It’s always fun when a giant multinational corporation tries to pull an extra-slimy move and the consumer backlash is so fierce that they have to back down.
Helldivers 2 is a super-popular game created by Arrowhead Game Studios but published by Sony that sold a zillion copies on release. Then Sony got the bright idea to retroactively force PC gamers to link their Steam accounts to their PlayStation Network (PSN) accounts, even though this was not a requirement at launch, and the fact that PSN isn’t even available in some 177 regions would mean the game would be rendered useless for multitudes of buyers. The outcry was so vast and fierce that Sony had to back down.
Following extensive player backlash, Sony has walked back its plans to require PC players of Helldivers 2 to link their Steam accounts with a PlayStation Network (PSN) account. The requirement had previously been scheduled to take effect May 6. Now, it will be optional for PC players of the third-person sci-fi shooter.
“Helldivers fans—we’ve heard your feedback on the Helldivers 2 account linking update,” Sony wrote early Monday morning. “The May 6 update, which would have required Steam and PlayStation Network account linking for new players and for current players beginning May 30, will not be moving forward. We’re still learning what is best for PC players and your feedback has been invaluable. Thanks again for your continued support of Helldivers 2 and we’ll keep you updated on future plans.”
Arrowhead Game Studios CEO and Helldivers Creative Director Johan Pilestedt thanked Sony for changing its stance. “I am impressed by the willpower of the Helldivers 2 community and your ability to collaborate,” Pilestedt wrote Monday morning. “I want to thank our partners and friends at PlayStation for quickly and effectively making the decision to leave PSN linking optional. We together want to set a new standard for what a live game is, and how developers and community can support each other to create the best game experiences.”
Sony’s decision to switch course comes after Helldivers 2 faced criticism from fans over the PSN account-linking requirement. The game, which was released back in February, did not require PC players to create or link a PSN account upon launch and didn’t clearly warn players that they would have to create one at a later date or later lose their ability to play the game. According to Sony, PSN account-linking wasn’t required at launch due to “technical issues.”
Steam gamers felt blind-sided by the announcement that they would have to sign up for what is primarily an account for PS4 and PS5 console owners despite being PC gamers. Others expressed frustration because PSN accounts aren’t available in every country. This would have meant that gamers in 177 countries—mainly nations in the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Africa—would have no longer been able to play Helldivers 2 without a VPN. Some players cited security concerns with Sony, such as the data breaches it faced in 2011 and 2023, as the reason they don’t want to create or connect a PSN account.
Here’s Penguinz0 covering the decision and its walk-back in much more pungent terms:
“Sony, leave it alone.”
Indeed.
Chalk up a rare win for the good guys over corporate stupidity.
Tags: Arrowhead Game Studios, Penguinz0, Sony, video, video games
Let me make an uneducated attempt (I’m not a gamer, but I am a lawyer) at explaining why Sony did what it did.
They finally decided that the risk of lawsuit was too high. Breach of contract or something like that. It never looks good to try and retroactively change the terms.
The current claim is that the only reason PSN wasn’t always required is because the game was too popular; PSN is a crap system, and keeping it in the mix for their overloaded servers would have likely taken the Helldivers 2 service from borderline unplayable to completely unplayable.
The implication is that by last week Arrowhead couldn’t fend Sony off with that excuse any longer. (My read on the situation is that Arrowhead took the opportunity to rid themselves of an onerous element of their publishing contract by intentionally obfuscating the suspended requirement for linking to PSN.)
Extra fuel for that fire: It was discovered earlier last week that Sony had patented an AI-powered biometric method to report a ‘hostile game environment’ for traumatized gamers who couldn’t bring themselves to report the bad behavior themselves. And ‘community managers’ who were publicly cheering that PSN tools would make banning people easier and/or more painful for the banned.