Helldivers 2 PC players will soon need to link their Steam accounts to PlayStation Network

If there’s one thing that’ll rile people up more than a robot blasting them with a laser cannon, it’s having to create a new account. That’s something Helldivers 2 players will have to do pretty sharpish, as Arrowhead announce mandatory account linking between Steam and Playstation Network. Why? Safety and security apparently.

In Arrowhead’s announcement post, they say that account linking wasn’t mandatory when Helldivers 2 launched because of the technical issues the game faced at the time. Now that the game’s been heavily patched up since launch, the “grace period will now expire”.

Existing PC players will start to see mandatory Playstation Network logins fromMay 30th – you’ll need to create a PSN account if you haven’t already by June 4th. New players will need a PSN account as of May 6th.

“Account linking plays a critical role in protecting our players and upholding the values of safety and security provided on PlayStation and PlayStation Studios games,” Sony comment in the Steam post. “This is our main way to protect players from griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of players that engage in that type of behaviour. It also allows those players that have been banned the right to appeal.”

There’s been a fair amount of backlash over on Reddit, with some players tired of having to make secondary accounts to play things. Others rue the possibility of Sony harvesting their data, while others live in countries where PSN is banned and, rightfully so, aren’t best pleased with the linking requirement. There’s also some annoyance at the aforementioned “grace period”, which I can get on board with. I had no idea there was a grace period!

Anyway, I’m lucky enough that I’ve already created a PSN account and linked the two. I should get back to earning super credits for this new wintery warbond that came out. Looks like it has some anti-robot measures in there.