A recent report by Dealabs confirms after an extensive investigation that the upcoming 5v5 multiplayer shooter Concord, which is suspiciously similar to Guardians of the Galaxy from Eidos Montreal, will mandate a PSN account to play even if you are on PC. This means that regardless of your launcher of choice, both Steam and Epic Games users will have to make a PSN account if they don’t already have one and want to play Concord.
This comes weeks after the bilious backlash from Sony fans when Helldivers 2 made a PSN account necessary on Steam if you want to take the game online. This resulted in vocal disappointment from PC players all over the world demanding that this decision be reverted. Helldivers 2 got hundreds of thousands of negative reviews on Steam only hours after the official announcement.
In a shocking turn of events, however, this was one of the rare events when a giant publisher actually listened, but evidently, that was limited to Helldivers 2. It seems that moving forward, all PlayStation-published games on PC will require a PSN account to play, regardless of community backlash. At best, Sony won’t be taking a retroactive approach.
Why Is the Concord PSN Requirement on PC a Big Deal Though?
It may not seem like a major problem at first, but when you realize that the PSN store isn’t even available in an unbelievable 178 countries, it starts to make sense. All fans who have bought games will not be able to play them because Sony isn’t able to add countries to its official list regardless of the market size and capitalization. And since Concord will require a PSN account for both Steam and Epic Games, there is no way around it if you are on PC.
This is a surefire way of stunting the release of Concord, not to mention the lukewarm reception in the first place. For anyone who was watching the reveal live, it was easy to see how disappointed most fans were at the generic Overwatch clone approach that Concord opted for, and this PSN requirement could be another nail in the coffin.
