Sony have announced that their PC game releases will no longer force a PlayStation Network Account requirement. Instead it will be optional and give you certain in-game rewards.
As announced in a blog post they said:
Starting with tomorrow’s release of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 for PC, we’re working to add more benefits to playing with an account for PlayStation Network. The Last of Us Part II Remastered (coming April 3, 2025), in addition to God of War Ragnarök and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, will all soon be adding in-game content unlocks for PlayStation Network account users.
An account for PlayStation Network will become optional for these titles on PC. Players who still opt to sign into a PlayStation Network account will also enjoy added benefits like trophies and friend management.
Emphasis ours.
Pictured - Marvel's Spider-Man 2
They've also revealed the first few benefits for signing in:
| Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 | Early unlock suits: the Spider-Man 2099 Black Suit and the Miles Morales 2099 Suit |
| God of War Ragnarok | Gain access to the Armor of the Black Bear set for Kratos at the first Lost Items chest in the Realm Between Realms (previously only accessible in a New Game+ run) and a resource bundle (500 Hacksilver and 250 XP) |
| The Last of Us Part II Remastered | +50 points to activate bonus features and unlock extras Jordan’s Jacket from Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet as a skin for Ellie |
| Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered | Gain access to Nora Valiant outfit |
This is a most unexpected move but an incredibly welcome one. It caused various regions to be unable to even buy some of their PC releases but even worse, requiring an online account for single-player games should never be a thing. Nice to see some sense come back to Sony. Hopefully this will mean the region restrictions on purchases can also be lifted.
Sony have clearly learned some lessons, likely a fair bit from the backlash they had with Helldivers 2 that eventually forced them to drop the requirement.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Eduardo Medina a day ago
I switched from Steam to GOG through Heroic Games Launcher because Steam is undergoing an enshittification process for two years now.
The Steam client for Linux is giving many problems to many users, mainly to those who use Big Picture and especially through the Flatpak package. By other hand, the problem with intermediate launchers has worsened, with publishers that don't allow to install a game after several times or directly don't allow you to install the game after buying it through Steam (Dead Space 2 and Civilizations III are two cases of that). Valve is doing nothing to fix the situation.
I'm very grateful to Valve because the Linux Gaming would not exist without its contribution, but its greatest contributions were made seven years ago and the circumstances have changed. Today Steam is not that platform that puts the user in the first place and I see that GOG looks more like the Steam from ten years ago than Steam itself currently.
The Steam client for Linux is giving many problems to many users, mainly to those who use Big Picture and especially through the Flatpak package. By other hand, the problem with intermediate launchers has worsened, with publishers that don't allow to install a game after several times or directly don't allow you to install the game after buying it through Steam (Dead Space 2 and Civilizations III are two cases of that). Valve is doing nothing to fix the situation.
I'm very grateful to Valve because the Linux Gaming would not exist without its contribution, but its greatest contributions were made seven years ago and the circumstances have changed. Today Steam is not that platform that puts the user in the first place and I see that GOG looks more like the Steam from ten years ago than Steam itself currently.
0 Likes
@Eduardo Medina:
The greatest contribution is continued support. If there were any signs of Valve loosing interest, we'd start gradually loosing out on new releases and hardware vendor support.
Pretty much all the strings lead to Valve and they still invest in fixing up edge cases all the time, like finally upstreaming a proper multisync implementation in the kernel and regular proton bugfixes for new titles. We have come far, but we still have not met the threshold to be self sufficient.
I'm pretty confident there are still things happening behind the curtain for Deckard, which is damn important with Meta seeking more and more control of the entire market.
GOG never cared, never will, still it's great we have multiplatform launchers that work in all directions.
The greatest contribution is continued support. If there were any signs of Valve loosing interest, we'd start gradually loosing out on new releases and hardware vendor support.
Pretty much all the strings lead to Valve and they still invest in fixing up edge cases all the time, like finally upstreaming a proper multisync implementation in the kernel and regular proton bugfixes for new titles. We have come far, but we still have not met the threshold to be self sufficient.
I'm pretty confident there are still things happening behind the curtain for Deckard, which is damn important with Meta seeking more and more control of the entire market.
GOG never cared, never will, still it's great we have multiplatform launchers that work in all directions.
1 Likes, Who?
Eduardo Medina 12 hours ago
@const
I'm not a Valve employee or someone sponsored by Steam, I'm just a customer, and as customer, I PAY to have a good app and a good service. Valve is giving me a bad app and a service that is rotting, so today I don't have reasons to have Steam as my main platform. By other hand, I reported some of the bugs that affect the Flatpak version, but after months or even years, the problems are still there. I know that the Flatpak version is not official, but some problems with the Big Picture interface and others that I will mention later also affect the official Deb package provided by Valve.
Steam was the best way to play from Linux two years ago, but today GOG gives me a better experience through Heroic Games Launcher and RetroArch is a much better app than Steam. Besides the bugs, Steam has a terrible performance because it's a 32-bit app and it's compatibility with XWayland is terrible, while RetroArch runs natively on Wayland and Heroic Games Launcher has a good performance through XWayland. RetroArch and Heroic Games Launcher are 64-bit apps.
