Game stores are refunding Ghost of Tsushima pre-orders in non-PSN countries

Steam is refunding preorders of the director’s cut of Ghost of Tsushima for buyers who live in countries without PlayStation Network access. That’s despite the fact that arguably the most important part of the game is still playable without PlayStation Network account linking. The news comes after Valve abruptly delisted the game yesterday.

Ghost of Tsushima only requires PSN account linking for its Legends multiplayer mode, a requirement the single player campaign is exempt from, the game’s developer went out of its way to say in a recent post. Steam, Green Man Gaming, and Epic Games Store each have disclaimers noting the same thing. In theory, that would mean if you don’t care about multiplayer modes, you could still play, but in practice, not so much.

The Steam team is sending this message out to players who are being refunded:

You are receiving a refund for a game you pre-purchased – Ghost of Tsushima. The publisher of this game is now requiring a secondary account to play portions of this game – and this account cannot be created from your country.

Frustrating as it is, the situation with Tsushima feels cut-and-dry compared to that of Helldivers 2. Earlier this month, Sony announced it would add mandatory PSN account linking to Helldivers 2, which had already been available to buy in non-PSN countries for almost three months. Steam quickly restricted where the game could be sold to only countries where PSN was available. Players weren’t happy.

Following a review-bombing campaign that slid the game’s Steam rating from “overwhelmingly positive” to “overwhelmingly negative” in a matter of days, Sony walked back the change. But despite that, Steam didn’t remove the sale restrictions.

Then yesterday, three more countries— Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — were added to Steam’s list of sale-restricted countries. The CEO of Arrowhead, Johan Pilestedt, said on Discord he wasn’t told about the newly-added regions, only finding out about them through the game’s Discord community.

A screenshot of Helldivers 2 CEO John Pilestedt’s comment.

He later said this came down to Valve noticing an administrative error, and that the countries were supposed to be there from the start.

A screenshot showing Johan Pilestedt stating he’s trying to get Helldivers 2 relisted in restricted countries.

Pilestedt has said he is trying to get both PlayStation and Valve to undo the sale restrictions. That this decision was made by Sony seems plausible, given the situation with Ghost of Tsushima on multiple game store platforms. However, Since neither Sony nor Valve have responded to The Verge’s request for comment on this situation, it’s impossible to say for sure whether that’s true, or if the stores are delisting Sony’s games on their own.