This is half the fucking interweb, right now. JESUS, YOU DON'T HAVE TO GIVE THEM YOUR REAL EMAIL ADDRESS. Fucking calm down.

Common in some games when they add cross platform play.

to be annoyed by having to sign onto services they otherwise would never use

Once.

You only have to sign in ONE SINGLE TIME, to link that one game to your PSN account.

And then you never, ever, ever, EVER have to do anything with that account again, until the sun burns out.

But people will cry their entitled fucking eyeballs out, regardless. Whatever. Like I said, seethe away. It just makes me erect.

EDIT: Also, what data collection? If you're fucking stupid enough to give Sony an email address that you actually use, you truly, actually deserve to be tracked. Scientists track dumb animals all the time. Nothing wrong with that.

EDIT: Also, it WOULD be fine for people to "be annoyed." But that's not what's happening, is it? These people are throwing a five-alarm, heart-attack-inducing, cringe-o-riffic, shit-smearing tantrum about it.

I read all the way up until "next time." I read nothing after that. Slippery slope fallacy. Thanks for playing.

LOLOL no.

Prove that shit. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that Sony can demand a photo ID from you. I mean, the Allies fucking won the war with Japan. Did you not get that memo, somehow?

Get out of here with your lying nonsense.

For a while now, I've been telling people that this screenname is aspirational.

That's basically the truth of the matter.

They saw this groundswell of potential players to add to their huge database of people to market to, and said “we’re getting those email addresses”

See, this is the salient point, right here.

The correct response to this action is "LOL, sure. You can have my protonmail account that I only use to sign up for free shit, anyway."

Checkmate. Internet 1, Sony 0.

But instead, we get all this shit-flinging, foot-stomping, childish nonsense.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, signing up for all the shit they ask us to sign up for, in an ORGANIZED WAY, could actually change the whole situation, for the better. Here's the plan that should be enacted:

1. Nobody gets screeching mad. Angry people behave predictably.

2. Everyone reminds each other to ONLY USE THROWAWAY ADDRESSES TO SIGN UP FOR CORPORATE SHIT.

3. Everyone reminds each other to NEVER ENGAGE WITH ANY MAILING LISTS OR OTHER BULLSHIT THAT YOU GET, ON ANY OF THOSE THROWAWAY ADDRESSES.

4. Stick to that shit, for EVERYTHING. Don't try and stop people from asking for your stupid throwaway email. Don't threaten anybody with boycotting. Just continue giving out the completely worthless email addresses.

5. Sooner or later, it becomes apparent that the majority of email addresses that are being collected in this manner are basically worthless.

6. Consequently, the value of these email addresses plummets, both as a tradeable commodity and as a means of mining further data.

7. Corporations slowly stop trying to track people via email.

their data is being harvested

WHAT DATA??? They don't have any power to mine your data, here! They will only get what you give them. AND YOU DON'T HAVE TO GIVE THEM ANYTHING VALUABLE!

As I keep saying: the correct response isn't getting mad. The correct response is to give the corporation a throwaway email address.

The smart move isn't taking your ball and going home. The smart move is STUFFING THEIR CORPORATE MAW FULL OF THROWAWAY PROTONMAIL ADDRESSES THAT WON'T BE WORTH A PENNY TO ANYBODY!!!

Kids don’t give a fuck about making a new account

You say that, but look at what various people are asking, in this situation.

Sony is asking for any email address, HOPING you give them a real one, but without any power to make you do that.

I'm asking for people to give Sony nothing but throwaway email addresses that you don't care about.

Others are asking THESE KIDS TO STOP PLAYING A GAME THEY LIKE.

Can you look me in my faceless, digital cyber-persona and tell me that these kids will continue to boycott a game they enjoy?

You know they won't. They're hyped up and mad, right now. They won't be, in a few weeks, and they'll start crawling back to that game they already bought.

BUT MAYBE WE COULD USE THEIR ANGRY MOMENT, RIGHT NOW, TO CONVINCE THEM TO CREATE NEW EMAIL ACCOUNTS.

Once they do that, and they give Sony those accounts, it's done! The damage has been done to the godforsaken corpo data mining machine.

I don't think I'm wrong, here.

Someone steals your account

...and?

Who gives a shit? They're going to get my 0 dollars worth of Playstation Bucks that I'm never going to put in there?

They're going to play my other PSN games that I have on there? Except I don't have a single one of those?

They're going to fuck with my Helldivers 2 account? OH WAIT, THEY CAN'T DO THAT EITHER, BECAUSE THEY'D STILL ALSO NEED TO HAVE ACCESS TO MY STEAM ACCOUNT. The two accounts get linked. You still do all the game shit through Steam.

There is NO RISK, here. The only thing that could possibly happen would be someone spams my throwaway Protonmail account with nonsense spam. And I don't care about that.

Technically true, since I don't play that game. But I actually understand that the game in question is designed to have a lot of crowd-directed gameplay. If the player-base hollows out, it actually will negatively affect a lot of the people who are playing it.

Ahhh, but that's just UNACCEPTABLE CORPORATE SHILL BEHAVIOR, according to all these other clowns.

According to these assholes, the only reasonable response is to throw a shit-tossing tantrum, until the children of these particular game developers have all actually starved to death. That'll teach 'em to mildly inconvenience some people.

EXACTLY.

And I mean, unlike the Hogwarts Legacy situation, this shit has a simple and 100 percent effective remedy.

Sony's asking for everyone's email address? Okay. EVERYONE give them throwaway email addresses, and NEVER interact with any of their mailing list garbage, or do anything else with those PSN accounts.

Let them have a huge list of completely worthless email addresses. There is no downside to letting them choke on that shit.

Like I said in another comment, there should be a continued campaign of everyone ALWAYS giving out throwaway email addresses that they never use to do anything other than sign up for the free shit, and nothing else.

Keep that up for long enough, and eventually the value of these bulk lists of email addresses will plummet to functionally zero. And that will mean less corporate nonsense, at least of that kind. And less attempts to hack companies for their email lists. I mean, why commit a federal crime, to obtain worthless data?