Rumor: Concord Will Also Require PSN On PC, Effectively Region Locking It

Dealabs writer billbil-kun has revealed that Concord will require PSN login on PC.

While the Dealabs article is in French, billbil-kun‘s rumor is as straightforward as it gets. They don’t reveal how they got the information, but billbil-kun did claim that they did their own investigation to confirm this.

They were also able to confirm that this will be true of Concord’s release on both Steam and Epic Games Store. As it seems to be the case with their other upcoming and recent releases, between Ghost of Tsushima, God of War: Ragnarok, and Until Dawn, PlayStation Studios has simply decided to make PSN login official policy for their PC releases moving forward.

Concord recently revealed a big presentation in the recent State of Play, only to get mixed reception. As Video Games Chronicle reported, the game’s trailer received an 18 % approval rating on YouTube. Many fans pointed out that this contrasts widely with the 99 % approval rating that Astro’s trailer received, also on YouTube.

You may personally like what you saw from that Concord preview, and that’s completely valid if that’s your opinion. But we have to make the observation that the game is already not popular based on the online reception.

We then have to reexplain the situation with Sony’s choice to require PSN login for their future PC games. This means that Sony will not sell these games in those regions where they did not set up PSN, on PC. Helldivers 2 really received the worst of it; after building critical mass with players around the world, Sony retroactively added the PSN login requirement.

So players who already bought the game and live in non-PSN regions lost access to the game. Some of those gamers successfully got refunds for their games, but Sony’s decision also harmed developer Arrowhead’s success and profitability.

Gamers who do want to play these games, but live in a non-PSN region, only have the option to buy those games on a PlayStation console. While it limits their options, it cannot be said that Sony has given those gamers zero options to play those games.

And on the flip side, it’s well known that most game sales, even for games made outside America, make a large share, if not most of their money, in America. So the impact of removing non-PSN regions is not as bad for Sony as it appears.

In any case, this has stacked things quite a bit unfavorably for Concord and its studio, Firewalk Studios. Sony may have already doomed this title, but we’ll see if there’s enough fandom, either from PlayStation fans, or live service gamers, to rescue this game anyway.