A Recap Of Helldivers II’s Hellish Weekend

Greetings! It’s Monday, a new weekday. While we were gone, one of the most popular video games of 2024 essentially imploded on itself. Let’s recap the events…

Sony is just beginning to dabble in releasing their games beyond the Playstation. Helldivers II, the new co-op shooter from developer Arrowhead, was one of the titles they allowed on PC — and it paid off beyond their wildest expectations! After its February 8 release, the game gained millions of users on PC and turned into THE title of early 2024…until last Friday.

That was when Sony made the announcement that, pending the next update, all users of the PC version of Helldivers II would need a Playstation Network account to continue using the game. The update, which was supposed to be applied today, would have set a May 30 deadline for all players to get PSN or else they would lose access to Helldivers II altogether. Those who made accounts after May 6 would need PSN from the start.

This alone would tend to make folks mad, but then there’s the fact that the Playstation Network is not set up in most countries right now. The move essentially shut out a large portion of Helldivers II fans from around the world, and to make things wilder, this resulted in the game being delisted from Steam in 177 countries! Those who paid for it were issued refunds.

The thing about Sony is, they usually don’t budge on their decisions, even when the results blow up in their faces. So it was a genuine surprise when, late Thursday night, an official message was posted from the company stating the update to force PSN on Helldivers II would no longer take place.

Helldivers fans — we’ve heard your feedback on the Helldivers 2 account linking update. The May 6 update, which would have required Steam and PlayStation Network account linking for new players and for current players beginning May 30, will not be moving forward.

We’re still…

— PlayStation (@PlayStation) May 6, 2024

As it stands, Helldivers II has gone from one of the best-reviewed games on Steam to one of the worst — over 200,000 negative reviews flooded its homepage during the PSN debacle. It would seem the whole mess has been resolved now, but…we’ll see how long it takes for people to forget (or for Sony to forget).