If you’ve been enjoying Helldivers 2 exclusively on PC since launch, whether due to preference or because you don’t own a PlayStation 5, Sony is now demanding you get a PlayStation Network account anyway. If you don’t, then you can’t play the game anymore.
In a May 3 news post on Steam, Sony has alerted PC players that PlayStation accounts will become mandatory for brand-new players starting from Monday, May 6. The mandatory log-in won’t appear for current PC players until May 30, and then they’ll have until June 4 to link their accounts or be forced to stop playing.
You may be wondering why Sony is enforcing this change roughly three months after Helldivers 2‘s launch, but this was always supposed to be the plan. Back in February, the launch period suffered from its fair share of technical issues, partially because of how many people were trying to play Helldivers 2. As such, Sony decided to temporarily make linking Steam and PlayStation accounts optional.
“Account linking plays a critical role in protecting our players and upholding the values of safety and security provided on PlayStation and PlayStation Studios games,” explains Sony. “This is our main way to protect players from griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of players that engage in that type of behavior. It also allows those players that have been banned the right to appeal.”
While signing up for a PlayStation account is completely free, plenty of PC players are not happy with the sudden change. In fact, initial responses on Steam and under the official Helldivers 2 Twitter account show people are so angry about it, that they’re threatening to quit the game entirely. Some frustration is understandable when you don’t have a PlayStation console, meaning you’re never going to use the account for anything else. What’s worse is there are some countries you can’t make a PlayStation account in, as highlighted by this Reddit post. So, there are going to be a bunch of people that simply won’t get to play Helldivers 2 anymore. Affected players could use a VPN to get around this, but you can get banned from the game for pretending to be in another country.
Could this mark the end of Helldivers 2‘s months-long popularity? That’s not something that can be easily predicted. While I don’t doubt some players will drop off, willingly or otherwise, the complaints could be part of a loud minority, with most players simply not caring about needing to get a PlayStation account. Still, Sony clearly expected some degree of backlash considering it acknowledges this “may be an inconvenience to some of you.” At the very least, it should come up with an alternative solution so those who literally can’t get PlayStation accounts can keep playing Helldivers 2.
