Arrowhead Games and Sony found themselves in hot water after their recent decision to get players to link their Helldivers 2 accounts to PSN IDs backfired.
Following the announcement, players started review bombing the game on Steam, and the game currently has mostly negative reviews on the digital marketplace.
However, a recent comment from one of the developers on the Helldivers 2 Discord server surfaced on X, and has sparked new debate. According to them, the decision to include mandatory PSN ID linking was “Sony’s idea”.
While some players have called out Sony for being “greedy” with respect to this idea, others have pointed out that the Arrowhead Games knew that this was on the cards all along.
They also shared screenshots on X, which are reportedly from the same Discord server, showing some of the community managers of the game who supported the decision.
Although linking an account isn’t that difficult, problems arose because there are a few countries and regions where PSN IDs aren’t available. So making the PSN ID link mandatory locks players from those regions out of the game.
According to a thread on the r/TwoBestFriendsPlay subreddit, a Chinese player tried to use a VPN to link their PSN account to Steam, but was subsequently banned.
There are two possible routes that the developers can take at this point in time, and one of them is as simple as making the PSN ID link optional. Alternatively, they could also allow players to use VPNs to connect to the PSN, but that would require Sony to alter their Terms of Service, and could probably cause further issues down the line.
As of now, players have reported that Sony is delisting Helldivers 2 in countries where PSN isn’t available or supported. In such cases, players who’ve purchased the game will be able to apply for a refund on Steam even if they’ve played Helldivers 2 for more than 2 hours.
While this move will make Helldivers 2 a PlayStation exclusive to a certain degree, this incident might just affect the sales of upcoming titles that are associated with Sony.
