Sony Suddenly Requiring PSN Accounts for All Helldivers 2 Players

Video Games

Is Sony determined to ruin every popular game it releases? It’s starting to look like it, between their censorship of Stellar Blade (well, details are scarce, likely due to non-disclosure agreements, but it’s almost certainly their doing) and now their pie in the face to Helldivers 2 fans. If you haven’t been paying attention, Helldivers 2 has been a massive success, selling over eight million units as of March and peaking at over 450,000 concurrent players on Steam. As of now, it’s Sony’s seventh-highest-grossing published game ever. You would think they’d be content with that and focus on making the game better, but that would mean you’re sane and, resultingly, not fit to work in the video game industry. Until now, PC gamers could play Helldivers 2 via their Steam accounts without having to go through a PlayStation Network account. Today, however – at 2:30 in the morning, Eastern time – Sony released this statement saying that will no longer be allowed:

Helldivers! An important message from our partner Playstation about account linking for PC players and its significance in providing player safety features.

Read the full message here: https://t.co/L1A9jv8yBf pic.twitter.com/q3eXKbtoNB

— HELLDIVERS™ 2 (@helldivers2) May 3, 2024

As you can imagine, this is not going over well with the many gamers playing Helldivers 2 who don’t have – or want – a PSN account. No one seems to recall a “grace period’ being mentioned when the game launched and was available to all Steam members, and many players are asking for refunds while the game is being review-bombed. Depending on what country you live in, you may not even be able to create a PSN account because the service is not available everywhere, including most of Africa. It probably doesn’t help that Sony is effectively calling everyone outside of PSN account holders an abusive bigot. I don’t know how else to read that they’re making people sign up with PSN “to protect players from griefing and abuse.” Given the massive popularity of Helldivers 2, how bad could the “griefing and abuse” be?

Actually, there is “griefing and abuse” going on, but it’s not from gamers:

Their Community Manager is a piece of work too pic.twitter.com/AoPUhl7rTP

— SnowBallBro (@SnowBallBoy777) May 3, 2024

Remember when Mark Kern, the former Blizzard producer who goes by Grummz on social media, said that community managers were awful, toxic people who were a big part of the problem in the gaming industry? Well, here’s more proof that he’s right. The community manager for the Helldivers 2 Discord server, whose online handle is “Spitz” (no jokes; you’re better than that), is now mocking gamers who said they would leave and ask for a refund. I’d say it’s hard to imagine a company attacking its own customers that way, but nowadays, it’s more unusual to see one treat their customers with a modicum of respect. Grummz is reporting that Spitz’s posts have been deleted, which indicates that someone is at last smart enough to know that antagonizing customers you’re already driving away isn’t great public relations:

Helldivers CM Spitz tone-deaf messages are being purged from @helldivers2 Discord for today.

Maybe he's getting a "talk."

— Grummz (@Grummz) May 3, 2024

But, as you can see from the above X posts, the internet is forever, and nobody is forgetting about this attitude anytime soon. Moreover, Helldivers 2 now looks like a scam, a way of hooking people on a new game and then forcing them to sign up for PlayStation Network to keep playing. If Helldivers 2 drops off a cliff now, Sony will deserve every lost penny.

Here’s Jeremy’s take on the Helldivers 2 fiasco on the Geeks + Gamers YouTube channel: