Helldivers 2 – Sony surrender: faced with community discontent, Helldivers 2 players will not have to link their Steam and PSN accounts

It was the storm that shook the small gaming video world in recent days: since its launch last February, Helldiverse 2 enjoys very solid popular success with online gamers, particularly on Steam. Last Friday, the developer Arrowhead Game Studios nevertheless announced to the many players of Helldivers 2 that they should now link their Steam account to a PlayStation Network account to continue playing. An obligation that goes badly.

An obligation that goes badly

So certainly, the obligation to link your Steam account to a PSN account was announced since the game's release (a small notice indicated this on Steam). Except that until now, this link was not required to play, officially due to “technical problems during launch”. Except also that the PC version of Helldivers 2 is distributed worldwide on Steam, including countries in which the PSN is not marketed (a total of 177 countries and territories all the same). In other words, players who legitimately purchased the game on Steam in their country would no longer be able to play it due to lack of access to PSN.

For good measure, Arrowhead Game Studios and Sony justified this Steam / PSN account linking obligation not for technical or interoperability reasons, but to “protect (the) players and (…) meet the security standards offered on PlayStation and PlayStation Studios games” . However, very often, we know that the “security reasons” imposed on users aim above all to keep them captive in an ecosystem and we imagine that Sony would not have hesitated to inflate its PSN user base with the few hundred thousand of Helldivers 2 PC players.

Sony backtracks

In this context, the measure aroused the ire of players and this weekend, Helldivers 2 received more than 200,000 negative reviews on Steam. Obviously, the community movement has reached Sony's ears. On social networksthe Japanese giant makes amends and raises the white flag.

“Helldivers fans, we've heard your feedback on the Helldivers 2 account linking update. The May 6 update, which would have enforced linking of Steam and PlayStation Network accounts for new and existing players from May 30, will not go further.

We're still learning what's best for PC gamers and your feedback has been invaluable. Thanks again for your continued support of Helldivers 2 and we will keep you posted on future projects. »

At a time when Sony is inclined to distribute its console games more regularly also on PC, permanently alienating Steam players was clearly too high a price to pay, even to increase the PSN user base. We can nevertheless bet that the image ofArrowhead Game (so far rather positive) as well as that of Sony (sometimes more controversial) will nevertheless undoubtedly emerge a bit damaged and the duo's next decisions will undoubtedly be scrutinized a little more carefully.