I'm not convinced about the theory that Sony lost against a community because the latter were trained by a game to work together. There are many tight gaming communities that lost the fight against developer/publisher decisions. I think this narrative is primarily just some community navel-gazing.
Two things caused the change. First, the fact that the policy would have delisted dozens of territories, and thousands of players, had a much bigger impact. If Sony had devised a workaround for those regions, it would not have such a big backlash. Here I will concede the community gained traction, but not because they worked well together through a military game. Rather, Sony's delisting gave them a natural rallying point and built-in support base of delisted players.
Second, and I think this deserves much more attention (though at least you mention it - many reports in the saga do not): Steam agreed to refund gamers who had much more than two hours playtime/two weeks ownership on their accounts. That was huge and effectively forced Sony to face the financial consequences of its decision.
If Sony had offered a workaround for non-PSN region players and Steam didn't alter its returns policy, I don't think the policy would have changed, no matter how much the community complained.
I'm not convinced about the theory that Sony lost against a community because the latter were trained by a game to work together. There are many tight gaming communities that lost the fight against developer/publisher decisions. I think this narrative is primarily just some community navel-gazing.
Two things caused the change. First, the fact that the policy would have delisted dozens of territories, and thousands of players, had a much bigger impact. If Sony had devised a workaround for those regions, it would not have such a big backlash. Here I will concede the community gained traction, but not because they worked well together through a military game. Rather, Sony's delisting gave them a natural rallying point and built-in support base of delisted players.
Second, and I think this deserves much more attention (though at least you mention it - many reports in the saga do not): Steam agreed to refund gamers who had much more than two hours playtime/two weeks ownership on their accounts. That was huge and effectively forced Sony to face the financial consequences of its decision.
If Sony had offered a workaround for non-PSN region players and Steam didn't alter its returns policy, I don't think the policy would have changed, no matter how much the community complained.