The Daily Populous Monday May 6th, 2024 morning edition
Authored by raiderking.com and submitted by opreaadriann

The chaotic situation at Helldivers 2 has gone from bad to worse. As of the moment of writing, Helldivers 2 is no longer available for sale on Steam in countries without access to PSN. This means those who are interested in signing up to become defenders of the Super Earth Federation from over 150 countries can no longer buy copies of the popular third-person co-op shooter.

The change, as noted by SteamDB, occurred on May 4. This comes days after Sony made linking to a PSN account a requirement for Helldivers 2 players on Steam.

Sony’s decision has resulted in nearly 200,000 negative reviews flooding Helldivers 2’s Steam page.

There still exists a possible workaround. Interested players can still use a VPN to change their Steam store region. But, this involves having a billing address from that said region. It’s a similar process for registering a PlayStation Network account if you live in a region without access to it.

With that said, it’s a lot of hoops to jump through for players in affected regions to play Helldivers 2.

Perhaps in response to the backlash, Steam has started issuing refunds, regardless of playtime.

u/Konsaki explained the process of how they got a refund for their Helldivers 2 purchase on Steam. Others have since shared their success with a similar approach.

Given that u/Konsaki had more than 225 hours of playtime of Helldivers 2 on Steam, a player who doesn’t agree with the sudden implementation of the game’s latest “Major Order” should get refunded.

It remains to be seen if Steam will use a blanket refund policy as it did with The Day Before in December 2023 or, more famously, with Cyberpunk 2077, when it originally launched in December 2020.

What’s Next for Arrowhead Game Studios and Helldivers 2?

After consistently topping the Steam charts following its launch on PlayStation 5 and PC in February, Helldivers 2 is no longer one of the ten most-played games on the platform, as per SteamDB.

The slide will likely continue before it settles down. Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt can do nothing but apologize for not being able to do anything about the backlash.

Helldivers 2 players on PC have until June 4 to link their Steam and PSN accounts.

Keep a close eye on what Steam does to appease disgruntled Helldivers 2 PC players by then.

Nyarlathotep-chan on May 5th, 2024 at 11:48 UTC »

How does Sony benefit from this at all? All they did was lose hundreds of thousands of potential players for one of their biggest games.

KABlank on May 5th, 2024 at 11:33 UTC »

Damn, i still trying to get refund, deny 2 time because it past 2 week despite living in Vietnam

holysideburns on May 5th, 2024 at 09:26 UTC »

What a shitshow.