Helldivers 2 kicked off the yr as one of many greatest 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 difficulty 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 will probably be required to hyperlink their Steam account to a PlayStation Community Account.
“On account of technical points on the launch of Helldivers 2, we allowed the linking necessities for Steam accounts to a PlayStation community account to be briefly possibility. That grace interval will now expire,” mentioned Sony, which continued to say that that is being achieved as a part of “defending our gamers and upholding the values of security and safety supplied on PlayStation.”
This didn’t garner an ideal 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 assessment rating,” started Pilestedt in his submit, which had a picture connected exhibiting that the latest inflow of destructive evaluations has introduced the sport’s score right down to “Combined” on Steam.
“Nicely, I suppose it’s warranted. Sorry everybody for a way this all transpired. I hope we are going to make it up and regain the belief by offering a continued nice sport expertise. I simply need to make nice video games!”
Now, you could be asking your self why this is a matter in any respect. Account linking between platforms is a typical apply, and infrequently is a key step for options like cross-play and cross-progression to be supported.
The problem partly is the truth that you possibly can have a Steam account in additional nations than you possibly can have a PSN account in, so post-June 4, there will probably be gamers internationally who will now not be capable to play Helldivers 2, due to this restriction. These gamers might strive utilizing a VPN, however that might 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 difficulty 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 during the last 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 sport they play.
It’s vital to notice that this was a requirement initially meant to be within the sport, it simply wasn’t enforced on account of 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]