Just days after PlayStation game God of War Ragnarok launched on PC to a ‘mixed’ Steam user review rating over its forced PlayStation Network account linking, a mod has been released that bypasses the requirement entirely.
Sony had made it clear on the God of War Ragnarok Steam page that a PlayStation Network account would be required to play Sony Santa Monica’s purely single-player adventure, but that failed to prevent a number of negative reviews singling out the policy.
While God of War Ragnarok’s Steam user review rating is now up to ‘mostly positive,’ one modder has decided to take matters into their own hands by stripping out the PSN requirement.
iArtorias’ NoPSSDK mod, which has been downloaded 1,764 times from Nexus Mods at the time of this article’s publication, “fully strips the PlayStation PC SDK runtime requirement for God of War Ragnarok.” But because the mod removes the PSN overlay from the game and mimicks an offline mode in the process, it's being used to bypass the PSN / Steam account linking requirement. IGN has verified the mod does indeed work.
In a post on Nexus Mods, iArtorias vowed to maintain their mod even if Sony updates God of War Ragnarok to combat it. “I will try to maintain the tool even if something changes, but hopefully nothing crucial happens,” they said.
Sony will no doubt take a dim view of iArtorias’ mod, which is picking up Steam as more and more players download it. There are also calls for a similar mod for Sony’s other recently released PC games, such as Ghost of Tsushima. Ghost of Tsushima requires a PSN account for the Legends online multiplayer mode and to use PlayStation overlay, but it is not required to play the single-player game, which makes Sony’s decision to enforce a PSN requirement on the purely single-player God of War Ragnarok all the more baffling.
Sony’s PSN account requirement for its PC games was thrust into the limelight with the release of Arrowhead’s explosive PC and PS5 co-op shooter Helldivers 2 earlier this year. Helldivers 2 suffered a review bomb campaign on Steam after Sony made PSN accounts mandatory for PC gamers on Valve’s platform (Arrowhead subsequently decided to turn the Steam user review history graph into a cape, which is ready for launch but has yet to release).
Sony eventually backed down and reversed Helldivers 2’s PSN account requirement, but the game remains unavailable in the many countries that lack PSN. And indeed all Sony’s games on PC now suffer from this problem, which means God of War Ragnarök is unavailable on PC in over 100 countries.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
