God of War Ragnarök Got Mixed Reviews Thanks to PSN Requirement

Santa Monica Studio’s 2022 action-adventure game, God of War Ragnarök, was finally released on PC last Thursday. Despite receiving universal acclaim from critics, the PC port of the game received mixed reviews on Steam. The main issue, not surprisingly, was the requirement to link a PSN account.

Four months ago, Sony showed the necessity of a PSN account connection when it announced the PC launch, as shown in the trailer. However, such an early announcement did not successfully persuade players to do it willingly. 

The majority of negative reviews come from players who question the need to link a PlayStation account for a single-player game due to concerns about security issues, such as the potential for personal information, including home addresses, to be leaked. A player named MorbidWill has written down a list of all the occasions when Sony was hacked, covering seven such cases from 2011 until last year. 

Apart from the PSN requirement, some players are experiencing performance issues with the PC port of the game, even with a decent graphics card and RAM. 

God of War Ragnarök is not the first game to receive negative reviews due to mandatory PSN account linkage. This year, Helldivers 2 also faced negative reviews bombing due to the same issue, and in the end, Sony retracted the mandatory PSN linking requirement for Helldivers 2 PC players. These controversies led the developers of Ghost of Tsushima to be extra careful and clarify that players would not need a PSN account to enjoy the game; it would only be required for the online multiplayer mode.