God of War Ragnarok is finally out on Steam, except it has launched to a Mixed rating on Steam, and yes, it is (mostly) because of that PSN requirement.
I think it’s pretty clear by now that plenty of PC players do actually want to play PlayStation games, they just want to do it on PC. In turn, I also think it’s very clear that these same players don’t want to have to jump through any hoops just to play those games, other than the usual, still annoying ones, like paying for said video games. And yet here we are again, with PlayStation releasing another of its first-party titles on Steam, with players immediately being met with the fact they need to connect to a PSN account to play it at all. Infamously, earlier this year, Helldivers 2 was subjected to heavy review bombing following the decision to require players to have their PSN accounts linked to the game, though this was later rolled back.
The PSN account argument is possibly somewhat understandable when it comes to online games, when things like cross-saves are taken into consideration, but with single-player games it’s a bit like being a door-to-door salesman trying to flog a horse to a butcher – not an impossibility, you just probably don’t want to be the only butcher selling horse meat in town. And even still, on Friday God of War Ragnarok finally arrived on PC, and yep, connecting your PSN account is a requirement, so players have done what they always seem to do these days, which is review bomb the game.
It’s worth noting that these aren’t actually all of what the negative reviews are about, as there are a number of them that note the game is suffering from a number of issues like crashes, visual glitches, stuttering. PlayStation has a bit of a history of releasing struggling PC ports, so it isn’t that surprising really.
Whether Sony will change its mind on the PSN requirement is unclear, as it hasn’t changed course on its strategy with all of its PC games. But hey, it’s Steam Deck verified, so at least you can hear Kratos saying “boy” on the go? I guess?