Helldivers 2 Dev Talking With PlayStation Following PSN Requirement on PC Backlash - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 05 May 2024 / 1,401 Views
It was announced recently that PC players of Helldivers 2 will be required to link to a PlayStation Network (PSN) account in the coming days and weeks.
Following this announcement, there has been backlash from PC players with around 200,000 negative reviews on Steam in the last few days. One of the issues with the PSN requirement is there are a number of countries that have had Helldivers 2 available to purchase on Steam that do not have PSN available.
Valve has also been issuing refunds to players with hundreds of hours of hours players, despite the fact refunds on Steam generally require someone to have played less than two hours of a game.
SteamDB has reported Helldivers 2 is no longer purchasable in 177 countries where PSN is not available. Though, it is still available in some like the Baltics.
The CEO of Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Johan Pilestedt has issued a statement saying the studio is talking with PlayStation on a solution. However he does not have the final say as Sony Interactive Entertainment is the publisher.
"We are talking solutions with PlayStation, especially for non-PSN countries," Pilestedt. "Your voice has been heard, and I am doing everything I can to speak for the community - but I don't have the final say."
Pilestedt added, "I do have a part to play. I am not blameless in all of this - it was my decision to disable account linking at launch so that players could play the game. I did not ensure players were aware of the requirement and we didn't talk about it enough.
"We knew for about 6 months before launch that it would be mandatory for online PS titles."
Helldivers 2 released for the PlayStation 5 and PC on February 8.
Is this the moment to tweet "What? You guys don't have phones?" 😵💫
— Pilestedt (@Pilestedt) May 5, 2024
On serious note: We are talking solutions with PlayStation, especially for non-PSN countries. Your voice has been heard, and I am doing everything I can to speak for the community - but I don't have the final…
I do have a part to play. I am not blameless in all of this - it was my decision to disable account linking at launch so that players could play the game. I did not ensure players were aware of the requirement and we didn't talk about it enough.
— Pilestedt (@Pilestedt) May 5, 2024
We knew for about 6 months before…
Helldivers 2 is no longer purchasable in 177 countries where PSN is not available (but some are still available like Baltics).
— SteamDB (@SteamDB) May 5, 2024
This game has now received 215,000 negative reviews. pic.twitter.com/jJrb9QFafR
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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I wonder why no one is asking the obvious question of why was Helldivers 2 allowed to have been sold in so many countries where the PSN service was never even supported yet it was always the plan to require the account linking?
Like, this was always going to be an issue and Sony had 3 months to look for a solution before enforcing account linking. Now, millions of potential Helldivers 2 players can no longer buy the game. This is no longer the case of “just change your region” anymore. People in 177 countries literally can no longer buy the game!
EDIT: Looks like Sony is reversing the decision! Hopefully this means these countries will be able to buy the game again soon.
They sell consoles and physical games in many of those regions. The philippines in fact has always had a large playstation community andthey have always been directed by sony to make accounts in hong kong. That has never been an issue.
....all the while millions of people will sign up for the most randomness things online without even thinking it through lol
A storm in a glass... a gigantic failure in communication!
A person can make a PSN account from anywhere, as far as I know, there are no restrictions and Sony has never banned anyone. I'm from Brazil, had PSN account on JP and USA for near 15 years and even before BR-PSN came to life.
I see no reason why you can't make an account in one of the many countries that support PSN and connect it to HDII.
FUD and PC gamers constantly looking for reasons to continue being mad. Even if you show them sony support directly saying there's no issue with creating an account in a different region they refuse to believe it and keep saying people will get banned.
Pretty much, everyone here in Brazil that had a PS3 early on has a USA account at least, it's not like its anything new.
Anyway, the decision to release the game silent about this until now really was shitty, tho.
They released the game with the account linking requirement in place. it was there on the store page and when you launched the game. it was made optional only because of the server issues during that time.
I personally would not care. But I was really disappointed that they asked me to link my Play Station Network account but then I started playing on my PC (I started playing first on my Play Station) and then realized that progress are not even synched up... So the link is basically for nothing (and obviously, that BS about "security" does not make any sense either). This is purely to get people create an account to get them into their ecosystem...
If cross progress would be enabled because of it; at least it would make a bit of sense.
Sony blows it again. Helldivers 2 went from a beloved game to most hated of the year. Lower rated than Redfall on Steam. Way to destroy your game’s reputation overnight. All to boost some account numbers. What an embarrassment.
eh. The internet does have a tendency of making something out of nothing . Requiring PSN truly isn’t a massive deal. It’s definitely less ideal than not requiring PSN, but it’s only a minor inconvenience at the end of the day. (at least, as far as I’m aware?)
Every new account is a (typically minor) security risk, and for a company its size, Sony has a surprisingly poor record in terms of security.
everyone has google and microsoft accounts and they both have had more frequent breaches. In fact google warns me about it every time i own my chrome password manager still.
I've had accounts for both for longer than I've had a Sony account, and I can't say I remember either having any, or at least as many as Sony, security issues. Phishing is a thing, but in such cases the fault lies mostly with the user. That said, if you already have a Google/MS account but not a PSN account, the chances are that they're actually useful for you whereas a PSN account is not.
People are snowflakey as ever
"I don't have an issue with this, hence no one should."
