There’s some bad news for gamers who wanted to play Lost Soul Aside on PC.
As reported by Tech4Gamers, Ultizero’s debut game is region locked on Steam in over 130 countries. This is in spite of the fact that Lost Soul Aside is a single player game with no announced online or multiplayer modes, and there are no integrations with PSN for the PC version.
We checked the SteamDB listing ourselves, and found that Lost Soul Aside has no price set in 7 countries, and cannot be activated or purchased in 133 countries. It’s also made clear that cross region trading and gifting is disabled for the game.
This is, of course, not the first time games that Sony published on Steam have been region locked away. After the fallout surrounding the planned PSN requirement for Helldivers 2, Sony has consistently region locked their games away from countries and regions that do not have PSN.
Since this is not the first time it’s happened to a game with no online components, and it doesn’t even have PSN, there should be no question as to why Sony does this.
It’s not, like some gamers are quipping, because Sony proverbially ‘hates money.’ It’s now clear that Sony is now avoiding any possible legal ramifications for publishing their games in places that don’t have PSN.
Now, that may confuse some PlayStation gamers, because they can buy and play PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 games just fine. But that’s where we point out that Sony has been coasting on some convenient workarounds for some time now.
If you didn’t know, anyone can make a US based PlayStation account even if they don’t live in the US. In fact, that’s precisely what most gamers around the world have been doing this whole time.
Subsequently, they can buy physical PlayStation games that were made for Americans, as well as buy digital games on the PlayStation Store for the US. Sony doesn’t provide these US account users outside America an easy way to buy games, but those gamers have come up with their own workarounds, such as buying US games imported, or buying PSN gift cards.
Sony figured out they can offer this as a legal loophole, without actually properly entering those 130+ countries they aren’t actually doing business in. In contrast, Microsoft took the effort to bring PC Game Pass, and subsequently Xbox accounts, to more countries and regions. One could argue Microsoft had an advantage, and more reason, to set this up, since they also sell Windows. But ultimately, this is on Sony to remedy, and it’s clear that they won’t invest in the money and effort to make it happen.
Since Sony is doing this to Ultizero Games’ Lost Soul Aside, you shouldn’t be surprised if it also happens to ShiftUp’s Stellar Blade, when it launches on Steam. PlayStation 5 is certainly a huge platform, but developers may want to be wary of working directly with Sony to bring their games there.
