Hi friends. As of 2 days ago, I have not been able to get my PSO2 Launcher to open up. This occurred right after Microsoft Crappy Update for their Crappy Explorer NOBODY was going to use forced itself onto my laptop, But at least my game stopped working.... I am being told my Their Tech team that you need a subscription, which I will not be paying for. Does anyone know what this recent update would have done to make the game not launch. ALSO what's the best way for me to switch to STEAM. I can not log onto the game, but is downloaded on the Microsoft side.

PSO2 does not need an Xbox Live or Game Pass subscription to be played on PC.

The game as installed through the Microsoft Store has historically had several issues with both downloading and launching. I expect those have been reduced over time but perhaps not eliminated entirely; most of us jumped across to Steam at the first opportunity when that became available to spare ourselves the grief (though it does require being able to launch the Microsoft Store version in order to perform an account link).

If you must use the Microsoft Store version and it's not working, it's probably worth the unfortunately painful wait to uninstall the game completely, restart the PC and then reinstall it afresh.

@AbsoluteLotus82 Damn, that sucks dude.. And then their tech team flat out lied to you to boot. You did make it clear you were on a PC/laptop right? Their tech team has historically been a hit and miss with their intelligence, based on the person on the other end. I'd definitely recommend what Miraglyth said to do though if all else fails. Eventually your end goal has to be to switch to the steam version, but that's up to you.

No, the game is free, requires no subscription.

Lotus - I play with a Microsoft account, but I do not use their launcher. I use PSO2 Tweaker, and it works great. Tweaker is basically a replacement launcher. It handles updates and prevents Microsoft from writing to your game files which prevents issues like you are experiencing.

The tech guy you talked to probably just doesn't know about PSO2 specifically, heard it was an online game and thought "oh yeah it's probably a subscription issue".

Microsoft updates are notorious for destroying the game if you have it installed through the MS Store, though that usually only happens if you have it installed into the default directories (which you can still do with the Tweaker, if you forgot to set it to a custom location). So if that's the case, you might have to reinstall.

If you switch to Steam, just make 100% sure that you follow the account-linking procedure before turning on the Steam version and going through the intro menus. It's possible to lock your Steam account from ever being able to connect to your MS Store characters if you mess it up.

I recently moved over to Steam. How I did it was to install the Steam version first (using the Tweaker). Made sure my account was linked (you have to log into your original game first, in this case the MS store version, to get the link code), then when you've successfully linked your account in the Steam version, uninstall the Store version (took 2 steps, uninstall via the Apps menu in Settings, then Reset the MS Store which, for me, cleared up a further 60GB space).

Hopefully you have enough room to have both versions on your PC for a while as I think the link code might expire if not used (not sure how long before expiry though)

Is it a bad idea for it to be a subscription? If so why? What is the pro’s and Con’s?

The microsoft pc version is free. It's unfortunate the tech team who are supposed to help you didn't know.

In fact Microsoft has plans for all online free games to no longer to require xbox live gold membership on the xbox itself as well (finally, it's insane that you would need 2 subscriptions to play pso2 premium if you played on a xbox). I don't think they disclosed a date for when that comes into effect though.

@RainGnyu said in Is Microsoft Forcing Subscriptions to play PSO2 Online for Pc?:

Is it a bad idea for it to be a subscription? If so why? What is the pro’s and Con’s?

Any subscription to play "games online" is a scam. You're paying for the games, your paying for the internet, and you're often times acting as the server or connecting to non-subscription based servers.

All you're paying for is the right to connect to a game's online functions, that's it. This is why I'll never pay for a Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo online subscriptions. Not to mention you're paying a premium for a "right to connect".

@DishSoap The Microsoft subscription was originally to cover the cost of server maintenance, security, code of conduct/ToS enforcement after player violation, tech support, and a bunch of other stuff they tacked on. It later expanded to cover monthly free games chosen by Microsoft,and there were quite a few triple A titles that were handed out for free. The problem is that free to play games aren't free to play when someone has to pay for the subscription. That and they recently tried to force people to switch to game pass by jacking up the Gold subscription price. They went from being honest about why the money was necessary, and have long since moved on to greedy reasons they want more money. Subscriptions such as Gold aren't inherently evil, wrong or corrupt practices as you claim, it's when companies move on from reasonable price, to cover expenditures, (as all companies seek to make a profit) and move onto dishonesty, and over pricing a service. That's where the problem lies.

@Anarchy-Marine Oh man, I was seriously annoyed when they said they were going to jack up the price of Gold and was honestly thinking of switching to PlayStation before they caved to the social media outrage. As you said, if they'd detailed why it was necessary due to significantly increased maintenance costs or something like that I would've been more open to it, but they basically just said we haven't raised the price in awhile and want more money.

Nope.

Microsoft even removed needing a sub to play F2P games on Xbox now. Saw the rage about raising their xbox sub price and quickly backtracked on it. The F2P games thing was also compensation for that attempted move.

@Anarchy-Marine said in Is Microsoft Forcing Subscriptions to play PSO2 Online for Pc?:

@DishSoap The Microsoft subscription was originally to cover the cost of server maintenance, security, code of conduct/ToS enforcement after player violation, tech support, and a bunch of other stuff they tacked on. It later expanded to cover monthly free games chosen by Microsoft,and there were quite a few triple A titles that were handed out for free. The problem is that free to play games aren't free to play when someone has to pay for the subscription. That and they recently tried to force people to switch to game pass by jacking up the Gold subscription price. They went from being honest about why the money was necessary, and have long since moved on to greedy reasons they want more money. Subscriptions such as Gold aren't inherently evil, wrong or corrupt practices as you claim, it's when companies move on from reasonable price, to cover expenditures, (as all companies seek to make a profit) and move onto dishonesty, and over pricing a service. That's where the problem lies.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one. "Right to connect" is and always will be a scam. Nothing you get from it is worth it's price. You added a bunch of thing that it's supposed to cover yet platforms like Steam and Epic Games don't hold such subscriptions and Microsoft is much bigger than both of them. While it does cost money to keep up game servers not all games that you can connect to have Microsoft run servers.

You're already paying for the console, you're already paying for the game, and you're already paying for the internet. There shouldn't be any reason to have to pay an additional fee to simply connect.

@DishSoap As I stated, it was to cover more than the rights to connect, and you wouldn't have responded with that being your only reason as to why you feel as you do, had you taken the time to read my post, instead of skim reading past everything once you saw I was disagreeing with you. The service is more than cost of connection. Take connection out of the equation, and you still have other expenditures I outlined. It's more than the cost of servers, as they pay employees to handle multiple tasks outside of maintenance and upkeep.

Had they not had made some incentive for the reasoning behind paying for a service, such as connection to online games, minus free to play titles, as there were none when Xbox Live first came out, Xbox live, and their console platform as a whole would not be where it is now, because there would be zero profit. In fact they'd be lucky if they broke even on the cost of such a service. Like their Twitch competitor Mixer, the service would be seen as too costly, and a waste of time, and thusly service would be dropped. It's the same reason they got greedy and tried to force everyone to switch to game pass, which is where the company went wrong.

They saw a profit, weren't happy with what they had, and wanted more. Beyond access to online gaming, most don't care about the bonus rented games, and other bells and whistles. Game pass just doesn't appeal to most players who want to own what their money is used on. There's a clear difference however, between an honest profit, and greed, and anyone that's had to work in their life, and deals with payroll, understands that If you aren't making profits, the business model begins to net negative returns, and the money to make up the loss either comes out of someone's paycheck, results in mass lay offs, or the company cuts it's losses and moves on entirely to something more profitable.