Helldivers 2 kicked off the yr as one of many greatest shock hits of 2024, and even just a few months out from launch it’s nonetheless making gross sales headlines.
The gravy prepare was by no means meant to final sadly, and it looks as if the sport has hit its first main problem 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 every one Helldivers 2 gamers on Steam from June 4, 2024 onwards can be required to hyperlink their Steam account to a PlayStation Community Account.
“Because 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 finished as a part of “defending our gamers and upholding the values of security and safety supplied on PlayStation.”
This didn’t garner an incredible response from gamers, and the aforementioned review-bombing has been acknowledged by Arrowhead Studios chief govt 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 publish, which had a picture hooked up exhibiting that the latest inflow of adverse critiques has introduced the sport’s ranking right down to “Combined” on Steam.
“Effectively, 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 is likely to be asking your self why this is a matter in any respect. Account linking between platforms is a standard follow, and infrequently is a key step for options like cross-play and cross-progression to be supported.
The difficulty partly is the truth that you’ll be able to have a Steam account in additional nations than you’ll be able to have a PSN account in, so post-June 4, there can be gamers the world over who will now not be capable of play Helldivers 2, due to this restriction. These gamers might attempt 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 problem 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 sport they play.
It’s essential to notice that this was a requirement initially meant to be within the sport, it simply wasn’t enforced as a result 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. Nonetheless with the quantity of backlash, it’s curious if Sony will stroll the choice again.
Supply – [Johan Pilestedt on Twitter]