God of War Ragnarök Launches to ‘Mixed’ Steam User Reviews — With Most Complaining About the PlayStation Network Account Requirement

God of War Ragnarök has a ‘mixed’ user review rating on Steam following its PC launch, with most of the complaints revolving around Sony’s controversial PlayStation Network Account requirement.

Sony had made it clear on the God of War Ragnarök Steam page that a PlayStation Network account would be required to play Sony Santa Monica’s purely single-player adventure, but that doesn’t seem to have prevented a number of negative reviews singling out the policy.

One negative Steam review, from a user who refunded the game after just 20 minutes of play, called out the PSN requirement. “Creating a PSN account was something I knew was necessary in advance and I was prepared to do so, until I was met with the reality of it,” they said. “For UK residents at least, it requires submitting a mobile phone number to verify your age just to start with, and if that fails (which it did, no texts were ever received) your only recourse is to submit a photograph of your face or a government-issued ID to a third party website. If you're happy with that, go right ahead.”

“Yeah I'm not linking my account to PSN especially for a single-player game,” reads another negative Steam user review, which also includes a list of Sony data breaches.

Sony’s PSN account requirement for its PC games was thrust into the limelight with the release of Arrowhead’s explosive PC and PS5 co-op shooter Helldivers 2 earlier this year. Helldivers 2 suffered a review bomb campaign on Steam after Sony made PSN accounts mandatory for PC gamers on Valve’s platform (Arrowhead subsequently decided to turn the user review history graph into a cape, which is ready for launch but has yet to release).

Sony eventually backed down and reversed Helldivers 2’s PSN account requirement, but the game remains unavailable in the many countries that lack PSN. And indeed all Sony’s games on PC now suffer from this problem, which means God of War Ragnarök is unavailable on PC in over 100 countries.

It seems unlikely that Sony will change its mind again for God of War Ragnarök, which means the game may have to live with its ‘mixed’ Steam user review rating for some time. As for how popular God of War Ragnarök is on PC, Steam's official concurrent figures show 25,471 playing at the time of this article's publication. That's down significantly on the PC launch of God of War, which saw a peak of 73,529 players on Valve's platform.

God of War Ragnarök continues the stories of Kratos and his now teenage soon, Atreus. The sequel was praised as an enthralling spectacle on its release, earning a 10 in IGN's review.

"Impeccable writing, pitch-perfect performances, knockout action – it’s a complete work of art from top to bottom. Reflecting its core themes, it's everything a sequel should be: respectful of its legendary lineage, but not afraid to take it to exciting new places," we wrote at the time. "God of War Ragnarok is an almighty achievement and creates a new high that makes many of its peers look positively mortal by comparison."

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.