Why are people angry about God of War Ragnarok requiring a PSN account on PC?

In case you missed yesterday's PlayStation State of Play, one of the big announcements was God of War Ragnarok's PC port, which is set to arrive on September 19. So, here's a thing people had been anticipating for a while.

It'll come, as these kinds of PC ports often do, with all of the DLC for the game and some extra performance options. Though, it'll require PC players to create a PSN account to pair with their Steam one - and here's why that's annoyed a lot of folks.

First of all, the fact that Ragnarok on PC will require a PlayStation Network account has been confirmed via the blog post about the game's PC announcement, reinforcing what a statement flicked up during the State of Play broadcast itself seemed to suggest. The Steam page for it, meanwhile, features a prominently displayed text box that reads: "PlayStation Network Account required, subject to the PlayStation Terms of Services and User Agreement."

So, why is this a problem? Well, much like with Helldivers 2 - which PlayStation had to walk back its plans to start enforcing account linking for after players made their outrage about it very clear - and the multiplayer elements of Ghost of Tsushima's PC port, a lot of it comes down to PSN not being available everywhere.

Yep, while some of us are lucky enough to live somewhere that means making a PSN account is as simple as going to PlayStation's website and following the steps to set one up, there are 170 countries around the world where PSN simply doesn't operate. So, it looks like not only will folks in those countries not be able to play the game due to an account they can't make, they can't even see the Steam page to buy it from.

While unlike with Helldivers 2 - which nearly saw the requirement come into force several months after its initial release due to technical issues preventing its deployment at launch - people aren't in danger of losing access to a game they've already been playing and progressing in, the fact Ragnarok is entirely single player is proving to be the big sticking point. After all, this has mainly been a thing for PlayStation PC releases with online elements up until now, with it seeming a lot harder for players to justify as something that's in their interest in some way without the kinds of cheating and security concerns which can come with online play.

We'll have to see how this plays out for some, but assuming it was a decision made before the Helldivers walk-back, we might end up seeing something similar to that happen again.