Helldivers 2 faces Steam review bombing as PSN account requirement announced

Sony has announced that, starting next week, Helldivers 2 players on Steam will start to be required to connect their Steam account to a PlayStation Network account in order to play the hit bug and bot shooter. In response, PC players have taken to a now traditional campaign of review bombing to crater the game’s reputation on Steam and share their overwhelming dissatisfaction at this move.

From 6th May, new Helldivers 2 players will have to have a PSN account, while existing players will start to be forced to attach accounts by 4th June.

The directive is being handed down by Sony as the game’s publisher, and was always intended to be the case, but was postponed as the game suffered from its severe server issues at launch. Sony state that this is so that they can more actively protect players, which… well let’s just say that doesn’t seem to have been that much of an issue up until now. Arrowhead themselves have said that this is Sony’s decision.

Sony’s statement reads:

Attention Helldivers,

Due to technical issues at the launch of HELLDIVERS™ 2, we allowed the linking requirements for Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network account to be temporarily optional. That grace period will now expire. See details below in this post.

Account linking plays a critical role in protecting our players and upholding the values of safety and security provided on PlayStation and PlayStation Studios games. This is our main way to protect players from griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of players that engage in that type of behaviour. It also allows those players that have been banned the right to appeal.

As such, as of May 6th, all new HELLDIVERS 2 players on Steam will be required to connect their Steam account to a PlayStation Network account. Current players on Steam will start to see the mandatory login from May 30th and will be required to have linked a Steam and PlayStation Network account by June 4th. PlayStation Network accounts are free and easy to set up using this link
https://www.playstation.com/support/account/create-account-for-psn/

We understand that while this may be an inconvenience to some of you, this step will help us to continue to build a community that you are all proud to be a part of.

Many thanks for your continued support of HELLDIVERS 2!

Sony Interactive Entertainment

In response, players on Steam have review bombed the game, but there’s also strong pushback on Discord and through the game’s subreddit. Some note that this will restrict players to only countries where PSN is available, excluding some portions of the player base as it excludes regions such as the Baltics, South Africa and more, others feel that this requirement was not clearly stated prior to the game’s launch – the requirement has been listed on the store page, as far as I can remember – and plenty have refuted this being a necessary move for managing and protecting players, especially when they’ve implemented kernel-level anti-cheat.

Of course, the real driving force is to induct more players into the PlayStation ecosystem one way or another. Helldivers 2 has a significant playerbase on PC, but if those players aren’t signed up to PSN, then Sony can’t claim them when reporting active user counts in reports to shareholders. It’s the same reason why Sony is bringing trophies to PC with Ghost of Tsushima, and is featuring the PlayStation friends list and cross-play through this system. Helldivers 2 predates the PSN overlay, so does not need PSN for cross-play.

At the moment, this is a big kneejerk reaction from the community, which always vocally pushes back against these kinds of third party intrusions into Steam games. We’ll have to wait and see if Sony bends on this one, or if they’ll stay the course and hope that the historical low impact of boycott threats stays true.

Source: Steam