In a nutshell

• The Steam version of Helldivers 2 will soon require players to sign up for a PlayStation account and connect it to their Steam account
• This announcement from Sony and Arrowhead has resulted in massive backlash, gathering over 200,000 negative reviews
• Countries without official PSN support, including the Philippines, cannot purchase the game on Steam
• Arrowhead and Sony are currently discussing workarounds to the situation

Following the controversial announcement by Sony requiring players to link a PSN account for the Steam copy of Helldivers 2, the sale of the game has now been disabled in 177 countries where PSN is not available, including the Philippines.

According to SteamDB, the game has received over 215,000 negative reviews because of Sony’s mandate.

The decision to pull Helldivers 2 from being purchased in these countries stems from the recent announcement to link PSN accounts, especially since the PSN terms of service dictate that players who create accounts outside of their country could result in a violation. Given that not all countries have official PSN support, treading that fine line is extremely nerve-wracking.

While the terms are indeed there, they have not been strictly implemented for the most part, especially for players in the Philippines who have been using either a US or an SG account to keep playing since years ago.

Other Southeast Asian neighbors like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and others do not have this problem because PSN is officially supported in those countries.

Some Steam users are reportedly getting refunds despite putting dozens of hours into the game.

Meanwhile, Arrowhead community manager Spitz has been communicative about updates on the Helldivers 2 discord, stating that internal discussions are ongoing about the mandatory account linking and that the development teams have been “universally negative” in their response to the mandate.

“If a better solution isn’t provided for players who are in regions without PSN coverage, I’m assured that we won’t be making the requirement mandatory for those players.”

“We’re not going to force people to either break Sony TOS or not play the game.”

Spitz also mentions that players making their displeasure known through reviews and refund requests “gives us more pull in the discussions with Sony.”

“It’s unrealistic to expect people to make PSN accounts in different regions to get past the account linking requirement.”

This has been an extremely unfortunate scenario, especially for the developers who have worked so hard to earn goodwill from the community as they see their efforts get wiped out by negative Steam reviews. It is interesting to see how Sony, who is not known to be extremely flexible with their policies, reacts to this in the following days.

What do you think of this whole situation with Helldivers 2?