Alright, fun's over—Helldivers 2 wants you to link your Steam account with a PlayStation Network one, with Sony reminding players it was a 'grace period'

Helldivers 2 has been out for a handful of months now—and it's been monstrously popular, so popular in fact that people could barely play it. There's also been another side effect of the game's runaway success: you were actually supposed to make a PlayStation Network account like, months ago. The servers were just too busted to handle it.

As revealed in a recent statement by Sony via the Helldivers 2 Steam page, players will have to create and link a PlayStation Network account beginning May 6: «Due to technical issues at the launch of HELLDIVERS™ 2, we allowed the linking requirements for Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network account to be temporarily optional. That grace period will now expire.»

The reason for the change, the post states, is that Sony uses its internal systems as «our main way to protect players from griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of players that engage in that type of behaviour. It also allows those players that have been banned the right to appeal.»

The grace period is longer than May 6, however—Steam users can expect to be prompted with an annoying login screen starting May 30, and will be required to have joined their accounts at the hip June 4.

One thing to note before we really get into this—this requirement was, unfortunately, here the whole time. A quick jaunt onto the Wayback Machine version of the store page pre-release reveals that Helldivers 2: «Requires 3rd-Party Account: PlayStation Network». Judging by the general community response, this supposed rugpull has surprised a lot of players, but I think it's fair to say that this isn't exactly fine print. Easily missable at best.

It should also be noted that, as per PlayStation's country selector, PSN has region limitations. As players on the game's subreddit have observed, while you can just lie, doing so is against ToS and could get you banned unless Sony makes an exception: 

«All information provided during Account creation, and during the use of your Account, must be