Democracy Prevails — Community Wins HELLDIVERS 2 Dispute Against Sony

Just last week, Sony released a statement that the HELLDIVERS 2 PlayStation Network requirements would become available for all new accounts and old ones, and it brought up a massive controversy. There were many problems with this — many countries can't sign up to PlayStation Network, it has had several data braches, and it wasn't very clear that this was going to be a mandatory thing for many.

The massive outrage turned HELLDIVERS 2 from one of the most successful releases of 2024 thus far into a controversial topic; the Steam reviews fell from Very Positive to just at the cusp of Mostly Negative. In just a few days, hundreds of thousands of gamers united to fight against Sony's decisions, and reviews hit rock bottom.

Thankfully, due to the efforts of the community, Sony has taken back the decision for now. Whether it'll be a permanent choice or not is yet to be seen, as this change was made over a post on X on the 5th of May 2024.

Helldivers fans -- we’ve heard your feedback on the Helldivers 2 account linking update. The May 6 update, which would have required Steam and PlayStation Network account linking for new players and for current players beginning May 30, will not be moving forward.

We’re still…

— PlayStation (@PlayStation) May 6, 2024

Since then, the HELLDIVERS community has assembled to — once again — return the score to what it used to be. Over on the r/HELLDIVERS subreddit, a new "Major Order" dropped, where the team was asking everyone to please change their negative reviews. The so-called "Operation Clean Up '24 Hour Update'" is a fun little graphic made by the team to see the reversed reviews back to positive, which is looking very favourable for the team: at the time of writing, HELLDIVERS 2 has successfully returned to Mostly Positive with 73% positive reviews (recent reviews are still Mixed, but it's slowly climbing).

This has been a massive win for gamers and PC gamers overall, and we're hopeful to see how the future looks for Sony and Steam's collaborations to bring console-exclusive titles to computer once and for all.