Earlier this week, God of War Ragnarok made its way to Steam a year and ten months after its initial PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 console releases. Unfortunately for many users, it has launched with a PlayStation Network account requirement despite being a single-player game.
Mandatory check-in also means users can't launch the game while offline. It's a little surprising that the game is seeing a high concentration of negative reviews on its Steam page— particularly in the aftermath of the Helldivers 2 incident, where Sony actually reversed course.
Granted, Helldivers 2 is a different case for two reasons. The primary reason is that Helldivers 2 launched without PSN linking requirements, so adding it after the fact would ruin the game for many legitimate customers, including those in areas where PSN is unavailable. The second reason is that Helldivers 2 is, of course, a multiplayer game, so some sort of online requirement did make a kind of sense...but Ragnarok has no such online multiplayer functionality, which makes its inability to launch into the full game offline extra frustrating, especially for Steam Deck and other PC handheld users.
In a way, this review bombing for God of War Ragnarok is a shame— because, by most accounts, the actual game is quite good. Additionally, the PC port seems to be quite well-optimized and feature-complete, which we've come to expect from these PlayStation PC ports, but it is always lovely to see from a game developed for the console first. However, the shame here isn't on those reviewers— it's on Sony for forcing a completely unnecessary, arbitrary PSN requirement on a single-player game that doesn't need it. As always, measures like this (likely for DRM's sake since there is almost no other conceivable reason for this requirement) only penalize customers for purchasing games.
With any luck for these gamers, Sony will reverse course as it did with Helldivers 2. If Sony really is "still learning what is best for PC players," as it claimed back then, it should start paying closer attention and not force PlayStation Network logins into games where there is no reason for it to be needed.
