2023 was when Sony began its region-locking initiative on the PC platform. The move affected over 100 countries, restricting the purchase of popular PlayStation ports and live service experiences for anyone in the regions outside of Sony's choosing. However, it seems the company is finally opening up access to these countries, starting today.
While Sony has made no official announcements, which was also how the original restrictions came to be, users in these regions have begun seeing most of the publisher's catalog reappearing on their Steam store platforms.
The change can be seen on affected games' SteamDB histories as well. For example, on Helldivers 2, a popular but blocked multiplayer game from before, it can be seen that the 'PurchaseRestrictedCountries' flag has been removed from a large number of countries just a few hours ago, on June 13.
The controversy began in 2023 when Sony began requiring PlayStation Network accounts for their PC ports, even for games that did not have any online elements. Following an uproar, especially regarding Helldivers 2, the company reversed course and made it an optional account on PC. Unfortunately, Sony did not lift the regional restrictions it placed on the countries that do not officially support PlayStation Network accounts, which amounts to well over 100 regions.
As for what may have changed the company's mind about this, Stellar Blade may have played a big role. The Sony-published action game by Shift Up just released on PC to an absolutely massive audience, with it already touting almost 200,000 concurrent players on the Steam platform. While its demo was originally region restricted, the developer had worked with Sony to remove these locks and launch the game globally. Just a few days later, almost the entire PlayStation catalog has gone through the same process.
Interestingly, while massive PlayStation titles like Helldivers 2, God of War Ragnarok, Spider-Man 2, and The Last of Us Part II Remastered are back to being available across most regions, it seems Ghost of Tsushima is still under the original restrictions. It's unclear why the title has not joined the rest in shedding its locks.
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