Well, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is now only barred from purchase in 117 countries according to Steam’s backend, which is a start

Good news! Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls’ Steam backend no longer lists it as not being available for purchase in 132 countries. It’s now only listed it as not being available for purchase in 117 countries. That’s 15 whole countries removed from the list of excluded nations, which looks like it could be linked in some way to the need to have PSN account to access certain bits of the game.

As spotted by Automaton, only 117 countries are now on the previously 132-long “this package can NOT be activated or purchased” here list outlined by Fighting Souls’ SteamDB listing.

Cross-referencing the updated list below with the one I screenshotted the other week, the countries no longer barred are: Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Pakistan, the Philippines, Serbia, and Uzbekistan. So, a number of countries clustered around Eastern Europe and Western Asia, plus some outliers.

The Vatican City State, tragically, is still barred. So, change on the lack of Captain America vs Spiderman brawls in The Pope’s future. Poor guy.

Whether this is the start of a gradual rollback on the region banning, which many had assumed to be related to PlayStation Network account requirements, is anyone’s guess right now. Marvel Tokon’s looked to be weird case compared to the likes of Helldivers 2 in the past, with its Steam page only mentioning a PSN account being required in relation to playing online and accessing pre-order bonus items. Folks in countries which PSN isn’t supported in have also reported being able to see Tokon’s Steam page even if they can’t buy the game.

Hopefully more countries slide off the banned list as release on August 6th nears, especially since Tokon’s single-player story mode has been penned by someone no RPS reader will ever have heard of.