KitGuru Games: Corporate nonsense has put Helldivers 2 in jeopardy as game removed from over 170 countries

It tends to take a lot for gamers to ‘forgive' a studio after messing up a launch, for instance CD Projekt Red had to spend three additional years developing Cyberpunk 2077 before many were willing to give the game another shot. In the case of Helldivers 2, despite the game having some rough server issues at launch, the game turned out to be so good that many players simply waited things out, without leaving a trail of negative reviews. Now, a case of incredibly poor communication and a poorly thought-out plan from the game's publisher, Sony, has put Helldivers 2 in jeopardy, with the game being removed from over 170 countries. 

We've seen some insane bag fumbles over the years but this one might just take the cake. This week, it was announced that soon, Helldivers 2 will be enforcing PSN-account linking for the game on PC. You have been able to link your PSN account to the game on PC since launch. However, the option to skip this step was also added to the game, within half an hour of it first going live. Now here is where Arrowhead messed up – the studio did not make it clear that the skip option was temporary. While the game's main Steam Store page does have a warning stating that a PSN account is required to play, this warning is easily missed and without any kind of pinned post on the Steam forums or the game's official Discord, the idea that a PSN account would eventually be required didn't even register with many players. Despite this, Arrowhead employees have stated that they knew this day was coming, so my question is, why wasn't there more forewarning?

To make matters worse, Helldivers 2 has now been sold to thousands of players living in regions where PSN is not available. The PlayStation Network is only officially supported in around 70 countries. Not even every EU country has access to the service, and skirting the geo-restrictions to create an account is in violation of Sony's Terms of Service, meaning those that do create an account while living in an unsupported country could be risking not only a ban in Helldivers 2, but a ban for PSN as a whole. Such an outcome would ensure that you are locked out of future PlayStation titles on PC, like Ghost of Tsushima, the first Sony PC game to ship with the PlayStation overlay and support for features like Trophies. To make matters worse, there are some countries, like Ukraine, where you can't actually make a PSN account without first buying a PlayStation console.

Arrowhead was seemingly caught off guard by the news that PSN is not that widely available. The game was sold without any kind of region restrictions in place on Steam, meaning many in unsupported countries have now forked over money for the game. To combat this, Arrowhead is only now beginning to restrict the game's sales, blocking it from being bought in specific countries. The changes began appearing this weekend, months after the game's launch. This change means those in unsupported countries may no longer be able to access the game as of today, despite the fact that PSN account linking is not going to be enforced for current players for another few weeks.

Now to Arrowhead's credit, the community managers have been quite transparent about their feelings towards this change. It is a Sony-enforced system, with the goal of making it easier to ‘enforce player safety rules' and ban troublemakers. Sony wants all of its published games to use its tools and network, regardless of platform, to create a unified experience. That is fine, Microsoft does the exact same thing with Xbox games on PC, with the majority of first-party Xbox titles requiring a Microsoft account be linked. However, the key difference here is that Helldivers 2 has already been sold to thousands of players living in areas outside of PSN's coverage and the enforcement of the PSN account system was not communicated well enough.

Why is it that the game has been out for several months already, celebrating huge player milestones and community-wide achievements, and we are only just hearing about this incredibly important news now? This is something that should have been spread far and wide right when the game came out. Additionally, Sony should have communicated the regional limitations of PSN to Arrowhead sooner, so that they could have restricted sales to supported countries, rather than having them lock down the game's availability months after launch.

This of course all comes just a week after we learned that PC has been the largest growth driver for Helldivers 2, boosting sales massively beyond the PlayStation platform. The key factor here? The PC release enabled gamers in countries where console gaming is less common to join the community, pushing the game's reach far beyond Sony's typical market. Executives were no doubt celebrating that fact, only to now find themselves in a situation where they are slamming the door shut on the very players responsible for the game's impressive growth.

As a result of all of this, there has been a huge wave of backlash against Helldivers 2 on social media. The game's Steam Store page has also been flooded with almost 180,000 negative reviews in the past two days, bringing the game's rating down from overwhelmingly positive to overwhelmingly negative. Additionally, thousands of players have also begun requesting refunds for the game, some of which have been granted despite accounts logging high playtime numbers. With Arrowhead being a small studio, known only for this IP, they are obviously unhappy with this situation too. Community managers have encouraged negative reviews via the game's Discord servers, which is no doubt why the protests from the player base is only getting louder. As The Act Man put it, the Helldivers player base is trained to coordinate on a mass scale to achieve in-game objectives, so it is no wonder that the community at large has been able to band together to protest this. No doubt by this time tomorrow, the game's number of negative reviews will have crossed the 200K mark.

We can only hope that by the time Sony's executives wake up on Monday morning, there will be an emergency meeting to address this situation. Given the game's global popularity, locking it down now makes little sense and it will no doubt cost an eye-watering amount of cash in refunds. Sony can always take the lessons learned here about regional availability and communication, and apply it to one of its own IP, rather than destroying the reputation of a beloved independent studio and their creative work. Yes, Arrowhead made some mistakes here too, as they knew this day was coming and did not communicate it effectively. However, the decision to enforce PSN accounts in the game appears to be coming from Sony, leaving the studio's hands tied in this situation. All Arrowhead can do now is hope that community pressure can help persuade Sony to stop this nonsense.

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KitGuru Says: How do you feel about the recent announcement that Helldivers 2 will require a PSN account moving forward? Do you live in a country where PSN isn't available? If so, do you own Helldivers 2 on PC? 

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