‘We are doing our best to resolve most of it’: Stellar Blade’s PC release will be restricted in 130 countries as the devs fight to have it lifted

Ahead of Stellar Blade’s PC release in June, players have been greeted with the dreaded yet expected message: Some people won’t have access to the PC release as it’s region-locked in 130 countries.

The full list of countries that won’t have access to Stellar Blade’s PC launch can be found on SteamDB, with six countries—Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Philippines, Russian Federation, and Vietnam—having no price set. While all the other countries outright prevent the game from being activated or purchased.

The list also includes three Unknown country codes: AN, FX, and XD. AN stands for the Netherlands Antilles, but Dutch players can simply use their NL accounts to purchase the game. While FX represents Metropolitan France and XD is for Dubai, but again, players can just use their French accounts or UAE accounts, respectively.

This list of countries lines up with PSN availability despite the developers’ Shift Up previously saying in a social media post that “PSN connecting is entirely optional and never required.”

But this wouldn’t be the first time that a game is restricted by PSN despite not actually requiring its use. Earlier this year, PlayStation added a PSN restriction to Horizon Forbidden West 10 months after its release, despite the game having no internet connection requirements.

PSN requirements are pretty controversial among the gaming community. It properly kicked off back when Sony forced it on Helldivers 2, and in response, players review-bombed the game, leaving over 200,000 negative reviews. Since then, Sony has tagged a PSN requirement onto all its PC releases like God of War: Ragnarok, which then got review-bombed too.

Needless to say, it’s not a very popular practice, so why won’t Sony let it go? Despite saying that PSN accounts will be optional for players to use, this only applies to those in countries where PSN accounts are available. PCG’s Harvey Randall has previously explained all the reasons why this is the case, but in short, it’s likely due to exchange rates. If a game is much cheaper in one country than another, there’s more of a chance of key resellers taking advantage of the price difference and selling cheaper keys on the grey market.

Regardless of the reasons behind it, it’s still an annoying practice, and one that the developers are going to try to fight against. “We are closely discussing the region lock issue with the publisher, and we are doing our BEST to resolve most of it as soon as possible,” Shift Up says in a social media post.

It seemingly took a lot of haggling for just the PSN requirement to be removed from Helldivers 2, so there’s no telling whether the Stellar Blade devs will be able to pull this off, but it’s definitely worth a try.