This whole "you should just kept quiet and make PSN account with supported country" talk is honestly starting to get on my nerves. I had sympathy for impacted (hell I am impacted too) but constant attacks and blaming users is slowly making me regret that. Is being able to play handful of games that much more important than doing something to make big corporation actually improve their service? Or am I just insensitive a-hole who is "ruining" people lives?
I'm going to be blunt. I have seen many games I love bomb and many developers who made those games I love crash and burn that I became completely desensitized to any attempt at a random dev "sob-story" or some empty PR. There is nothing someone on the internet can say or write that will ever make me feel bad for "buying/consuming" or "not buying" a product and you know why?
I respect developers, I enjoy the videogames they make, but they are not your friends. A friend is not some guy you will never interact with outside of using their product. The absolute vast majority of players will never interact in any way with the developers of a game they're currently playing for their entire life, at most they will see him/her/them during a stream or during an interview. The link between developers and players is ultimately build on consumism: a developer produces something I enjoy -> I give the dev money to enjoy the product -> the dev invests the money received. That's it. That's all there is to say. In 2024 the amount of developers has grown so much that it's literally impossible for everyone to find success, and a random guy on an internet forum like me would never have enough money to support all of them. It's inevitable in this consumerist world that many devs will lose their job or leave the industry
I can be sad when I read about all the layoffs. I can be disappointed in other players if they refused to buy something I though was a really good game for petty reasons. I can curse this dog eats dog world. But is it my fault? Absolutely fucking not. What else can I do but to buy a game I know I will enjoy? This is all I can do, and it's such a small thing no one's job will ever be "saved" with just 1 extra copy sold, just as how the opposite "1 less person not buying something will never make it fail" is true. Even if I were to gift a game I love to 2 other people, 5, 10, 20, it's still peanuts. Even if I ran a smearing campaign over a shitty game and convinced 10, 25, 50, 100 people to not buy it it's still peanuts. Even if every member currently registered on this forum bought a specific game en masse it would still be peanuts
Let's look at 2 recent examples. Did me buying Hi-Fi Rush change Tango's destiny? No because consumism is king. Did me not buying Suicide Squad caused Rocksteady to be on the chopping block? No because consumism is king. It's exactly because I'm a "consumer" that it's in my interests to pay for things I enjoy and ignore things I don't. An alternate interpretation could be a "prize and reward system": a game is coming that does things I approve, on a platform I prefer, and in a genre I enjoy, with a sensible price depending on the 3 factors before. By preordering (or buying it at launch if no preorder is possible) the game (or even by preordering a higher priced version) I send a direct message to the pub: do more things like this and you will get my money, and in case I got scammed I can always refund. It's like when you give a treat to a dog in training. You reward companies in the same way. And of course the same is true for the opposite. You punish a product by not paying for it especially if you don't like it, or think it's pushing some shitty practices and so on. Or you can buy it while on sale if you know you will enjoy it but think it's overpriced. Again, it's consumerism: I don't spend my money because I'm an activist, I do it because it's my hobby. And no one can make me change my ways
So no. You should not feel bad for not buying Sony games because of the PSN account thing even if you are in a supported country. It's your money and it's in your right, and no one will lose its job because you specifically didn't support a product. If you don't punish a dog that doesn't behave it will continue to bite everything and everyone