It seems that PlayStation and its parent company Sony have learned nothing from their mistakes in 2024. The company will continue to force players to connect PlayStation accounts to play games on PC, even single-player games like God of War: Ragnarok and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. The decision was confirmed in a recent financial call with Sony’s president, who listed safety as the number one reason for the PSN requirements.
The move to keep requiring a PlayStation account won’t make PC users happy, but perhaps a more upfront approach will work, since the strategy to force integration months after launch didn’t work very well for PlayStation with Helldivers 2 earlier this year. Either way, Sony is off to a bad start and its current strategy isn’t incurring much goodwill from PC players.
PlayStation Account Linking Might Be Here To Stay
Online, Offline, And Everything In Between Requires PSN
Anyone hoping that Sony would drop the forced account linking will be disappointed. According to a report by GamesRadar, Sony has confirmed that PlayStation account linking isn’t going anywhere despite the backlash from fans in the past. Hiroki Totoki, the president, COO, and CFO of Sony spoke on a recent company financial call about how the company learned a lot from recent “pushback” but that the company intends to stay the course regarding PSN requirements.
The primary reason that PlayStation will continue to require PSN linking, according to Sony, is for player safety. In the financial, call translated to English from Japanese, Totoki said, “for the live service games, in order to maintain order of the gaming so that anybody can enjoy the games safely, we need to create an environment conducive to that and, of course, enjoying the game freely.” This reasoning seems noble on a surface level, but when used to force PC players playing single-player games to sign in to or create a PlayStation account, it doesn’t make much sense.
PSN Requirements Don’t Just Affect Live-Service Games
Gaming Safely, Even Alone
While it may make more sense for live service games like Helldivers 2 to require a PlayStation account, that argument falls flat when applied to single-player games in the PlayStation catalog. The PSN requirements didn’t go smoothly for Helldivers 2, as the community collectively protested over being forced to create another account to sign in to before embarking on their missions to bring freedom and democracy to the galaxy.
Helldivers 2 was supposed to require PSN account linking at launch, but the requirement was removed to avoid more bugs in an already turbulent launch window. The attempted update to reinstate account linking resulted in Helldivers getting review bombed on Steam.
Games like God of War: Ragnarok and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered are both popular single-player games and Sony has required a PSN login for both. This trend for offline, single-player games doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, so the “player safety” argument looks more like an excuse for PlayStation to increase its account numbers by forcing even offline players to sign up. Tracking player habits and data may be a major factor in Sony wanting more and more players to have a PlayStation account.
Additionally, Sony hasn’t acknowledged how these account requirements prevent players in certain countries from accessing the games they bought altogether. When the Ghost of Tsushima PC port came to Steam, Sony announced that an account would only be needed for the multiplayer functions. However, because of the need for PSN linking, over 170 countries no longer had access to the game, causing mass refunds and many disgruntled players.
PlayStation Needs To Build A Stronger Future On PC
Courting PC Players Will Require More From Sony
If PlayStation wants to get consumers to look past their reservations about having to use another account to play games, the publisher needs a better lineup of games on PC. The PSN requirement is just another hurdle to getting PC users to purchase a new game, so PlayStation will need to do better with its lineup of games to convince them to look past it. Even headliner games like Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered received little fanfare upon release. Sony is already off to a bad start since the Helldivers 2 debacle earlier this year made the company back off momentarily.
If Sony wants to appeal more to PC players, it'll have to do more than just force players to enter the PSN ecosystem. Adding features that actually benefit players and don’t just interfere with launching a game offline would do a lot to seduce PC users into creating a PlayStation account without fuss. What exactly Sony could do isn’t clear, since it has already lost a lot of goodwill, but it can certainly do better than vowing to make players safe in games that they play alone.
Source: PlayStation/YouTube
PlayStation 5
The fifth flagship video game console from Sony Computer Entertainment, the PlayStation 5, is a part of the ninth generation of consoles. The console features full backwards compatibility with PlayStation 4 games and features a digital storefront that gives access to older generations. The console can output images at 4K resolution, with alternative options including 1440p at 120 frames per second for gameplay. This console is also known for implementing 3D audio, which allows headphones to be connected to the console for simulated spatially accurate audio.
Brand Sony
Original Release Date November 19, 2020
Original MSRP (USD) $399.99 (Digital Only), $499.99 (Disc Drive)
Weight Digital Edition now weighs 3.4 kg & base version weighs 3.9 kg
English (US) ·