Helldivers 2 Just took a dive thanks to Sony

Helldivers 2 is probably the most successful game this year in terms of player numbers but thanks to Sony things are looking grim. If you aren't caught up on all the juicy details let me try to break it down for you. 

Basically Sony has chosen to start enforcing PSN account requirements on players who own the game through Steam. Some people see this as a non-issue but clearly the community vehemently disagrees as reviews on Steam went from Overwhelmingly Positive to Mixed in just a handful of days. 

Screenshot from Steam reviews

Thanks to this handy Steam review graph its pretty obvious to see that over the last 3 days people have been pretty upset about this. Recent reviews are now sitting at Overwhelmingly negative but that's not all Steam is issuing refunds regardless of time played and has stopped selling the product in several countries that do not support PSN. While this may seem like a positive development the issue is that most players do not want to refund or give up the game. This forces those players into an extremely gray area where if they wish to continue playing Helldivers 2 they must utilize a VPN to even get a PSN account. Again it seems like such an easy solution until you realize doing so breaks Sony's own PSN Terms of Service. What that essentially means is if you do use a VPN just to play Helldivers Sony has the right to ban your account for it meaning you'd lose access to Helldivers and any other Sony game you may be playing or want to play. 

Now this wouldn't be so incredibly problematic if both ArrowHead, the studio behind the game, and Sony had enforced this from the beginning. While some of the blame is on ArrowHead for being a bit disingenuous about PSN accounts but at least the CEO of ArrowHead Johan Pilestedt has taken some responsibility for the part they play in all this.

Screenshot curtesy of u/matti-san on Reddit

While this is very disappointing to hear what truly hurts is that it seems nothing will free great games from terrible choices by publishers. ArrowHead certainly has their work cut out for them now as the game is unlikely to ever recover its positive standing on Steam. This also likely means the game is unlikely to ever release on Xbox consoles and even if it did it wouldn't sell as no one on Xbox has any interest in making a PSN account. 

Will Helldivers 2 recover from this controversy? All players can do now is hope. In my own opinion this will likely burn the game to a greater degree than most people think. Regardless of what anyone believes the facts are that now players in up to 100 countries will refund the game because they can no longer play it and that isn't counting those who will refund simply because they have no interest in creating a PSN for a single game. This may not hurt Sony's bottom line but developer ArrowHead may feel the squeeze as players abandon the game and request refunds. 

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