Sony has thrown a curveball at PC players by quietly adding a region lock to a port of a three-year-old PS4 game. As revealed by SteamDB, Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition was patched with the ‘PurchaseRestrictedCountries’ tag for 130 regions, including Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Vatican City. As expected, the PC version of Horizon Forbidden West ended up getting region lock for those countries. This marks another head-scratching move, considering the game doesn’t even require a PlayStation Network account sync to run.
Previously, another PlayStation-published game Helldivers 2 was in hot water when the PC version suddenly required its player to log in with a PSN account. As PlayStation was not officially established in many regions yet, it ended up being unavailable in 177 countries. Even when the players have already bought and played the game before the update.
While a PSN account linking is still not mandatory for Forbidden West, the game does offer a small incentive for those who do. You can claim an exclusive Zero Dawn-styled Legacy outfit and weapon if you link your Steam account to PSN. As written on the official PlayStation site:
Do I need a PSN account to play PlayStation games on PC?
No, you currently do not need a PSN account to enjoy PlayStation Studios games on PC, but you will need a Steam account to redeem your voucher code. Some of our PlayStation Studios titles also offer incentives for linking your Steam and PSN accounts.
Still, this sudden region lock for Horizon Forbidden West has PC owners debating Sony’s motives. Is this another ‘strategic’ decision to streamline its future live service products and services across platforms? “Now, sailing the high seas is my only choice,” wrote eltorr007 on Reddit, implying he’d rather pirate than buy new PlayStation games on PC.
Adding fuel to the fire, in 2023, Sony promised to release more PC ports for its first-party games. For many, this latest move feels like a betrayal of that commitment as it makes the product unavailable for select regions anyway.
Releasing Horizon Forbidden West on PC with mandatory PSN account linking in the first place would have made more sense. But it didn’t. Considering the game has already been out for 10 months at this point, this seems like a good way to burn bridges. Who knows what other arbitrary rules the company will enact in the future.
