Sony made the PSN account requirement optional with some games, so why are those games still not on sale everywhere?

Somehow, Sony continues to make decisions around the PlayStation Network’s PC presence that no one could explain, and I doubt the publisher could even justify. But here we are, months on from the Helldivers 2 disaster, when Sony executives woke up one day and decided to enforce the PlayStation Network linking requirement in the co-op shooter.

Even then, that could’ve been the end of it. Sure, many would’ve complained, but needing yet another account or launcher to play a game you paid for has become such a norm on PC that most would’ve just bitten the bullet and created a free PSN account; satisfying whatever desire to juice the numbers Sony had.

Except, of course, Sony – seemingly unaware of the limited reach of its own service – realised that most countries in the world aren’t recognised by PSN, which caused it to remove the game from sale in all those countries.

I know everyone and their dog has poked holes into whatever logic got Sony to make the game inaccessible in over 170 countries, but I have no choice but to do it again here to highlight just how asinine that decision was, how clumsy it got carried out, how utterly sloppy Sony’s handling of the entire debacle since has been, and its consequences now in 2025.

From that moment on, every single Sony Interactive Entertainment release on PC has been unavailable in those countries. Most of those games are strictly single-player, so there’s no need for them to hit a server or require any sort of regional support that would necessitate this removal.

In some cases, players who own the original game were unable to buy the sequel and continue the story. In fact, when Sony released a remaster of a game and offered existing owners a discount, the majority couldn’t take advantage of that, as the remaster simply wasn’t on sale where they are. But perhaps the most egregious is that, because of the remaster’s existence, the original game was itself no longer on sale.

If you purchase a Steam key from somewhere, or have one sent to you – say, by a Sony PR person because you work in games media – you cannot redeem that key. There you are, with a key Sony is willingly offering you to play its upcoming PC release, and there’s nothing you can do to get it to work.

But you know what the most frustrating part of all this is? None of it needed to happen!

No, I am not talking about corporate greed or whatever other reason spurred the original decision. I mean the PSN linking requirement could’ve continued to exist, and there would still be no need for the games to be inaccessible to so many.

The PlayStation is the default console in most of the world. It’s been that way since the PS1, and continues to be true today. The majority of the countries that buy PlayStation consoles, accessories – and crucially, games, never had official PSN support. In fact, hardware warranties are often rarely offered in many of them.

In the age of physical games, people simply imported copies from the EU and US. When digital picked up steam and discounts made it possible to secure better deals, everyone moved most of their yearly buys to digital. Everyone I know in Egypt, one such country Sony shunned, had a UK/US/or some Gulf country PSN account. They’d buy PSN cards of various denominations, charge their account balance, and get whatever they wanted off the PlayStation Store. I was happy to do the same, and I even used the same account I created with my PS3 to play Helldivers 2 on PC last year! I guarantee you many of the people playing that game at launch did the same exact thing.

So, imagine my surprise when Sony announced last week that it’s dropping the PSN linking requirement with some games, and instead making it optional. I thought, surely that means this is the company’s way of saving face as it puts those games back on sale in the dozens of countries they were previously unavailable in.

Nope, all those games remain inaccessible to me and millions of other players. I can’t get them on Steam or the Epic Games Store. I can’t even ask Sony for a review key, because as we’ve established, it’s not going to work. I’ve gotten so sick of seeing “This item is currently unavailable in your region” every time I have to view the Steam page of one of Sony’s recent games.

I could go buy those games through the PlayStation Store on PS5 right now and Sony would happily take my money. I would be using the same PSN account with the same very real UK address – the one I’ve been using for over a decade – to do it. Why can’t I do the same on PC? Why is it possible to overlook whatever perceived regulatory hurdles there are and offer the games on the console PlayStation Store, but not on PC?