Steam, Epic and Green Man Gaming are reportedly cancelling pre-orders for Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut on PC. The PC port has been under the spotlight recently after Sony began locking access to certain games behind a PlayStation Network account. Last week, Helldivers 2 fell victim to this when Sony announced users would require a PSN account in order to play the game.
Shortly after the announcement, PC gamers began review-bombing Helldivers 2 on Steam which resulted in Sony quickly backtracking on its requirements and removing the mandatory PSN access.
Sony has already made it clear that the upcoming Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut won’t rely on a PSN account to play the single-player mode. You’ll need a PlayStation Network account to play the Legends multiplayer mode if you wish to do so. You’ll also need a PSN account to access the new PlayStation overlay which ships for the first time with Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut.
Otherwise, the account is completely optional. However, storefronts are still cancelling pre-orders for the game across regions where PlayStation Networks aren’t available. This is currently in over 170 countries. This has likely been done as a safety precaution so gamers don’t purchase a game with limited features.
Given that you need a PSN account to play the co-op Legends mode, this portion of the game is completely locked out in these countries. So cancelling pre-orders and informing customers about the restrictions seems to be the right thing to do.
At the moment, it isn’t clear yet whether these restrictions have been enforced by Sony or the storefronts. Sony likely wants to avoid another Helldivers 2 situation so the company might have instructed stores to cancel pre-orders.
Keep in mind that these cancellations are only happening in countries with limited to no PSN access. So if you have the PlayStation Network in your region, you don’t have to worry about it. You’ll only need to worry about linking your Steam Account to your PSN account if and when you want to play the Legends mode in Ghost of Tsushima.
Given Sony’s current push for PlayStation titles on PC, the company is going to have a tough time convincing PC players to create a PlayStation Network account to play these games. Sure, most of them are single-player titles but when Sony decides to launch the next live-service PC/PS5 game, this account linking will be mandatory.
