Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut Steam pre-orders are being cancelled in countries where PSN isn’t available. It’s a move that would seem to confirm the lessons of last week’s Helldivers 2 drama didn’t stick.
While Helldivers 2 players in 177 countries and territories remain unable to purchase the game, despite Sony rolling back the PSN account linking requirement, Ghost of Tsushima has entered the fray as the next title to cop similar mandatory requirements. Steam has gone as far as to begin refunding the game in regions where PSN isn’t available. According to SteamDB’s update history, it was also removed from sale in a number of countries that line up with this too.
Fans who were automatically refunded by Steam for Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut received the following message: “You are receiving a refund for a game you pre-purchased – Ghost of Tsushima. The publisher of this game is now requiring a secondary account to play portions of this game – and this account cannot be created from your country.” Many players have reported that they’ve been auto-refunded for purchases of the title made across not just Steam, but Epic Games Store and Green Man Gaming, too.
This move comes after Ghost of Tsushima developer Sucker Punch confirmed last week amidst Helldivers 2 backlash that Steam players would not need to sign up to PSN to play the single-player mode of the Director’s Cut. In the reply to a user on X (formerly Twitter), Sucker Punch advised that a PSN account would be required for the Legends online multiplayer mode and to use the PlayStation overlay. “It is not required to play the singleplayer game,” the post ends.
Sony has yet to comment on this, but given the changes to accessing Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut on PC come only a week after similar restrictions were temporarily placed on Helldivers 2, it does seem like this is an intentional change. It seems like going forward PSN account linking for PC players is going to become more commonplace for Sony titles, which doesn’t bode well for the massive amounts of players that will be locked out from a pretty large chunk of games as a result.
We’ll likely hear more from Sony or Sucker Punch soon regarding the situation – if the efforts of Helldivers 2 players are anything to go by, players aren’t big fans of this kind of requirement, even if they can make an account in their own country.
Image: Sucker Punch, PlayStation, Kotaku Australia
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