What a whirlwind few days it’s been for PlayStation and Arrowhead Studios/Helldivers 2. Incase you’ve been living under a rock let’s get you caught up.
Late Thursday night Arrowhead announced via a steam post that they would be implementing a requirement that players must login to a PSN account on PC.
This set off a firestorm Friday and through the weekend. Helldivers 2 was review bombed, the game was pulled in almost 200 countries and speculation was rampant about why it was being done and who was doing it.
By Monday morning (weirdly right at 12am EST) the Sony announces they are reversing the decision and PSN is no longer going to be required. This was a big win for gamers and a great decision by the new regime at PlayStation.
As I talked about yesterday this was indeed the first big decision from the post Jim Ryan ate at PlayStation and they passed with flying colours. Is this a one off or a sign of how things will be?
Whether rightly or wrongly PlayStation has developed a reputation of making a decision and sticking to it regardless of the fanbase’s anger. Whether it was raising game prices, raising PS+ prices or any other number of moves they typically stuck to their decisions.
And you can’t really blame them either. A multi billion dollar company doesn’t make knee jerk reactions to every fan outcry. But they still should listen and adapt and at the very least learn from what they do.
Which if nothing else today’s decision has proved they are willing to do so. You know going forward this will be addressed immediately anytime they discuss PC.
So well done Sony, and well done to the gaming community (the ones who did so respectfully anyway) for letting your voice be heard. Now let’s get back to focusing on the games shall we?
