Earlier this week, Helldivers 2 players on PC were told that they would soon need to link their Steam account to a PlayStation Network (PSN) account. Two days later the game received 100,000 new negative reviews on Steam.
Furthermore, the developers at Arrowhead have made several statements to say that they stand with the players.
“Oh, right into the review result,” chirp CEO and Creative Director of Arrowhead game Studio Johan Bilstedt. “Well, I guess that’s justified. Sorry everyone for how this all turned out. I hope we can make up for it and regain trust by providing a continued great gaming experience. I just want to make great games!”
When Pilestedt made this comment yesterday, Helldivers 2 still had a “mostly positive” user review rating on Steam, with a “mixed” rating based on reviews from just the past two weeks. As of the time of writing this post, the overall rating is now mixed – indicating only 59% positive reviews – and recent reviews are mostly negative.
“Internal discussions are ongoing about changing the mandatory linking, and while I cannot reveal details, the response from our development teams has been very negative globally and we are looking for better options,” Arrowhead community manager Spitz wrote on Helldivers Discord (as It was shared by Reddit user Navar4477).
Spitz also said that the decision and announcement were made by Sony, not Arrowhead itself.
Players object to the requirement to link their PSN accounts for a variety of reasons, from basic inconvenience to more general data collection and privacy concerns. This change is of particular concern to those players in regions where it is not possible to sign up for a PSN account. A previous comment from Arrowhead suggested that these players should sign up for a PSN for a region other than the one in which they reside, but doing so would actually violate Sony’s terms of service.
“If a better solution is not provided for players located in regions that do not have PSN coverage, I am sure we will not make this requirement mandatory for those players,” Spitz wrote. “We will not force people to break Sony’s terms of service or not play the game.”
Sony has been bringing more and more of its games to PC in recent years, usually years after the initial console exclusive release. Helldivers 2 is a little different, as they publish the game and it is developed by an outside studio that they do not own, and it was released on the PC and PlayStation platforms simultaneously. This cross-platform release is part of the reason it’s been so successful; that it It said The seventh highest grossing Sony published game of all time, with more than half of its sales on PC. It’s also just a great game.
All of this makes it a huge shame that players’ experience is distorted by unnecessary account requirements.
