TheHelldivers 2community imploded yesterday afternoon when developer Arrowhead Game Studios and publisherSony Interactive Entertainmentannounced that PC players would soon be forced to link their Steam and PSN accounts in order to play. The move went down like a lead balloon, withplayers promising to quit the gameif the studios went through with the decision.
There’s a magnitude of reasons as to why the game’s player base is outraged. While Arrowhead and Sony did state on the game’s Steam page that players would need to link their Steam and PSN accounts to play, this was not enforced at launchdue to a myriad of server issues. Players now feel as though they’ve been duped after playing for months on end without having to link their accounts.
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Some players have stated that they simply do not want to create a PlayStation Network account, even if it’s completely free and simple to do. This comes down to multiple reasons, according to players. But the main one is that gamers simply do not trust Sony with their data after the studio sufferedmultiple data breaches over the years.
Sony has stated that account-linking won’t be enforced until May 6th for new players and June 4th for current players, but the outrage this decision sparked has already had players promising to quit the game. Or so they say.
Helldivers 2 Continues To Thrive, Despite Players Promising To Quit
While thousands ofSteam players promised to quit Helldivers 2yesterday following Sony’s decision to enforce account linking, Steam’s database appears to show the game’s concurrent player count remains steady, with seemingly nobody actually quitting the game.
As you may see from the image below, Helldivers 2’s 24-hour peak sits at just shy of 120,000, which is about the average amount of players on Steam, meaning there has been no significant drop-off since this whole fiasco began. At the time of writing this article, there are almost 60,000 players in-game right now. While this might seem low, it’s the normal amount of players for this time of day.
While there’s likely a large number of players that will drop off once the account-linking rule is enforced, you’d expect there to have already been some sort of decline considering all of thesupposed refund requestsandoutrage. There has, however, been a huge number of players review bombing the title on Steam, which has resulted in a"mixed" review badge on the platform.
Sony Sneakily Updates PSN FAQ
While Sony has yet to officially respond to all of the outrage surrounding Helldivers 2, it has managed to take the time to update its PSN FAQ in regards to PC account linking. After Arrowhead’s CEO John Pilestedt pointed players in the direction ofPlayStation’s official support page, players quickly noticed that one of the answers in the FAQ didn’t quite add up.
According to the FAQ (before it was updated), Sony stated that “signing in to PSN is optional when playing a PlayStation game on PC.” Now, however, the new answer reads: “Some PlayStation games may require you sign in and link to an account for PSN.”
It’s not exactly out of the ordinary for a company to update its FAQ pages or terms and conditions, but you’d think Sony would have done thatbeforestarting one of the biggest controversies of the year.
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