Ever since Sony cancelled plans for a PSN requirement for Helldivers 2 PC players (and since Arrowhead Game Studios said it was trying to reverse the game’s removal from countries without PSN access) it was easy for gamers to assume that there wouldn’t be more delistings. However, that’s exactly what happened, as three more countries – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – had the game pulled from their digital Steam shelves.
The decision reportedly surprised the devs themselves, according to Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt, who claims that they were on a bank holiday and learned about these updates from the community. A follow-up message from Pilestedt then confirms that the delisting happened because of an “administrative error correction […] executed independently by Valve” that occurred after a similar PSN restriction was being enforced for the upcoming Steam release of Ghost of Tsushima.
“While it doesn’t look positive, it’s not an indication of further restrictions,” Pilestedt says. “The conversation on region restrictions is still ongoing and is independent of this. I have no further information. We (Arrowhead) still want the game to be available everywhere.”
As for who was responsible for the original pulling of H2 from Steam, which occurred months after players in PSN-locked countries were able to buy and play the game otherwise, that was evidently a demand made by Sony to Valve according to a help desk response from Valve Support. “[I]t looks like the game is not available in Steam right now for specific regions as decided by the publisher. This information is all we have right now,” reads part of the support response.
