Arrowhead CEO Apologizes To Helldivers 2 Gamers Over Sony Requiring Steam Customers Hyperlink To A PSN Account

Helldivers 2 kicked off the 12 months as one of many largest shock hits of 2024, and even a couple of months out from launch it’s nonetheless making gross sales headlines.

The gravy practice was by no means meant to final sadly, and it looks as if the sport has hit its first main subject that has drawn the ire of gamers, who’ve gone on to massively review-bomb the sport on Steam.

It was introduced on Friday that each one Helldivers 2 gamers on Steam from June 4, 2024 onwards might be required to hyperlink their Steam account to a PlayStation Community Account.

“As a consequence of technical points on the launch of Helldivers 2, we allowed the linking necessities for Steam accounts to a PlayStation community account to be quickly possibility. That grace interval will now expire,” stated Sony, which continued to say that that is being carried out as a part of “defending our gamers and upholding the values of security and safety supplied on PlayStation.”

This didn’t garner an amazing response from gamers, and the aforementioned review-bombing has been acknowledged by Arrowhead Studios chief government officer Johan Pilestedt on Twitter, who even apologized to gamers for “how this all transpired.”

“Ouch, proper within the evaluation rating,” started Pilestedt in his put up, which had a picture connected exhibiting that the latest inflow of unfavorable opinions has introduced the sport’s ranking all the way down to “Combined” on Steam.

“Nicely, I assume it’s warranted. Sorry everybody for a way this all transpired. I hope we’ll make it up and regain the belief by offering a continued nice recreation expertise. I simply wish to make nice video games!”

Now, you may be asking your self why this is a matter in any respect. Account linking between platforms is a typical observe, and sometimes is a key step for options like cross-play and cross-progression to be supported.

The difficulty partly is the truth that you may have a Steam account in additional nations than you may have a PSN account in, so post-June 4, there might be gamers the world over who will now not be capable of play Helldivers 2, due to this restriction. These gamers might strive utilizing a VPN, however that will danger Sony taking motion on their account ought to they be detected as doing so, leading to that participant being banned.

Gamers are additionally taking subject with Sony’s declare that it’s one thing to be mandated for safety causes, with some pointing to Sony’s historical past of safety breaches over the past decade as their reasoning for not trusting Sony when it talks about safety.

Others are lamenting a fatigue round needing to have writer or developer-specific accounts for each recreation they play.

It’s vital to notice that this was a requirement initially supposed to be within the recreation, it simply wasn’t enforced attributable to Arrowhead and Sony specializing in growing server capability and coping with different points at launch.

It must also be clear that the blame for this being a requirement in any respect is on Sony, not on Arrowhead. Nevertheless with the quantity of backlash, it’s curious if Sony will stroll the choice again.

Supply – [Johan Pilestedt on Twitter]