Sony Lifts Region Locks on Its PC Games, Including Helldivers 2, The Last of Us, More

That’s good news for people in those regions! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

99% of Steams spenders probably weren't affected. The markets affected were miniscule

Good news!
Locking out regions, from playing the games, was a stupid decision to begin with.

extremely great news!
Someone remind why isn't PSN in those areas, was it a Sony choice or the countries?

@cainhurst94
Helldivers 2 was removed from sale on Steam, in 177 countries and territories. And Stellar Blade in 130.
That's more than 1%.

So are they bringing PSN to those regions too - especially if PSN is a requirement otherwise those regions can't play. If HD2, GoT and LoU2 require PSN to be playable, then unless PSN is available in those regions, the reason they weren't sold in those regions, is a big issue.

So either they are releasing PSN in those regions or PSN itself must be purely 'optional' at most.

I'll finally be able to play Helldivers 2 with the Pope!

@BAMozzy PSN is not a requirement for any Sony game. Was going to be at one stage but was reverted like a month before it came into effect. There seems to be a lot of confusion around this issue though.

Can anyone explain to me how PSN is not available in “hundreds of locations,” given that there are fewer than 200 countries on earth? Are you counting each town in each affected country? Every uninhabited island?

I’m not bringing this up to defend Sony or distract from the topic at hand, but I can never get an answer to this question.

@KidRisky It’s based on what Steam appears to consider a “territory” so it actually includes any overseas territory, so for example the Isle of Man(+ dozens more you’ll likely have never heard of, some will not have any actual people on them). Also, hilariously, it includes places like Antarctica.

Which is at it always should have been. I'm surprised it took the bean-counters this long to realise the amount of revenue they were losing by trying to do it the way they were. Twas a foolish decision probably built on the desire to make the numbers signed up to Sony to look more impressive than they really were...

@Fiendish-Beaver It was more the fact they couldn't sign up to PSN to being with.

@KidRisky It says countries and territories. There are 195 recognized countries, but there are dependent but separate territories scattered all over which bring the number closer to 250 or maybe even more. Stuff like Faroe Islands, Greenland, Hong Kong etc.

@Pat_trick

@SeaDaVie That helps. I don’t use Steam so I’m not familiar with their systems. I just knew that PSN had to be available in more than 20 countries.

Can a researcher use his or her Steam account from their home country while they’re stationed in Antarctica? If so, is this a problem?

Bit late on the info here!

More access to games = more sales, more fans, more good.

@KidRisky once you own the game you can play it anywhere with your account, the issue might be accessing the store since Steam tracks your IP. The easiest solution for the store is using a VPN.

@__Seraph I don’t see the word “territories” in the article. Has it been edited? It says “hundreds of countries” in the subhead, and “hundreds of locations” in the article. The first is impossible, the second is vague.

It seems like double counting to include a country and each of its territories separately.

Awesome to see good on Sony

@KidRisky Sorry, I pulled 'territories' from a different article on the same news.It's just what Steam considers separate territories, A lot of these places govern themselves, despite not being fully independent, that's probably a big reason why they're separate. Not to mention often being very far away from the country that owns them.

Psn has never been a issue in those countries before pc releases. Why you ask, cause playstation allowed people have psn from other countries and even several psn accounts. They had a faq on their site how people create a psn where psn doesnt exist naturally.
But then pc players started to cry over to need create a psn account where psn exist and then steam locked out all countries that didnt have psn naturally.

How do people that psn doesnt exist naturally played games before, cause it wasnt a issue creating a psn account for a differrent country, nobody cared until pc players cried and created this problem.

^^ The Cat is speaking facts people.

They never should have existed. Sony tends to make ***** decisions until backlash is strong enough that the corpos think it's hurting shareholder profits.

This is why being a brand allegiant drone only serves to worsen your hobby. Criticism is vital.

@Neverwild If it weren’t for PC players, gaming would be in a worse state, imo. at least they, uh, “cry” about important things that changes for the better.

if only console players “cried” enough about $ony and nintendo scamming people to pay again to use their own internet for online features & that’s just 1 example.

