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Discussions Rules and Guidelines
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But as far as I can tell, there's no way around linking your Steam account to a PSN account once at the first start of the game. ANY active PSN account will do and It can be unlinked later in the game's menu. The game won't ask again.
God of War Ragnarok has the same pointless requirement while the previous God of War didn't. For Horizon Forbidden West a PSN account is optional, for Ghost of Tsushima it is optional for offline play but required for the game's online features.
I guess Sony REALLY want's to increase the number of PSN accounts and possibly directly collect some usage data for their PC ports. Might at least help getting more exclusives ported to the PC if the numbers are good enough.
In most countries you can simply create a free account. Unless you're in the UK, where age verification is required, you don't need to give much information either. And apart from a working email - any free email like hotmail or gmail will work - that information doesn't even have to be real (Unless you're in the UK). ;)
I genuinely did not expect this level of helpfulness.
Thanks guys.
Ill make an account on one of my less used mails.
I really appreciate all the feedback.
All the PSN junk is among the first things gone, right next to Steam DRM, in any pirated copy. And for legal users, Steam and the other annoying DRM launchers are more than enough to protect the integrity of the files. Even a compressed GOG-Installer does that effectively, free of any DRM. And that's usually enough for multi-player title as well. On top of that, most multi-player games also use extra cheat protection that also helps ensuring the integrity of the game files.
The main reason for most countries where PSN isn't available is quite simply that it hasn't been worth it for Sony, so far. Simple cost and return consideration. There might be a few exceptions but as the UK shows, Sony is willing to go the extra mile if they think the extra revenue is worth it.
Protection of minors is also quite irrelevant in that context. Most parents I ever met would just let their kids use their accounts anyway, and that's okay. After all, THEY have the right to decide what their kids can play or watch. Either way, you have to enter a birth-date but in most countries it's not verified so kids can easily create an account and enter anything they like. PSN is simply useless for that purpose.
The only thing a PSN account might offer is a way to directly contact or ban toxic users from multi-player games. But again, that's completely irrelevant for a SINGLE-Player game like Horizon!
So the only thing Sony has to offer PC users in return for requiring a pointless PSN account is an annoying, unstable overlay and useless "trophies".
The posts on this board are really surprisingly civilized, compared to all the toxic junk you often find for many other games. :)
The only REAL protection against piracy is playing online, anyway. But thankfully users made it unmistakably clear, that Always-On is an unacceptable no-go for single-player games. The PSN overlay comes dangerously close to going TOO far in this regard. Thankfully it can be disabled.
And what the Sony boss said was nothing but hollow, empty PR talk, in my book. A made up explanation to hide the real reasons for the annoying PSN requirement on PC.
But, yes, it's much worse elsewhere. This here is REALLY civilized most of the time.
I'm currently waiting for the release of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and that board is full of trolls. Especially annoying are all the ridiculous discussions and accusations about an unreleased game being "woke" or "DEI". And whenever you manage to shut one Troll up, a couple of new ones show up. Or they just start new threads with similar accusations. But it seems to be changing, the closer we get to release. Now the accusations changed to the game being not optimized or having ridiculous hardware requirements or being too expensive. Will be interesting to watch how this develops further, once the game is released.
Anyway, I'm here for the same reasons as you. I love the Horizon Series. And I always appreciate people - like you - who try to help others or are capable of having respectful discussions about any topic. :)
I want remote verification by creators that the executed code is legitimate! Because I understand the inner workings of computers, even if I am only average, and I know that anti-viruses are just smoke and mirrors, even though saying so isn't entirely true.
I have been coding for 40 years, and as a personal challenge, once I "déplombé (cracked)" the ping-pong virus of the time, which I fully understood, but I also spent days in vain trying to decipher the self-rewriting recursive and polymorphic protection of the first version of Word, which I must admit I did not fully understand back then, though saying I understood nothing would now be a lie.
Not to mention the issues the press has been increasingly highlighting in recent years, culminating in this one, where data thefts parade like avalanches and cyclones.
The problem of pirated and infected software, as well as security breaches, is a serious one, worse even than email threats. Something must be done about this.
To my knowledge, I have never been infected, thanks to my protective measures, and I hope never to be. But I know how easy it is, especially when one is unaware.
We are now more online than ever, at greater speeds than ever before. This is serious.
As for other security issues, I don't see the personal computers of end users, even if connection to the internet, as a big risk. The only real threat I ever witnesses from systems like that where some large scale Denial Of Service attacks by slaved, infected machines. But that's no longer a big issue since there are quite effective counter-measures these days. It's been a while since I read about a successful attack like that. They still happen, but hardly cause much trouble any more.
So the the biggest danger here is mostly data loss for the end-users or businesses, which might be tragic for them, but that's certainly not a real threat for most other people or their computers.
And as I mentioned before, things like Steam DRM or PSN don't prevent pirated software at all. They just get removed. Even somewhat successful copy protection software like the much hated Denuvo don't really prevent piracy, they usually just delay it.
I started coding in 1982 and use mostly self built DOS/Windows PCs since 1989. Today I mostly work as an IT-Consultant. And in all these years, there were REALLY few actual threats coming from any kind of malware, that I can remember.
Most security issues that get reported are real, of course, but very often blown way out of proportion. Most of them are irrelevant for home users since they're about elevating privileges of limited accounts. Those could be very relevant in the networks of larger companies or other entities but most of those also got much better protection than home users or small businesses. And they rarely use pirated software. If their admins are not good enough to prevent it or even allow such things, it's their own fault. And still, even most larger companies don't pose a general threat, even if they do get compromised.
Most stolen data is also of much less relevance than it's often made out to be. At least nowadays. Most companies have learned not to store passwords or sensitive data unencrypted. Most of the data than CAN be stolen theses days is not very sensitive. All the spam people receive, both physical and virtual, pretty much proves that a lot of that data is out in the wild anyway.
I do see real dangers as well, but none of them have much to do with pirated software, especially games, on end-user systems.
Of course malware could be used to break into sensitive systems and steal really sensitive data. There are definitely operatives of various agencies out there trying to do that. The only real threat a pirated game might have in that context would be if it's used by careless people like for example the family of a possible target on systems that might contain at least some important information. But that is such a rare and limited scenario, that I'm not too worried about it. And more often than not, such break-ins make extensive use of "social engineering", making users install dangerous software willingly.
All in all, I'm much more concerned, for example, with the possibilities and, more importantly, the abuse of AI. Especially for spreading misinformation. The biggest, most unpredictable danger is still us. Humans. People...
I think this is REALLY getting VERY off topic now, don't you think? ;)