Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut disappears from Steam in over 150 countries

Thousands of gamers recently woke up to find Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut set to release on May 16 gone from Steam and their game library. The game is a much-awaited PC port of a PlayStation exclusive and is one of the most anticipated releases in May.

The main attraction for the game is its single-player story mode which does not require PSN login to play as revealed by the developers. As for the reasoning behind the refunds, the game uses PlayStation Network (PSN) for the overlay and online aspects.

Due to this, over 150 countries have had the game delisted as the PSN service is not available in that region. Few reports suggest that the number of countries may be near 200.

Source - SteamDB

Players who have already purchased the game are now receiving refunds on Steam with a note saying, “You are receiving a refund for a game you pre-purchased — Ghost of Tsushima. The publisher is now requiring a secondary account to play portions of this game — and this account cannot be created from your country.”

Ghost of Tsushima in Helldivers 2 situation

A similar thing happened with Helldivers 2 which made linking a PSN account mandatory to play the game, leading to a huge backlash to Sony from the community. The game was review-bombed to bring the rating from very positive to overwhelmingly negative.

As a result, Sony backtracked on their decision and made the PSN account linking optional. However, this wasn’t the case for Ghost of Tsushima, it looks like. Sony has decided to stop the sales altogether in counties with no PSN access, similar to Helldivers 2

Many see it as Sony’s attempt to prevent another community outcry, as the game will not be available to them from the beginning. On the other hand, Sony claims that the account is required for security purposes. The game is just a few days away from release and the situation will likely be a hot topic.