God of War Ragnarok‘s release on PC has been at the center of controversy over the past several days due to its requirement of a PlayStation Network (PSN) account, despite sporting no online features. Almost immediately after release, a mod that bypassed this requirement went up on Nexus Mods, but the creator has pulled it down, citing fears of retaliation from Sony given the mod’s popularity. The mod’s creator has also pulled down the GitHub page for the mod.
“In short: that was my personal decision to remove the mod since it has become way too popular and people started promoting it on Steam forums, as well thus generating tons of attention,” the creator said in a statement to IGN. “I just wanted to avoid the possible threats from the Sony side, even though the code has never touched any of their products in memory. You never know and it’s really a gray area to me.”
Despite being one of the most critically acclaimed games of 2022, God of War Ragnarok currently sits at a Mostly Positive review status on Steam. The vast majority of the 29% of negative reviews cite the requirement of a PSN account as an issue. Sony originally introduced the requirement for a PSN account with its PC-published games in May, including Helldivers 2. The game was review-bombed, forcing Sony to reserve course on the decision.
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More recently, Sony released Ghost of Tsushima on PC, which also requires a PSN account. However, that game has online features through its Legends mode. God of War Ragnarok, on the other hand, doesn’t feature any multiplayer modes or online features. Upcoming releases, such as the remastered version of Until Dawn, will also require a PSN account despite a lack of online features.
Outside of what many see as a useless additional piece of software, the PSN requirements also locks users out of playing Sony-published games. PSN isn’t available is many countries, including most of the continent of Africa. That means some players who were able to buy the original God of War on PC when it released won’t be able to play God of War Ragnarok due to the PSN requirement.
Although it’s tough to find, a version of the NoPSSDK mod is still live on Nexus mods. However, the service warns that, as an archived file, it’s not longer supported on maintained, so use it at your own risk.