Sony Reverses Need to Have a PSN Account for Helldivers 2 on PC

In a recent X post, PlayStation have confirmed that Helldivers 2 players will no longer have to link a PlayStation account to play the hit Co-Op shooter. This comes after review bombings dropping the score to a ‘mixed’ rating on Steam, refund requests and after the game was pulled from over 170 different countries by Sony earlier last week. There is no news on whether these countries will now have the games relisted but, considering that they were only pulled because these countries did not have a form of PSN, they will likely be put back onto Steam soon.

Helldivers 2 initially launched back in February to critical acclaim for its bombastic combat against hordes of aliens with friends. This came to both PlayStation and PC, but only the PS5 version required a PSN account as with most other ports to PC. However, fans were informed that the game would eventually require a PSN account once they had managed to integrate it properly. This was finally announced to be implemented at the tail end of May. This meant that everyone who played the game on PC would have to either log in or create their own PlayStation account to continue playing the game that they had originally purchased.

Image by Sony

The fanbase had several issues with this decision from Sony. Most notably, with the requirement for a PlayStation account, all players in countries and regions that had no PSN support (over 170) would no longer be able to play the game. This is what resulted in it being delisted from Steam in all of these countries as well as refunds being issued. Players outside of these areas were also able to request and obtain refunds from Steam regardless of the normal 2 hours or less refund requirement. The other main reason fans opposed the decision is due to PlayStation’s frequent data leaks that place anyone with an account at risk of having their information stolen.

Image by Sony

A lot of the fallout for this decision fell on ArrowHead, the developers of Helldivers 2. Since then, however, it seems that the fanbase has shifted all blame to Sony, as the publisher is who wanted to force the PSN account requirement onto players. Now that this has been removed, however, we’ll likely see player counts rise again and the review score on Steam increase to match what it was at before the controversy. Its likely that Sony has learned from this backlash and will not attempt to implement PSN support for Steam players at any time in the near future.