Helldivers 2 Suffers Steam Review Bomb Over Mandatory PSN Requirement, CEO Reacts

HELLDIVERS 2 has had immense success over the past few months, with millions of players worldwide. However, the positive reception of the game has been somewhat soured by a policy change announced earlier this week. At the game's launch, the requirement to link Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network account was optional due to technical limitations. This temporary change has since been rolled back, drawing the ire of the Internet and causing some pushback.

On May 2nd, Sony Interactive Entertainment published a notice to the HELLDIVERS 2 Steam page which explained the issues with account linking. They noted that “Account linking plays a critical role in protecting our players and upholding the values of safety and security provided on PlayStation and PlayStation Studios games.” Therefore, on May 6th, all new HELLDIVERS 2 players on Steam will be required to connect their Steam account to a PSN account, and existing players will see a mandatory login come May 30th, at which point the requirement will go into effect for them. Of course, setting up a PSN account is not possible in some places around the world, and it is just one more account to add to the mix, which is quite annoying.


As such, many gamers got rather annoyed with the HELLDIVERS team and started to review bomb the game on Steam. Further, influencers like Pirate Software were expressing their disdain on social media, stating “Removing access from Steam players unless they make a PSN account and link it months after release is absurd.” Therefore, they changed their review of the game to negative and have filed for a refund as many others since have.


The CEO of the studio behind HELLDIVERS 2, Johan Pilestedt, took to X to respond to the chaos. In his post, he noted that the uproar was warranted, he apologized for the issues, and hopes to “make it up and regain the trust by providing a continued great game experience.” Beyond this, HELLDIVERS 2 Community Manager Spitz took to Discord to give a little more insight into the change. They noted that internal discussions are ongoing regarding the change and that dev teams have responded in a “pretty universally negative” way.

Some Discord Updates
byu/Navar4477 inHelldivers

With that in mind, the hunt for a better solution is on as Arrowhead Games negotiates with Sony to work this out. After all, Sony was behind the announcement and requirement change and is subsequently to blame for this.