It’s been a crazy few days for the Helldivers 2 community. After becoming an indie darling with plenty of critical acclaim, Arrowhead Studios‘ shooter reached new hellish lows owing to various circumstances. First, publisher Sony announced that all PC players would need to link to an active PlayStation Network (PSN) account to continue playing. The review bombing on Steam came next, exacerbated by a community manager’s disparaging comments about the controversy.
Not knowing that a majority of the market are locked out of PSN access, he wrote on Discord that “if it’s a dealbreaker to have to take 120 seconds out of your day to enter an email and password then forget about it.” An issued apology and 200,000 negative Steam reviews later, studio CEO Â Johan Pilestedt posted on X/Twitter:
“I understand that linking accounts and signing up for additional services may not be something that some users would like to do and that needs to be respected. While the steam page has always shown the requirements on the game page, I wish we had been more clear with the long term intent to not disappoint any of the divers out there.”
To add fuel to the fire, Sony went on to delist the game in 177 countries and territories, while Valve ignored its own policy to issue refunds for players with over 100 hours (Steam policy normally only allows refunds for titles with under two hours of in-game time). It also doesn’t help that players are unable to create a PSN account for a different region or use a VPN service, since doing so would violate Sony’s terms of service and can result in a ban, so where does this leave them?
As it turns out, back to the starting point. The company has confirmed in a tweet that the account-linking prerequisite is no longer moving forward, although it’s unclear whether the game will become available again in the delisted countries. Very likely, if we dare say so.
This decision marks a significant win for the Helldivers 2 community, which saw the whole debacle as an intentional effort by Sony to ride on the game’s success and increase sign-ups for its live service platform. Suffice to say, it doesn’t bode well for the company’s reputation, especially when it comes to future concerns on whether it can leave projects in a good state — or untouched, even.
Glory to Democracy, indeed.
Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth’s theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia’s greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really.
