Sony's decision to forbid people in certain countries from playing Helldivers 2 was bad policy, and caused a lot of backlash.
I'm surprised Valve would support Sony's rather unpopular side in this issue. They should be encouraging the use of VPNs to bypass arbitrary and unfair geofencing.
Sony is a joke of a company. Players from Central Asian countries used Russian PSN for years because Sony did not have a local presence. After leaving Russia and Belarus, they still refused to establish presence in those countries because it then might be used by players from Russia and Belarus to circumvent sanctions. So according to them it's fine not only to collectively punish people of those two countries, but also to drag in completely innocent third parties because of what might happen.
IMHO what they actually think is "you're not worth our money to bother to go through all the bureaucratic processes", and it would be far less insulting if they just said so directly, but I guess this may have something to do with Japanese notions of politeness.
The best thing people could do these kinds of situations is "buying" their games on the closest torrent tracker. What I actually see is people spending money on VPNs and payment cards from far away places to still give them money. (I don't do either, fuck them.)
Valve bans people using VPN because it has localized pricing. They had an issue with people switching to a Russian IP to buy a game and pay only a fraction of the correct price, so they started banning these people.
So no, they're not taking sonys side. They're just protecting their bottom line, and people trying to evade geo locks are just also affected
It's been a thing for years and non-US PC gamers have hated it just as long, as there is a lot of censoring in some countries. (Which you now have to either live with or pirate)
I believe it is nowadays, yes. So my phrasing was incorrect wrt the current situation I guess. People currently trying to evade the geo locking will likely either purchase an account, a US steam key through other sites such as G2A or simply get a prepaid US visa
I think the point I made was still applicable though, despite VPN no longer being an option to purchase the game. The used method to evade the geo locking doesn't have an impact on the game costing different amounts depending on the area.
I'm surprised Valve would support Sony's rather unpopular side in this issue. They should be encouraging the use of VPNs to bypass arbitrary and unfair geofencing.