Helldivers 2 gamers who’ve been enjoying the sport on Home windows PC through Steam since launch will now want a PlayStation Community account to entry the sport. Helldivers 2 writer Sony Interactive Leisure posted a notice to the game’s Steam page on Thursday informing Steam gamers of the change.
“On account of technical points on the launch of Helldivers 2, we allowed the linking necessities for Steam accounts to a PlayStation Community account to be quickly non-obligatory,” the writer wrote. “That grace interval will now expire. See particulars beneath on this publish.”
Sony claims account-linking with PlayStation Community is “vital” to the “security and safety” of Helldivers 2. “That is our major strategy to shield gamers from griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of gamers that have interaction in that sort of behaviour,” it mentioned. “It additionally permits these gamers which were banned the fitting to enchantment.”
Beginning on Could 6, all new Helldivers 2 gamers shall be required to attach their Steam and PlayStation Community accounts earlier than enjoying the sport. Present Helldivers 2 gamers will start to see the necessary PlayStation Community log-in on Could 30, and might want to have their accounts linked by June 4. You can sign up for a PlayStation Network account on the PlayStation web site when you don’t have one already.
From these dates on, Helldivers 2 gamers shall be prompted to hyperlink their accounts when the sport is launched. You’ll see a QR code and a hyperlink to the sign-in web page for PlayStation Community, according to an FAQ page on Arrowhead’s website. By signing in there, you’ll have your accounts linked. If you happen to haven’t created a PlayStation Community account earlier than you comply with the QR code or hyperlink, you’ll then comply with the directions to make one — and the account shall be robotically linked, Sony mentioned.
There’s no strategy to hyperlink your accounts exterior of this, so that you gained’t find a way to take action as a present participant till you begin seeing the immediate pop up in-game.
Some Helldivers 2 players using Steam are furious — significantly that this wasn’t a requirement from the start, and that gamers are immediately compelled to hyperlink up. One of many greater issues is that some folks gained’t be capable of create PlayStation Community accounts if they don’t live in a region supported by Sony; South Africa is the one African nation that’s acquired PlayStation Community, for example. Belarus and Lithuania aren’t on the listing. Based on Steam’s download statistics, there’s not a ton of Steam visitors from these areas over the previous seven days, however it’s nonetheless there. Positive, you possibly can choose a distinct nation, however that might require a VPN or danger a ban. There’ll probably be quite a few gamers who bought the sport on Steam who will quickly be unable to play.
The Helldivers 2 web page does have a discover alerting gamers of the third-party account linking, nonetheless. It was simply unenforced till now.
Different gamers are merely unwilling to provide their data to Sony. Since Arrowhead posted the replace, Helldivers 2 has obtained an inflow of damaging opinions on Steam — on the time of writing, hours after the publish went dwell, Helldivers 2 has more than 6,000 new negative reviews, a dramatic improve from the two,500 seen on April 25.
We’ve reached out to Sony Interactive Leisure and Arrowhead for extra data, and we’ll replace this publish after they reply.