Sony Repeats The Helldivers 2 Mistake With Marvel Tokon Region Lock

A few years ago Sony published Helldivers 2 on PC, and after people already had a chance to buy and play the game, they decided to shove a stick in their wheels by introducing a PSN requirement.

Secondary account requirements are not rare for video games at this point. Every other live service game wants you to make a separate account, and in some cases opens a whole other store (looking at Ubisoft here), but the difference here is that Sony decided it's not good enough.

After introducing the requirements, they also stopped selling the game in all countries that are not officially supported by PSN. Even though it only affected a fraction of the playerbase, the massive wave of justified negative reviews convinced Sony to revert the requirement.

They even went on to gradually roll it back from some of their other PC releases, with varying degrees of consistency. That said, it seems like they didn't learn their lesson, which is why Marvel Tokon will be unavailable in 132 countries.

Sony is already in a pretty bad spot when it comes to reputation. Raising prices, cancelling their PC ports, and now getting rid of physical media in a way that will have big repercussions for the gaming industry.

That said, which FGC had a massively negative reaction to this, it's hard to say if we'll see the repeat of Helldivers 2. While there aren't as many fighting game players, it means that each negative review is more impactful, so there is still a chance that Sony could be convinced.