If you missed yesterday’s PlayStation State of Play, one of the big announcements was the PC port of God of War: Ragnarok, which is coming out on September 19. So, this is something that people have been waiting for a long time.
It will include all of the game’s DLC and some extra performance options, as is customary with PC ports of this type. However, it will require PC players to create a PSN account to pair with their Steam account – and that’s what’s irritating a lot of people.
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Firstly, the fact that the PC version of Ragnarok requires a PlayStation Network account has been confirmed via a blog post accompanying the game’s PC announcement, further confirming what the statement that appeared during the State of Play broadcast seemed to suggest. Meanwhile, the game’s Steam page features a prominent text box that reads: “PlayStation Network account required, subject to PlayStation Terms of Service and User Agreement.”
So why is this a problem? Well, much like the multiplayer aspects of Hellraiser 2 (PlayStation had to back off plans to start forcing account linking after players made their anger clear) and Ghost of Tsushima’s PC port, a lot of this comes down to the fact that PSN isn’t available everywhere.
Yes, while some of us are lucky enough to live somewhere that means creating a PSN account is as simple as visiting the PlayStation website and following the steps to set up an account, there are 170 countries around the world where PSN doesn’t operate at all. So it looks like people in these countries will not only be unable to play the game because they can’t create an account, they won’t even be able to see the Steam page to buy the game.
While players aren’t in danger of being unable to continue playing the game they’ve been playing, unlike Hellraiser 2, which was forced to do so due to technical issues just months after launch, the fact that Ragnarok is entirely single-player has become a major sticking point. After all, this has been primarily a PlayStation PC game with online elements so far, and it seems difficult for players to justify this as a game they’re interested in without the cheating and security issues that online play can bring.
We’ll have to see how this plays out for some, but assuming this was a decision made before the Helldivers retreat, we could end up seeing something similar happen again.
