While gamers were initially excited for Sony to start releasing its PlayStation first-party games to PC, a PlayStation Network account was needed in order to play the games. As the service is not available worldwide, PC gamers in over 100 countries could not play these games. A recent update seems to indicate that Sony is rolling back this policy.
Looks like Sony is removing regional restrictions on its first-party PC games
As pointed out by Wario64 on BlueSky, regional restrictions for Sony’s PC games via Steam are being removed. The games shown in the post are God of War Ragnarok, The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and Helldivers 2.
When Days Gone Remastered was released earlier this year, it did not have regional restrictions. With these changes being made to the above releases, it seems Sony is moving forward with removing the requirement, meaning over 100 more countries will have access to these games.
The PSN requirement for Sony’s PC releases seems to have been more hurtful than helpful for the company. Probably the most infamous case occurred when Helldivers 2 was released last year. The controversy had led to the game’s community manager losing their job after they encouraged players to review bomb the game.
One of the most recent cases involved the Sony-published game Stellar Blade. Initially, the beloved action game seemed to have been unavailable in 132 countries, which is typically indicative of the PSN requirement. However, the developer noted that the service was not required to play the game and they would discuss the matter with Sony. A few weeks later, the regional restrictions were lifted.
While this move from Sony seems to essentially be confirmed, the company has not yet made a statement about the removal of the controversial policy.