God of War Ragnarök on PC requires a PSN account

A PlayStation Network (PSN) account will be required to play the newly-announced PC version of God of War Ragnarök.

Sony revealed during its State of Play presentation that the game would be coming to PC on September 19.

However, a blog post about the game notes: “Account for PlayStation Network is required.”

The game’s Steam page also confirms this, saying: “PlayStation Network Account required, subject to the PlayStation Terms of Services and User Agreement.”

This was further confirmed at the start of the State of Play presentation, with a statement reading: “Sony Inveractive Entertainment games for PC require an account for PlayStation Network.”

While this is sometimes the case for PlayStation PC ports which have online multiplayer modes, God of War Ragnarök is a single-player game only.

The restriction theoretically means the game will not be available to buy in any of the more than 170 countries where Steam is available but the PlayStation Network isn’t.

The news will prove controversial following an attempt to implement a similar requirement in Helldivers 2.

The requirement was present when the game originally launched, but after its unexpected early success led to severe technical issues, it was temporarily removed.

Earlier this month Sony stated that the requirement would be returning on May 30, and that all players would need to have linked their Steam and PSN accounts by June 4.

This led to the game being delisted in 177 countries, because the PlayStation Network wasn’t available there.

The news was met with huge backlash from players, and the game was hit with over 100,000 negative reviews on Steam in less than 48 hours.

Due to the reception, PlayStation delivered a U-turn and scrapped the requirement, saying it was “still learning what is best for PC players”.

This was promptly followed by a confirmation by Ghost of Tsushima studio Sucker Punch that the Steam version of Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut didn’t need a PSN account for the single-player mode.

While players can use it for the game’s Legends online multiplayer mode, or to bring up a PlayStation overlay in-game, they can choose not to sign into a PSN account if they don’t want either of those.