Breakdown
- Helldivers 2 has devastated sales records with 12 million units sold
- At the same time, Sony has severely limited access to their PC games via forced PSN integration
- Upcoming PlayStation PC ports, such as Ghost of Tsushima, suffer from the same restrictions
Sony’s Helldivers 2 is this year’s biggest surprise, reaching another major milestone for PlayStation and shattering existing records. Unfortunately, Sony has cut off access to their games for hundreds of countries on PC for the foreseeable future.
During Sony’s earnings call, the company announced that this shooter sold 12 million copies in 12 weeks, which is an astonishing accomplishment. Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt thanked fans on Twitter for their support, even joking that there are more Helldivers than people in Sweden.
The sales impact of numerous refunds for Helldivers 2 remains unclear. While Sony walked back on forcing PSN integration, the shooter remains unavailable in over 100 countries, despite Arrowhead's efforts to make it accessible.
Even more worrying is that upcoming PlayStation games on PC have already faced effects from Sony’s baffling decisions. Ghost of Tsushima only needs PSN integration for multiplayer, but the game was still pulled from hundreds of countries days before its release. This is a baffling move since the game’s single-player is the biggest selling point, and taking that away from thousands of PC players is insulting.
PC players will need a PSN account to use Sony’s touted PlayStation overlay on PC, which means future titles might be unavailable in these countries. Helldivers 2 and Ghost of Tsushima might be the beginning of this mass exodus from other countries, as other games might force this overlay on players as well.
Fans looked forward to the rumored God of War Ragnarok and the eventual PC port of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, so forcing this overlay will continue this trend. This is a real shame since the sales of Helldivers 2 proved how important same-day releases are for these games. We hope Sony changes their minds, but that doesn’t seem likely.
Helldivers 2 is readily available on PS5 and PC, but those 170 countries will only be able to play it on PS5.