Steam Users Review-Bomb Helldivers 2 Over Mandatory PSN Account Linking

Helldivers 2 players brings the fight for democracy to Arrowhead Games itself after the studio announced that a PlayStation Network account will be mandatory to play the game starting on May 30 for existing players and May 6 for new players. In protest, players are now review-bombing the popular squad-based shooter on Steam with recent reviews now plummeting to Mostly Negative from over 120,000 players.

According to the studio, they’d have implemented the Steam account linking requirement at launch but decided to give everyone a “grace period” due to technical issues. To be fair, players were warned about the mandatory account linking on the Helldivers 2 Steam page since its launch and when booting up the game for the first time.

“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,” Arrowhead explains. “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.”

The push back is more than just an unwillingness to create a PlayStation account, however, as players are also worried about being locked out of the game if they’re playing in one of the regions and countries where PlayStation Network isn’t available.

The good news is that Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt acknowledged the region-locking concerns, saying that the team is currently looking into ways to bypass the country selection menu when creating a PlayStation account. Until then, it looks like the bombs will continue to drop on Steam instead of on the heads of the Terminids and Automatons.

Agree that it's an issue. We are looking into solutions on how to get around the country drop down menu if your country isn't listed.

— Pilestedt (@Pilestedt) May 3, 2024