Helldivers 2
Helldivers 2 players are celebrating the defeat of Sony, having complained enough to force PlayStation to retract its demand that new and existing players would have to link their Steam accounts to a PSN account to keep playing. Many didn’t want to at baseline, but in 177 regions, it wasn’t even possible to make a PSN account to begin with without using a VPN (which goes against PlayStation TOS).
Thing reached DEFCON levels in the community when PlayStation actually delisted Helldivers 2 from sale in those 177 regions, with player anger reaching a boiling point that sparked the reversal of the PSN decision shortly thereafter. But it does not appear to be “Mission Accomplished” after all, as those 177 regions, for some reason, are still in limbo. They still cannot buy the game again.
While it may seem obvious and logical that if this PSN demand was no longer happening, there was no reason that the game should not be on sale in those countries again. However, that’s not what Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt is saying, and that it’s not a done deal for some reason. Here he is answering the posed question on Discord when asked about the delisting issue:
“Sorry no, I’m speaking to our partners at PlayStation and Valve for it to be undone. Getting the account linking took a herculean effort – but I won’t rest in my desire to have it available everywhere.”
There is no apparent logic to what’s going on here. Unless Sony has plans to reinstate the PSN demand later, and they don’t want to run into the same “you sold the game in regions that couldn’t play it eventually” problem again, it doesn’t make any sense why this delisting would stay in place.
Granted, this is on Sony as the publisher, not Arrowhead the developer, so Pilestedt can’t just flip a switch himself here. But the fact that no one at Sony has told him “yes, it’s being reverted, it will just take a little while” is disconcerting. He also makes it sound like since reversing the PSN linking was such a big ask, that they may not also do this. But again, why? Why wouldn’t they? It makes no sense.
So right now, the game is stuck in a bizarre place where there are players in those 177 regions that own the game, and presumably will not lose access to the game now that the PSN demand is gone. But now in those same regions, new potential players cannot buy the game at all. Again, unless Sony is planning to not make this reversal permanent, it does not stand to reason that these regions should remain delisted. But they are, and Arrowhead’s CEO has apparently not been told they’re coming back.
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