Took them long enough. I refused to get any of their pc titles while both restrictions were in place. I'm guessing Stellar Blade's success had something to do with the decision making on this.

There are 195 countries in the world. „Hundreds of countries“ couldn’t have been excluded from PSN.

@Neverwild when you have a playstation, you can just say you're from one of the permitted regions even though you're not. There is no penalty for that, and playstation doesn't bother to verify. Steam, however, recognizes that you're not from that region and locks you out in accordance with the PSN terms of service. Also, having to create a PSN on PC (especially for single player games) is just dumb and unnecessary. We don't have to pay to be online and we sure as hell don't need playstation monitoring our in game activity

A little more transparency from Sony wouldn't hurt. They never gave an explanation why those regions were locked out and we also don't get any sort of official update now, someone had to discover this on Steamdb and make a social media post. We can only guess at Sony's reasoning and that's a little frustrating.

@cainhurst94 So? Sony would be missing out on tens of thousands of dollars in free revenue by preventing players in these regions from buying their games. Even if only 10 people bought their games, that's 10 sales that Sony would miss out on for no good reason.

It's not like Sony has to pay extra to sell their games in all regions around the world.

is there a reason why those regions are locked out?

@SeaDaVie I don't know exactly what the state of PSN is - especially with Legacy titles like the ones mentioned that it was a 'requirement' for. If I were to now buy Helldivers, GoT or LoU2 on PC, would I need PSN? According to the article, these games still require PSN - at least in regions PSN is supported.

Unless PSN is 'optional', then those games shouldn't be 'sold' in regions PSN is NOT available and if its Optional in those regions, it should be optional in ALL regions too.

@BAMozzy PSN is optional for all except the Ghost of Tsushima Multiplayer mode

https://youtu.be/pKxJca7LLNM?si=D_P-zcdzxyT2OON1

@SeaDaVie again that is an 'issue' for those out of Region. If they buy GoT but it requires PSN for Online MP, then they cannot access Online MP. It still costs the same but some content would be 'inaccesible'.

It either should be Optional for ALL so EVERYONE can access ALL the content or NOT sold in those regions because they can't play all.

@BAMozzy Ghost of Tsushima has not been made available everywhere, it's not included in this article.

@SeaDaVie It is mentioned in the article above and to Quote:

"After just over a year, hundreds of countries can now once again purchase Sony's catalogue of Steam games.

While some of Sony's PC games no longer require a PSN account link, there are a few that still do, such as Helldivers 2, Ghost of Tsushima, and Until Dawn.

Still, at least the purchasing restrictions are no longer in place."

This reads like ALL of Sony's games are NOW once again available to buy in those regions. It doesn't say that games like GoT or even 'Until Dawn' will remain unavailable as they 'require' PSN, but like Helldivers 2, TLoU2 and 'others' (as the title of this article states), they are now being Sold in those regions PSN is NOT available.

The way this article reads, it would indicate that ALL of Sony's games are now not region locked, available to buy everywhere Steam exists. Just because Wario's image doesn't mention GoT, the PushSquare article does and makes it seem that EVERY Sony game is now available whether PSN is required or NOT and some games do require it. I wouldn't have mentioned GoT (or Until Dawn) and would have assumed these were the 'others' along with Helldivers and LoU2 that were now no longer region locked.

@BAMozzy that Statement is wrong, Helldivers 2 for instance has never required a PSN account.

The embedded tweet is an accurate list of games that had the regional restrictions removed, and none of those require PSN

@Oram77 logistic costs versus missed business? Probably costs more to set up PSN in Djibouti than what they make from people there

Wonder just how big the potential player base was in..."Unknown country code: AN"? ...Was the corresponding region even aware of where in the world they were?

Bro where is all these extra countries coming from back in 2008 when I was in eight grade we only had like 165 now we're like double that how 🤔

@KundaliniRising333 being a brand allegiant drone has never affected my gaming addiction..err I mean hobby for the worse as I only play games I like and it just so happens all the games I enjoy are on my ps5.