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.
Eduardo Medina 11 hours ago
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 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.
Patreon
PayPal
How to install GE-Proton on Steam Deck, SteamOS, Linux
See more from me