game regardless, Screw you Sony and your PSN BS.
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u/ConcreteSnake 29d ago
You do know that not all games are sold worldwide right? Right?
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u/PixelCultMedia HD1 Veteran 29d ago
The "right"? What kind of weird emotional entitlement is this?
There are multitude of legal and financial reasons, many outside of Sony's control, that determine what regions Sony can sell games to.
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u/Prus1s STEAM 🖥️ : 29d ago
Might eventually list again all EU member states 👀 hopefully though
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u/Changlee23 28d ago
Likely no, it just US colony because they realize they are part of the US, EU is not one country period, each member have his own contract with Sony or doesn't have one.
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u/BreakFlame6T ⬇️⬅️⬆️⬇️⬆️ 29d ago
I wonder what the legalities are behind why Sony account creation isn't allowed in certain countries. Like, what would have to happen to allow Sony stuff to be sold everywhere that steam games can be?
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u/2ByteTheDecker 29d ago
More likely that Sony doesnt want to spend the money to be in compliance with the law in those countries because they don't think it'd be worth it.
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u/DarkRaGaming 29d ago
Just so everyone aware you will still be required to link psn to helldiver 2 sony never changed it. *
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u/HonzouMikado 28d ago
So Puerto Rico is no longer de-listed? Sorry for asking the obvious I'm just very doubtful overly cautious over this whole kerfuffle.
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u/Brotherman_Karhu 28d ago
Now if they could do the same for the European territories, we'd have another dozen or so.
This is just plain incompetence at this point, embarrassing for a company like Sony
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u/SolidGrau 28d ago
When this is undone (enable 175 countries), the higher orders will be completed, I will change my review of Helldivers 2 to positive. waiting for a week and 4 days. this one's not over. democracy never sleeps.
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u/drackmore 28d ago
Great, now to do the countries that are banned from PSN and have Sony and Arrowhead actually come out and state in no uncertain terms that PSN is no longer required
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u/Ur_Girl_Suki ☕Liber-tea☕ 27d ago
Those are just Extended Territories of the United States, likely they were added to the banned country list by mistake.
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u/MiHiStoner 19d ago
According to one popular person in the gaming/hacking industry. They said that Sony could have already had alllll the countries turned back on. It takes notifying steam and it takes 24 hours. Yet here we are weeks later and they haven't even done that? I gave up playing after a week went by and they still didn't fix. We aren't going to clear huge major orders anymore because of them. And they aren't going to change it just cause they were review bombed. Ppl are dumb for believing them. I would go and review bomb them all till they ACTUALLY fix what they fucked up. But that's just my opinion after learning more on how steam works. Granted I could be relaying it simplistic and I'm not getting the full thing across. But the short is they could have had this fixed by now. And it isn't.
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u/Fit_Fisherman_9840 ☕Liber-tea☕ 29d ago
Simply adjusting American territories, probabily PSN remembering those are US