How PSN Integration with Steam Hurts Gamers and Developers

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Obaid Ur Rehman

At Tech4Gamers, I mainly cover new gaming news, leaks, and rumours. Aside from that, I love to write features about my favourite games while inserting my opinion about their different aspects. 

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It is not news that in order to play a majority of Sony’s PlayStation-exclusive titles on Steam, you will need to sign up with a PSN account as well. This not only applies to online games like Hell Divers 2 but also to single-player story titles. 

This was not the case in the past, as in order to play PlayStation ports on the PC, all you needed was a Steam account and the specific game bought by the account, without the need of signing up to any other platform. 

Signing up on another platform is not that big of a deal. The major elephant in the room is that Sony’s PSN service is only available in a handful of regions. Out of 195 countries in the world, PSN is available in only 73 countries. 

This has resulted in a major backlash from the gamer community all across the globe, as Steam has started handing over refunds to the people who pre-purchased these games before their initial launch. 

Sony Requires PSN Account For Single-Player Titles

All of this account integration would have made sense to some extent if they had kept it to multiplayer games only, as it is a bit difficult for the developers to manage all the servers with different platform and their accounts. 

However, the fact that Sony is requiring you to sign up to PSN just to be able to play offline modes of single-player story-based titles like Ghost of Tsushima is just straight-up absurd, since you do not need to have active internet to play that mode.

Reports also suggest that the upcoming PC port from Santa Monica Studios, God of War Ragnarok will also require a PSN account. Keep in mind, that this is also a single-player story-based campaign that can be played without an active internet connection. 

Sony Backtracks On Their Decision to Require PSN Account For Hell Divers 2

This whole debacle began with Hell Divers 2, as Sony announced after its launch that players will need to sign up for a PSN account if they want to be able to continue playing Hell Divers 2 with their fellow PS gamers. 

This resulted in a massive backlash from all across the globe, as over 300,000 players actively played the title back then, and most of them came from regions that were not supported by PSN. Their Steam rating went all the way from Positive to mostly negative.

This decision was so wildly criticized that Sony had to backtrack on it, and now, players no longer require a PSN account to enjoy Hell Divers 2 from their Steam accounts. 

This backtracking shows that this was never about the complications of the cross-platform servers, or devs working harder than usual to support other platform accounts like Steam. It was a tactic used by Sony to get more people to sign up for PSN.

How This Decision Is Affecting The Community?

This decision is effectively hurting the entire community, including both the developer studios and the player base because, despite the games having support for PC, most of the regions are not entertained by PSN. 

This means that the gamers who reside in these regions can not legally play these games, although they have active Steam accounts and games bought with their money in those accounts.

This means that a gamer who genuinely wants to enjoy these titles is left with no choice other than pirating these games. If the majority of your player base is pirating your game, then you as a developer studio are not getting anything from it. 

This decision is a major setback for the community in general, as it is not only promoting unethical measures like piracy but is also depriving more than half of the gamer community of being able to enjoy online PlayStation titles with their friends.

PlayStation account will be required to play
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Obaid Ur Rehman

[News Editor]

Obaid is pursuing a Law degree, while working as a content writer. He has worked as a gaming writer for over a year because of his passion for the medium and reporting the latest updates in the industry. Having played hundreds of games, Obaid finds himself coming back to Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, and Red Dead Redemption 2, with these games being among his favorites. He has also been mentioned on highly regarded websites, such as Wccftech, Metro UK, PS Lifestyle, GamePressure, VGC, and Gamespot.