Helldivers 2 Announces Major Change To Steam and PlayStation Account Linking

gamerant.com:

Arrowhead Game Studios confirms that starting on May 6, Helldivers 2 players on PC will need to link their Steam account to an active PlayStation Network account in order to continue playing. Since its launch in February, Helldivers 2 has become a massive success for Arrowhead, and it's publishing partner with Sony. The game's launch on PC and PS5 wasn't without difficulties initially, but the game's popularity has only continued to grow in the past few months as the live service elements continue to see the experience change and evolve almost on a weekly basis.

The challenges that Helldivers 2 faced at launch have been well documented, with server issues and capacity errors preventing a rising tide of players from even accessing the game for a time. It was all hands on deck for Arrowhead Game Studios as they worked around the clock to increase server capacity, solve networking problems, and squashing bugs. Eventually, the team got a hold of the numerous problems and players have been able to battle against the Automaton and Terminid forces in defense of Super Earth. However, it seems Arrowhead also had to disable some intended functionality over the first couple of months to ensure a stable experience for players.

In a surprising announcement, Arrowhead Game Studios revealed that it is reinstituting an account linking policy it had to initially disable at launch for PC players. Starting on May 6, all new Steam players will need to link their current accounts with an active PlayStation Network account, while existing players will begin seeing the mandatory login on May 30. Arrowhead reiterated that the requirement is to protect players while also «upholding the values of safety and security provided on PlayStation and PlayStation Studios games.» The account linking requirement was initially supposed to be active at launch, but was temporarily disabled due to the ongoing server issues plaguing Helldivers 2.

Reaction to the news hasn't been particularly positive, with