What seemed to be good news, is now bad news. PlayStation’s efforts to expand on PC continues to cause issues as Ghost Of Tsushima Director’s Cut on Steam is now delisted in 177 countries. Pre-orders of the game in countries and territories have been refunded. The game is set to release this week.
Pre-orders for Ghost Of Tsushima in countries with no PlayStation Network (PSN) support has been refunded. The first instance of this was spotted was a pre-order from key reseller site Green Man Gaming,
SteamDB reported that they spotted Steam has started to refund pre-orders of the game in affected regions directly as well.
Previously, developer Sucker Punch reassured that players would only require a PSN account to use the upcoming new PlayStation overlay and to play the Legends online multiplayer mode.
However, nobody expected that PlayStation, after receiving backlash with Helldivers 2 suddenly enforcing a PSN account link and stopping game sales in countries and territories which does not have PSN support, to be applied to Ghost Of Tsushima. And this is done only a week before release.
PC players in countries where they are not officially able to acquire a PlayStation console and setup a PSN account (unless they jump through some hoops like purchasing an imported console) cannot play Ghost Of Tsushima, previously a PlayStation console exclusive title. At all. Not even the single player mode.
The backlash from Helldivers 2 has caused PlayStation to reconsider making PSN account linking mandatory. But it has yet to lift the sales restrictions from the 177 countries. Rather, PlayStation just added more with more countries in the Baltics unable to purchase the popular multiplayer co-op shooter.
The main crux of the controversy wasn’t PC players not wanting to link their Steam account to another publisher-specific account. Other publishers have done this prior. Rather, it’s that the account linking would render players in countries outside of PSN coverage unable to play the game anymore.
PlayStation had no problems with selling its PC ports previously. But the efforts on putting a PlayStation overlay- and in turn establishing a PSN ecosystem on PC- has meant its pushing away new customers that have never gotten the chance to play these games before. Which should’ve been the main target audience for these PC releases.
Horizon Forbidden West, the most recent PC release right now, isn’t affected by any of this. It seems PlayStation only wants to enforce these restrictions with titles that have multiplayer which thankfully, isn’t that many.
Though that may mean the arrival of a PC port of Bloodborne, arguably the most-request game in PlayStation’s current library where fans demand a PC port, is going to be involved in a situation like this.