It’s been one day since the announcement that Helldivers 2 would require PC players to have a PSN account and already the game has lost its Mostly Positive Review Score on Steam! As of the writing of this article there are currently more than 120,000 negative reviews dropped since the official X account for Helldivers 2 told players of this controversial change.
While it is true that Sony is hardly the first company to require a mandatory sign-up to their service in order to play one of their games the truth of the matter is that it is the first time Sony has ever made it a requirement. Ubisoft, Microsoft and others typically require the account before a player is allowed to login to a game, but for Helldivers 2 you could simply skip this step originally. So to have it forced onto a PC fanbase months after release the outrage should have been anticipated by Sony and the developers. However, it’s unlikely that anyone could have predicted the level of backlash in just a single day.
What makes matters worse is that the actual reasoning provided by the official Helldivers 2 account and Sony doesn’t make much sense. In their words the change is being made to protect players from griefing and abuse, but given that players engaging in such behavior can already be punished on Steam it appears to be nothing more than a data grab by Sony. And given Sony’s notorious history of not securing their user’s personal data as well as massive spam mailers they send out PC players are rightfully outraged. It seems Sony really has destroyed one of their most popular games all in a poor attempt to build up their PSN account numbers.
And while the rabid PS fangirls defending Sony for this overreach argue that this change was always how the game was supposed to launch, the actual Q&A section for PSN Accounts had clearly stated that it was always optional to have a PSN account to play a Sony game on the PC. It was only yesterday that a stealth edit had been made to their site in which the language was changed to “Some PlayStation games may require you sign in and link an account for PSN”. If it’s really true that this was always how Helldivers 2 was going to launch then the obvious question becomes: Why wasn’t the PSN Q&A changed prior to the launch of Helldivers 2 back in February?
We will likely never be given an actual explanation for this by Sony who seems to have wrongly believed they could steamroll the PC playerbase into giving up their data and creating a PSN account. However, with such a massive backlash hitting them in just a single day this may convince them to pull back on this change which goes into effect for all players on May 30th. Although it should be expected that prior to them doing so we will likely see an attempt to purge negative reviews of the game from Steam which has become a common tactic of AAA releases that are received poorly. Although is it even possible for these reviews to be purged?
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Helldivers 2 has been out since February, and a quick scroll through the review section shows that the majority of these reviews come from players with at least 20 Hours of playtime in the game. While other AAA titles have successfully managed to purge negative reviews these are typically done to reviews made prior to the official release of a game or on the days that they launch. So it stands to reason that these 120,000 negative reviews from active players will remain in place.
Sony continues to make changes that seem to do little more than outrage fans of their games as they jump from one controversy to another. The recent Stellar Blade fiasco that FandomPulse has covered in other articles has left Sony with a black eye as people canceled their paid PSN subscriptions. However, that change was still supported by individuals who seemed to do so for no other reason than engaging in a pro-censorship counter-movement. The situation with Helldivers 2 has seemed to unite all of the internet against Sony outside of a few PS fangirls and paid shills who are being drowned out by the overwhelming backlash.
The change is going into effect on May 30th, which is when we are likely to see a massive drop in the active players on Steam, who make up more than half of the game’s audience. However, there are still a few weeks for people to get what they can out of it, which is very unfortunate. Helldivers 2 has been a bombastic experience that allowed people to engage in mindless fun with a few friends, and the model of a low-cost game that didn’t force microtransactions onto players was massively successful. And with one tactless and nonsensical decision, Sony seems to have effectively killed any excitement for the future of the Helldivers franchise.
It seems that the developers and team behind Helldivers 2 are feeling the pressure, as the Community Manager who had been mocking players, saying they’d be leaving the game, issued an apology in the early morning for his behavior. While it’s hard to say if this is genuine or simply forced by the Helldivers 2 team, it is a good sign that the studio behind the game isn’t dismissing players’ concerns with Sony’s current demands.
Has this change deterred you from purchasing or continuing to play Helldivers 2? Let us know in the comments below your thoughts on Sony’s latest debacle!
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