Helldivers 2 PC players will have to link their Steam accounts to PSN just to play soon, and it's, er, not going down too well

Sony itself has just made a big announcement about Helldivers 2, and it's not going down too well. Basically, the "grace period" for PC players not having to link their Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network one in order to play is coming to an end soon - with security being cited as the reason why this is set to become mandatory.

This news came via an update on the game's Steam page, attributed to Sony Interactive Entertainment itself, rather than Helldivers developer Arrowhead. "Due to technical issues at the launch of Helldivers 2, we allowed the linking requirements for Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network account to be temporarily optional," it reads, "That grace period will now expire."

"Account linking plays a critical role in protecting our players and upholding the values of safety and security provided on PlayStation and PlayStation Studios games," Sony continues, "This is our main way to protect players from griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of players that engage in that type of behaviour. It also allows those players that have been banned the right to appeal."

"As such, as of May 6, all new Helldivers 2 players on Steam will be required to connect their Steam account to a PlayStation Network account. Current players on Steam will start to see the mandatory login from May 30 and will be required to have linked a Steam and PlayStation Network account by June 4."

Providing a link to guidance on how to set up a free PSN account, Sony adds: "We understand that while this may be an inconvenience to some of you, this step will help us to continue to build a community that you are all proud to be a part of."

Some players have pointed out that having a PSN account has been listed as requirement for the game on Steam since it came out, and that they don't view it as being that big a deal. Though, a lot of their peers have been left pretty disgruntled, mostly due to the fact it'll require them to add yet another account to the ever-growing list of ones they already have and could cause issues for folks living in regions where setting up a PSN account isn't possible or an easy proposition.

"It's a publisher decision," Arrowhead community manager Twinbeard has written in response to criticism of the move from players on the game's official Discord server, "The account linking has been on the store page since launch, though. STILL/BUT, I think this could been handled better."

With regards to the issues it could cause for folks in places where PSN isn't available, they added: "We're hunting our Sony reps to get more info on the region stuff. That info should obviously had been in the message regardless of if the reply will be that you can link or not outside PSN territories, but wasn't. We'll get back on that as soon as we know more!"

While this news is obviously dominating the Helldivers news cycle now, in case you missed it, a fresh Warbond for the game - Polar Patriots - was announced yesterday.