PSN controversy spreads: Ghost of Tsushima banned on Steam in over 170 countries

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The PSN account requirement has now caused sales of the open-world role-playing game to be halted in many regions

The Steam community has just celebrated its triumph over Sony and its planned PSN account ban, and the controversy is already entering its next round: The long-awaited open-world highlight Ghost of Tsushima is finally being released for PC this week, but the situation is escalating even before the release.

Over 170 countries have to do without Ghost of Tsushima

What happened? Recently the sale of Ghost of Tsushima on Steam was stopped in over 170 countries without access to the PlayStation Network (PSN). This affects the same countries as in the case of Helldivers 2.

Purchasers who had purchased the game in the relevant regions before the sales stop were automatically canceled and their money refunded.

This happened shortly after Sucker Punch, the game’s developer, clarified that no PSN account is required for the single-player mode. Only for the co-op multiplayer mode “Legends” and the use of the PlayStation Overlay would the PSN account need to be linked.

At present, it remains unclear whether Sony or Valve is responsible for the removal of the game. In the case of Helldivers 2, however, it has since been confirmed that Sony is responsible for the country lockdown as the publisher while the developer studio itself continues to campaign for the global release.

The only certainty so far is that Sony cannot or will not sell a product that players in the affected regions cannot fully use. It remains to be seen whether the Japanese publisher will intervene here before release and remove the PSN restriction, similar to Helldivers 2.

Whether this will be possible also depends on technical aspects: The multiplayer of Helldivers 2 is hosted on the Microsoft platform Azure PlayFab, so the game does not communicate at all with the Sony servers, which are operated by Amazon’s AWS.

Ghost of Tsushima will allow cross-play between PC and console, so the co-op mode will likely run through Sony’s PSN servers. If this is the case, it seems unlikely that Sony will lift the account requirement in the short term until release on May 16, 2024