Sony has reversed their recent decision to require a PSN account for Helldivers 2 on PC. The policy, which was planned on June 4th, instantly infuriated PC players of the space action game.
The planned policy has faced an intense backlash amongst Helldivers 2 players over the weekend since the initial X (formerly Twitter) announcement. Helldivers 2 players led a coordinated effort to show their mass displeasure at the news, with a series of “review bombing” and a boycott over the weekend.
The review bombing led Helldivers 2’s rating on steam plummet all the way to the “Mostly Negative” rating over the weekend. However, it has now risen back to “Mixed”, which is still a far cry from the positive reviews it previously held.
In an announcement published on the official @Playstation X account, Sony confirmed that they heard the feedback from the player base, and have decided to scrap the planned policy.
Arrowhead Employee Almost Fired for Encouraging the Protest
Perhaps most surprisingly during this saga is the pushback from Arrowhead themselves against Sony. A community manager for the Helldivers 2 Discord, known as Spitz, actually encouraged players to change their reviews to negative and demand refunds for the game.
In the last few hours, PC Gamer released a full report on Spitz’s status at Arrowhead. While it looks like his position is now safe, the community manager certainly put himself on shaky ground as he went against the decision of publisher Sony. In an update in the official Discord, Spitz admitted that his encouragement of the player’s protest almost led to him being fired.
It seems that the players did indeed manage to make a difference here. With such an unprecedented backlash, Sony had to entirely back down. Now PC players will still be able to enjoy the incredibly fun Helldivers 2 without PSN accounts.
Just last week, a major update went live for Helldivers 2. You can view the full Helldivers 2 Patch Notes for version 01.000.300 in our handy article. Inside, we break down all the balance changes brought to the game.
