However, Concord developer Firewalk Studios has defended the move, explaining that this makes cross-play and cross-progression easily possible between PS5 and PC. This is despite its fellow Sony-published live service, Helldivers 2, having to walk back its own PSN requirements due to backlash from fans.
"The goal is for players to come together," says Concord's lead character designer, Jon Weisnewski, in an interview with Eurogamer.
"For us to have PC players and PlayStation 5 players together, for that cross-play and cross-progression to work, that's a layer that needs to be there - just on a technical level," he continues. "So the goal is we want to get players together, to have fun and play together, this is part of that experience."
Of course, there would be another way around this. Many online games require you to take a separate account specific to that game, which you can then use to sign on to other platforms while keeping your progress. It just seems that the devs here have opted to make that a PSN account, rather than a new login entirely.
It's possible that this will avoid the controversy that Helldivers 2 went through since it seems like Concord will have a PSN requirement from day one. In the case of Helldivers 2, this launched without it and then planned to make it mandatory long after release. After intense review bombing, the decision was reversed, and now PSN account linking is completely optional.
The same cannot be said for Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut. This release made the original game available on PC for the first time but has a PSN requirement for its online mode. While this means you can ignore it if you just want to play offline, it was enough to get the game delisted in countries that don't have access to PSN, since they would be locked out of an entire feature otherwise. We can expect Concord to be restricted in this way too.
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Source: https://www.thegamer.com/concord-required-psn-on-pc-developers-explain/
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