Summary
PlayStation’s controversial announcement thatHelldivers 2players on PC would be required to sign in to a PSN account (which will make the game unplayable for some) has led to the game being delisted fromSteamin over 100 countries.
After spending most of 2024 so far as one of the most popular games of the year (and even one of the best-selling games from PlayStation in recent memory), Helldivers 2 seems set to take one of the biggest falls from grace in gaming history. Just a few days ago,PlayStation announced that PC players on Steam would be required to log into PSN to be able to play the game.
Sony backed this up by claiming it was for player protection, but the Helldivers 2 community wasn’t having any of that and took toorbital striking the Steam page with over 180,000 negative reviews over the past few days. To top it all off, players have evenreported successfully receiving refunds from Steamdespite having far more play time than the standard two-hour limit that is usually enforced.
As bad as things have been for Helldivers 2 on Steam over the past few days, there’s always been a little optimism that PlayStation would realise how badly this has all gone and reverse it. Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that certainly doesn’t seem like it’s happening any time soon since,as shared by the SteamDB Twitter page, Helldivers 2 has now been removed from sale on Steam in over 100 countries.
Just over ten hours ago,Helldivers 2’s SteamDB Page was updated to add restrictions on which countries would be able to purchasethe game on Steam. Through a very lengthy change log, we can see that a total of 177 countries are now unable to purchase Helldivers 2 on PC, including Bermuda, Ghana, Jamaica, and a whole bunch of others.
Although 177 countries might raise some alarm bells considering there are only 192 in the world, Steam actually has between 240 and 250 due to how it divides certain regions. It’s still a very large number of areas in the world no longer being able to purchase Helldivers 2, but it’s not quite as scary as it may first seem.
It’s not clear if the update comes from Steam or PlayStation, but if it is the latter then it seems like Sony is doubling down on the sign-in requirement.
Going through the list is a little like doing the Countries of the World song from The Animaniacs but with a far more depressing tone. Arrowhead has already made it clear it doesn’t agree with the requirement and wants to change it, but we’ll have to wait and see how PlayStation responds to the controversy next week and if it reverses the decision altogether. For many, though, it looks like Helldivers 2 is going to be impossible to play on PC.
