Insomniac Games has confirmed that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is now up for pre-order on PC.
They made this announcement on Twitter:
“WE. ARE. Launching on January 30, 2025. On PC.
Wishlist the PC version of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 on Steam and the Epic Games Store! #BeGreaterTogether
Steam: http://insom.games/MSM2PC-STEAM
Epic: http://insom.games/MSM2PC-EGS”
As you can imagine, the “WE” in that tweet alludes to them speaking as if they were Venom, and Venom appears in a small clip alongside the announcement.
And if you were wondering, yes, some fans are quick to express their dismay about this release, as some of them can’t actually go to Steam and Epic Game Store to pre-order the game. For that matter, they can’t see the listing for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 on either store.
And in case you were living under a rock, the reason for that is that Sony has locked the games they publish on PC to countries and regions that have PSN.
Now, we recognize that a large number of PC game sales predominantly come from the US, and significant numbers are also found in Europe. So some fans have argued that Sony isn’t losing out on that much.
For that argument, we would point to the up-and-down story of Helldivers 2, who will never get back a fraction of the user base they once had, because Arrowhead launched the game without this requirement, and was forced to take it all back.
For Sony, who felt compelled to sell their games on PC in the first place because their own PlayStation 5 user base isn’t Nintendo loyal to Sony’s first party games, this choice is an additional impediment to their games becoming more successful.
But Sony knows that they are facing criticism for this. The fact that they won’t make any changes may be a sign that they have made certain calculations in this regard.
It’s possible that they decided they can make their games succeed without a broader international audience. Or perhaps they have decided they need the telemetry their games presumably give them more than those additional sales. Or it is possible that they did the math on this, and that’s why their sticking to it.
We’d like to believe, as some gamers have claimed, that Sony is actively working in expanding PSN to more regions. They certainly haven’t been communicating with the public if they are, and that’s just increased the unhappiness of fans – Sony fans – who live in these regions and now feel like second class citizens.
It certainly feels a little extra egregious to do this when we all know Sony decided to fire many of the developers who made this game, in spite of its critical and commercial success. For all the discourse around Xbox’s console and publishing strategy, Sony’s strategy feels intended to harm their own developers.
