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Sony removed Helldivers 2 from sale in countries where PSN is not available. For example whole CIS region.
(programming.dev)
Here are a few discord comments about the situation from a Helldivers 2 dev:
It's insane to me that this is a hill Sony is willing to die on. So much goodwill to throw away just to collect a bit more data on users.
Just remember, if they're willing to enforce this nonsense, you can be sure that there will be more nonsense to come. "Sorry everyone, Sony decided we need lootboxes! But our team is on the side of the players!"
I hate modern AAA games, I'm gonna go try out that new Stardew Valley update.
It's not even much data at all. A game dev friend of mine took a look at what is shared through Steam's own API, and it's just a unique ID basically verifying that the steam account belongs to that steam user. The worst they can do with that is ask if the user already owns this or that game, likely just from the same publisher.
They probably just want the ability to better ban people if they are griefing other players (or make sure people can't cheat their way to more super credits)
The whole thing is such a nothing burger from sony's part, it makes it even more absurd that they're doing this!
I've seen this said a few times. Armed with the steam id already, what does having the PSN account improve on?
If they can get a new steam account, they can get a new anything account.