If Valve wants to retain me as customer, it has to do the things better. Today we have alternatives with Heroic Games Launcher and Wine-GE, and if the Heroic Games Launcher community and Glorious Eggroll do the things better, I will support them instead of Valve.
If we want to have a good support for Linux Gaming, the submission to a monopolistic corporation like Valve is not the way. Today Valve doesn't care about Linux desktop, it only cares about SteamOS. Yes, I'm accusing Valve of trying to split Linux Gaming in two parts, one of them composed with first class citizens (SteamOS users) and the other composed by second class citizen (the rest of Linux distributions).
I'm not a Valve employee or someone sponsored by Steam, I'm just a customer, and as customer, I PAY to have a good app and a good service. Valve is giving me a bad app and a service that is rotting, so today I don't have reasons to have Steam as my main platform. By other hand, I reported some of the bugs that affect the Flatpak version, but after months or even years, the problems are still there. I know that the Flatpak version is not official, but some problems with the Big Picture interface and others that I will mention later also affect the official Deb package provided by Valve.
Steam was the best way to play from Linux two years ago, but today GOG gives me a better experience through Heroic Games Launcher and RetroArch is a much better app than Steam. Besides the bugs, Steam has a terrible performance because it's a 32-bit app and it's compatibility with XWayland is terrible, while RetroArch runs natively on Wayland and Heroic Games Launcher has a good performance through XWayland. RetroArch and Heroic Games Launcher are 64-bit apps.
If Valve wants to retain me as customer, it has to do the things better. Today we have alternatives with Heroic Games Launcher and Wine-GE, and if the Heroic Games Launcher community and Glorious Eggroll do the things better, I will support them instead of Valve.
If we want to have a good support for Linux Gaming, the submission to a monopolistic corporation like Valve is not the way. Today Valve doesn't care about Linux desktop, it only cares about SteamOS. Yes, I'm accusing Valve of trying to split Linux Gaming in two parts, one of them composed with first class citizens (SteamOS users) and the other composed by second class citizen (the rest of Linux distributions).
0 Likes
Kuduzkehpan 3 hours ago
welldone sony kneel to the Mighty Playerbase. Obey the players. not your nonsense "bullshidz"..
i hope they remove psn complately cuz this decision reminds me how psn rendered useless.
Also i have to state that;
@Eduardo Medina
Steam is very good app that enables us to play windows games on linux with a few clicks.
yet you shouldnt expect top tier service with "unofficial steam installs"
also i had almost zero issues on steam with native runtimes but sometimes gui bugs happens which i cant blame steam it maybe cause of KDE beta etc. but yet it doesnt keep me from using steam and play my fav games. Yet still Steam+Lutris are a go to app for me. with lutris you can use ubisoft ea gog libraries too.
Last edited by Kuduzkehpan on 31 Jan 2025 at 8:31 am UTC
i hope they remove psn complately cuz this decision reminds me how psn rendered useless.
Also i have to state that;
@Eduardo Medina
Steam is very good app that enables us to play windows games on linux with a few clicks.
yet you shouldnt expect top tier service with "unofficial steam installs"
also i had almost zero issues on steam with native runtimes but sometimes gui bugs happens which i cant blame steam it maybe cause of KDE beta etc. but yet it doesnt keep me from using steam and play my fav games. Yet still Steam+Lutris are a go to app for me. with lutris you can use ubisoft ea gog libraries too.
Last edited by Kuduzkehpan on 31 Jan 2025 at 8:31 am UTC
0 Likes
Some things that I consider important:
During the last years, GOG has done nothing for Linux users. I'm not sure when linuxvangog left, but since then there has been nothing positive. Yes, there are some games where the native Linux version is not missing and even a hidden addition of a previously missing Linux version, but that's it.
GOG has nothing to do with Heroic launcher or other community developed workarounds, so they don't deserve praise for it.
And – last time I checked – the Steam flatpak was community made as well. It does not make sense blaming Valve for issues that are only present if a program is run in a way it is not supposed to be used. That's like saying my car is getting worse and worse because the manufacturer is bad and then revealing that you put nails through the tires. I've had issues with the Steam client as well – e.g. the right click only works when alt is pressed bug on my desktop system and the weird parsing of desktop files.
There are things that GOG does better and there are things that Valve does better.
During the last years, GOG has done nothing for Linux users. I'm not sure when linuxvangog left, but since then there has been nothing positive. Yes, there are some games where the native Linux version is not missing and even a hidden addition of a previously missing Linux version, but that's it.
GOG has nothing to do with Heroic launcher or other community developed workarounds, so they don't deserve praise for it.
And – last time I checked – the Steam flatpak was community made as well. It does not make sense blaming Valve for issues that are only present if a program is run in a way it is not supposed to be used. That's like saying my car is getting worse and worse because the manufacturer is bad and then revealing that you put nails through the tires. I've had issues with the Steam client as well – e.g. the right click only works when alt is pressed bug on my desktop system and the weird parsing of desktop files.
There are things that GOG does better and there are things that Valve does better.
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