Marathon players on PC won’t need a PlayStation account, say Bungie

You won’t need a PlayStation account to play Marathon on PC, promise Bungie as their shooter’s marketing blitz picks up speed. Previous games under Sony’s umbrella, such as Helldivers 2, caused frustration and backlash when PC players were forced to register for a PlayStation account just to play online. But it looks like Sony’s recent backpedalling on this requirement will save the upcoming extraction shooter from pissing off PC folks.

“Marathon will not require a PlayStation Account for players on PC and Xbox,” said the developers in the game’s official Discord (as spotted by Polygon). A plain and straightforward confirmation that they won’t be doing any of that nonsense. Fans reacted with lots of fire emojis and some pink cats, a reference to the cyberdermal kitty that lies down with the corpse of a defeated runner in the most recent teaser trailer.

That teaser was released to build hype for another trailer which Bungie plans to unveil tomorrow, and which should show some footage of the actual stuff you’ll be doing in the game. I’m looking forward to knowing what the bullets sound like.

The PSN account fiasco began in earnest when the requirement was introduced to Helldivers 2 post-release. Players were deeply annoyed at the inconvenience, and some pointed out that it meant the game would become unplayable in certain regions in which PlayStation accounts could not be set up.

PlayStation eventually relented and removed the requirement for Helldivers 2 in the wake of angry review bombing but still tried to enforce it on other games, some of them entirely single player in nature, such as Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. In the end, the company seems to have totally backed down from the idea, making a PSN account optional for their upcoming games. And from Bungie’s words it looks like this will also be the case for Marathon. Good to know.