Sony Finally Begins To End The PSN Account Requirement Madness In Cross-Platform Titles

One of the more annoying ways that Sony insists on handing itself losses for no reason whatsoever has been its insistance on requiring a PlayStation Network account for cross-platform titles. The company has done this with a bunch of these titles, perhaps most famously so when it did so with Helldivers 2, an early access success that had the PSN requirement added via a patch long after PC players had been enjoying the game for months and months. Sony eventually backed down after a significant backlash on that particular title, but the requirement for the others remained in place.

Now, finally, it seems that Sony has decided to see the error of its ways and, while still making a PSN account for these titles available with some perks, it has removed the requirement on a bunch of other titles.

A PlayStation account will “become optional” for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, God of War Ragnarok, The Last of Us Part II Remastered, and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. Sony hasn’t lost hope that players will still go ahead and use a PlayStation account, though, as it’s tying several benefits to signing in.

The change is a major about-face for a handful of single-player titles after Sony faced considerable backlash from many angry PC players about the PlayStation account requirement to play the games.

As I said in the Helldivers 2 post, look, on the one hand it’s a good thing that Sony is capable of listening to the feedback it gets from its customers and is willing to pivot based on that feedback. There’s a reason why public pressure and things like review-bombing over corporate decisions like this are complicated enough to not warrant immediate negativity. That stuff clearly works.

But what continues to flummox me is why Sony, and other companies in similar situations, insist on getting punched in the face publicly for so damned long before the pivot. This PSN requirement thing has been almost universally hated for as long as it’s been around. That means Sony spent a long, long time collecting hatred over something it absolutely knew was despised by its own customers. Why?

And especially why when it comes to purely single-player titles?

There are numerous reasonable justifications even for the end user for requiring a Sony account for an online multiplayer game—for example, it would make it easier for Sony to enforce community guidelines and battle reported harassment in lobbies, and it is the only way to achieve some features like cross-progression. The value proposition for players in a single-player game is a lot fuzzier, though; that’s why Sony is adding some candy with these in-game unlockables to try to entice players to create accounts and sign in.

At least this silliness is over. And I’m actually looking forward to firing up my copy of Spider-Man 2 tonight, sans PSN account.