GamesThird Person ShooterHelldivers 2Sweet liberty, are Helldivers 2 players not happy about having to link their Steam accounts to the PlayStation hive mindWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

GamesThird Person ShooterHelldivers 2Sweet liberty, are Helldivers 2 players not happy about having to link their Steam accounts to the PlayStation hive mindWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

(Image credit: Steam / Arrowhead Games)

A Steam chart showing a recent spike in negative reviews due to Sony�s insistence on players linking a PSN account.

Helldivers 2 is going to make you link your PlayStation Network account—and boy, are liberty’s finest upset about it. If you dare to venture into the game’s Discord server at the time of writing, you’ll find the place is thoroughly on fire, with timeouts being issued left and right.

This move, Sony claims, is to “protect players from griefing” among other ‘benefits’—and was only ever delayed thanks to the state ofHelldivers 2’s servers at launch. Here’s theproper rundownof the change—or, more accurately, reinstatement—in policy. For now though, let’s turn our gaze towards the community.

Considering players from these countries will have previously been able to play the game—and could have, reasonably, missed the section on the game’s store page thatsaid it required a PSN account—it’s a nightmare customer service issue. If you lie about it, Sony is technically within their rights to ban you, according to its Terms of Service.

The game’s been thrown into the grinder on Steam, too. Over the course of one day, over 10,000 negative reviews have flooded in. That number’s set to grow over the coming hours, and at the time of writing has knocked the game’s recent reviews into “Mixed” territory.

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(Image credit: Valve)

Steam charts documenting Helldivers' current negative reviews on Steam.

The whole debacle had led to plenty of conspiracies flying around to the tune of ‘Sony wanting to sell your data’ or ‘Sony just wants to boost its PSN numbers for investors, consideringover half of Helldivers 2 players experience the game on Steam’.

But the handling from Sony has clearly been catastrophic. A huge part of the problem, as Arrowhead Games community manager Twinbeard writes, is that the development studio—while knowing about the shift—didn’t craft the statement itself. “We’re chasing Sony to get more info” regarding the region-locking issue, Twinbeard writes on Discord, in the middle of a swarmed general chat that’s gone full Lord of the Flies.

(Image credit: Johan Pilestedt on Twitter)

johan pilestedt

(Image credit: Helldivers 2 Discord)

A message that reads: “First of all, it’s Sonys decision, not ours. Secondly, we don’t have all the details about region related issues yet. We’re chasing Sony to get more info."

Arrowhead Games CEO Johan Pilestedt has also issued astatement on Twitter, directing players towards Sony support: “if you have any further questions you can reach out using the ‘Contact PlayStation Support’ at the bottom of the page.” One can’t help but wonder whether the studio itself was given much advance warning.

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