Simply days after PlayStation sport God of War Ragnarok launched on PC to a ‘blended’ Steam consumer assessment score over its pressured PlayStation Community account linking, a mod has been launched that bypasses the requirement completely.
Sony had made it clear on the God of War Ragnarok Steam web page {that a} PlayStation Community account could be required to play Sony Santa Monica’s purely single-player journey, however that failed to forestall a quantity of adverse opinions singling out the coverage.
Whereas God of War Ragnarok’s Steam consumer assessment score is now up to ‘largely constructive,’ one modder has determined to take issues into their very own arms by stripping out the PSN requirement.
iArtorias’ NoPSSDK mod, which has been downloaded 1,764 occasions from Nexus Mods on the time of this text’s publication, “totally strips the PlayStation PC SDK runtime requirement for God of War Ragnarok.” However as a result of the mod removes the PSN overlay from the sport and mimicks an offline mode within the course of, it is getting used to bypass the PSN / Steam account linking requirement. IGN has verified the mod does certainly work.
In a submit on Nexus Mods, iArtorias vowed to preserve their mod even when Sony updates God of War Ragnarok to fight it. “I’ll attempt to preserve the software even when one thing modifications, however hopefully nothing essential occurs,” they mentioned.
Sony will little question take a dim view of iArtorias’ mod, which is choosing up Steam as extra and extra gamers obtain it. There are additionally calls for the same mod for Sony’s different just lately launched PC video games, resembling Ghost of Tsushima. Ghost of Tsushima requires a PSN account for the Legends on-line multiplayer mode and to use PlayStation overlay, however it’s not required to play the single-player sport, which makes Sony’s choice to implement a PSN requirement on the purely single-player God of War Ragnarok all of the extra baffling.
Sony’s PSN account requirement for its PC video games was thrust into the limelight with the discharge of Arrowhead’s explosive PC and PS5 co-op shooter Helldivers 2 earlier this yr. Helldivers 2 suffered a assessment bomb marketing campaign on Steam after Sony made PSN accounts necessary for PC avid gamers on Valve’s platform (Arrowhead subsequently determined to flip the Steam consumer assessment historical past graph right into a cape, which is prepared for launch however has but to launch).
Sony ultimately backed down and reversed Helldivers 2’s PSN account requirement, however the sport stays unavailable within the many international locations that lack PSN. And certainly all Sony’s video games on PC now endure from this downside, which implies God of War Ragnarök is unavailable on PC in over 100 international locations.
Wesley is the UK Information Editor for IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You possibly can attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.