(Paris) By wanting to force PC players of “Helldivers 2”, a very popular cooperative shooter, to register on its online service Playstation Network, the video game giant Sony provoked a revolt which pushed it to reconsider his decision.
Posted at 8:57 a.m.
“Helldivers fans, we’ve listened to your feedback,” Sony wrote in a post Monday on X. “May 6 Update […] will not take place,” he clarified, in a rather rare about-face in this industry.
The Japanese company sparked an outcry on Friday by announcing that from May 6, PC players would have to link their Steam account, the platform from which they launch the computer game, with a Playstation Network (PSN) account, owned from Sony and used by PlayStation gamers.
If Helldiverse 2 offers the possibility for PC and PlayStation players to play together, creating a link between accounts on the two platforms was previously only optional. With this decision, players accused Sony of wanting to artificially increase the number of subscribers to its own online service.
Direct consequence: on PC, the game became inaccessible during the weekend in 177 countries, which do not offer the possibility of opening a PSN account, according to the SteamDB database.
“I lost access to my main account Helldiverse 2 because I live in the Philippines,” said Zanny, a YouTuber with 2.3 million subscribers, on X.
In response, fans posted nearly 200,000 bad reviews of the game on Steam in less than three days, causing the game’s rating to drop sharply, to the point of forcing Sony to backtrack.
Released at the beginning of February on PC and PlayStation 5, Helldiverse 2 allows the player to play as a soldier sent from planet to planet to fight hordes of insects and giant robots, in an atmosphere close to Starship Troopers by Paul Verhoeven.
Developed by the Swedish studio Arrowhead and published by Sony, the game has enjoyed great success since its launch, particularly driven by computer sales, to the point of making it “the 7th” at the beginning of May.e best-selling Sony game in history,” according to analyst Mat Piscatella of Circana.
By mid-March, the game had already sold more than 8 million copies, according to Doug Creutz, analyst at TD Cowen.
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