The PlayStation Network account has been a big topic of debate in the PC gaming community. It started with Helldivers 2 and now all PlayStation games released on PC are asking for this requirement, and it seems like Sony is fully committed to having players sign up for a PSN account, citing safety reasons.
Talking about the situation during an investor call, Sony president, Hiroki Totoki said the PSN account is required to maintain a safe environment for gamers. As per the translation, Totoki said that the company has learned about the pushback against PSN requirements but for live service games it is required to have an enjoyable and safe experience.
Helldivers 2 was a great example of the PSN backlash as the game launched without its requirement, however, sometime after, Sony added the requirement that removed the game from several countries and forced people to sign up. The pushback, however, made Sony remove the requirement and make it optional.
Sadly, this wasn’t the end, as Ghost of Tsushima and all other games moving forward started releasing with PSN requirements. While signing up for these accounts isn’t that hard or costs anything, having to go an extra step just to play can get annoying, especially for games that are single-player and are already a ‘safe’ environment in themselves as there is no interaction with other players.
Also Read: Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut disappears from Steam in over 150 countries
Learning from mistakes
While Sony may not be coming down from their PSN arc anytime soon, the company did say they learned from the failure of Concord. If people are having a hard time remembering, it is not their fault as Concord was shut down in just 10 days of release, peaking at less than 700 players on Steam.
The launch was so disappointing that Sony shut down the development studio but did say they learned many things from it and will be hosting more play tests for live service games for feedback in order to avoid things like these in the future.
Concord wasn’t necessarily a bad or broken game, it just did something that was done years back. With a $40 price tag and PSN requirement, the game could not survive in a competitive market. Adding salt to its wounds was Valve’s Deadlock which acknowledged its existence on the same day and peaked at over 150k players in beta test.