I have no idea what exactly is going on over at Sony, but the company’s recent further expansion into PC gaming appears to be going off the rails.
First, we had the issue where Helldivers 2 was going to require PSN accounts for all players on Steam, something players either didn’t want to have to make, or in 177 regions, players were not even allowed to make a PSN account, meaning they would lose access to the game they’d already paid for and invested dozens or hundreds of hours into.
While Sony reversed the PSN decision for current players after an enormous amount of pushback from players, they have quietly still not undone the decision that the game can no longer be sold in those 177 regions. Those that already have the game apparently can keep it, but it appears there are going to be no new sales unless something happens soon.
But that’s not all. Within the same week or so, Sony also stumbled into a situation with Ghost of Tsushima, where the single player game also has a much smaller multiplayer mode as part of the package. But again, there is going to be a PSN requirement because part of the game is online, and now the game is not listed for sale in, you guessed it, those regions where you cannot make a PSN account.
While some defenders are correct to point out that yes, other companies require you to make accounts to play their games from EA to Ubisoft to Microsoft, this is a different situation because Sony has such a vast array of countries where this is not possible, which goes far beyond what we see from these other publishers most of the time. As a result, it means big restrictions in many parts of the globe, and that’s lost sales, lost microtransaction spending, all of it.
It is unclear why Sony has not made some sort of tier of PlayStation account that can be accessed from anywhere and is not the type of PSN account that these players cannot have. Now, Steam is actively issuing Ghost of Tsushima refunds in these regions that already bought the game, but now have this new requirement. I am willing to bet that if the Helldivers 2 push was not reversed, Steam would have refunded all those copies as well, result in lost revenue and millions of angry players.
Sony is correct in their desire to expand beyond PlayStation consoles and into PC. Helldivers 2 would not have the numbers it has without its huge PC launch. But whatever is happening with this PSN requirement is being botched in game after game and Sony has to figure this out, quickly.
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