If you thought the days of Sony controversy with Helldivers 2 were behind us, you would be sorely mistaken. Only a week has passed since the company tried to ban the game in dozens of countries and require a PSN account for those on PC. They would have succeeded too if it wasn’t for many meddling Helldivers, a CM who told everyone to refund and review bomb the game, and a dedicated development company wanting the game to be available worldwide. Unfortunately, while we may have won the battle, Sony is trying to win the war by doubling down on the country bans. This is also without developer knowledge. At least, that is what CEO of Arrowhead Game Studios, Johan Pilestedt, had to say.
Posted earlier today on the Steam database, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia were added to the ban list for Helldivers 2. This is the latest addition to the list after Sony banned over 100 countries during the linking controversy. The company has since not unbanned any countries from the list like many believed they would. Many took to the Helldivers 2 Discord to let the developer know about this action.
The CEO of Arrowhead responded to the posts on Discord by saying, “We have no idea what’s going on. Most devs are on a bank holiday and we just found out through the community. We want the game to be available worldwide.” One user responded to the message by saying, “Yikes. I thought it was Steam that did this for safety till Sony agreed to remove the PSN requirement (which they said they would). Please do keep us posted as much as you can. Good luck with this.”
Pilestedt then responded with, “Yeah… Sorry, I have no more info.” Not only did Sony blindside the community, but the company blindsided the developer as well. Hopefully, we will get more information from Arrowhead involving this matter. Until then, maybe the community should go back to the review bombing and refunding phase of the operation.
