There was understandably much rejoicing in the Helldivers 2 community when Sony backed down on its controversial PlayStation Network account linking requirement, but there's also been a curious snag: the game remains delisted from sale on Steam in a collection of 177 countries and territories that aren't served by PSN.
When asked about this issue on the game's official Discord (spotted by Helldivers Alerts on Twitter), Arrowhead Games CEO Johan Pilestedt revealed that this particular fight is still ongoing. "I'm speaking to our partners at PlayStation and Valve and pushing for it to be undone," Pilestedt wrote. "Getting the account linking took a herculean effort—but I won't rest in my desire to have it available everywhere."
From what Pilestedt said, I'm now curious how much the delisting was a Sony initiative versus a decision by Valve to protect Steam from any liability—during the uproar, Steam had notably begun issuing refunds to players who had far exceeded the platform's usual two-hour refund window. I have reached out to Sony for comment on the matter, and will update this story if I hear back.
While most Helldivers 2 players are not affected by this particular issue and were more opposed to the PSN login requirement for its inconvenience and perception as a bit of a rug pull, Sony's failure to account for Steam and Helldivers 2 being available in more regions than PSN was an embarrassing mistake, a legitimizing force for the game's fan outrage campaign, and remains a huge insult to players in affected regions.
Egypt and The Philippines are particularly large, populous countries that stand out to me from the list, and I can only hope that Sony, Valve, and Arrowhead move quickly to ensure future sales and access to the game in these regions.
As a product of a Catholic upbringing and education, I also can't help but notice that the Holy See, aka Vatican City, the small sovereign government of the Catholic Church within Rome with the Pope as its head of state, also saw the game delisted. All I'm saying is it's a sorry state indeed when you can deny the Bishop of Rome and Vicar of Christ on Earth his Helldivers 2 fix.
