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Nexus Mods says the creator of the God of War Ragnarok PSN bypass mod has taken it offline

Nexus Mods says the creator of the God of War Ragnarok PSN bypass mod has taken it offline

UPDATE: The creator of the PSN bypass mod God of War Ragnarok has told IGN that it has become “way too popular” and that they took it offline out of fear of a possible threat from Sony, not because Sony actually made contact had.

In a statement released to IGN, modder iArtorias said:

“In short, it was my personal decision to remove the mod as it had become way too popular and people started promoting it on Steam forums as well, which caused a lot of attention.

“I just wanted to avoid the possible threats from Sony, even though the code has never touched any of their products in memory. You never know and it’s really a gray area for me.”

ORIGINAL STORY: The creator of the high-profile PSN bypass mod God of War Ragnarok has reportedly taken it offline without explanation.

Just a few days after the PlayStation game God of War Ragnarok was released on PC and received a “mixed” review from Steam users via force linking PlayStation Network accountA mod was released that bypassed the requirement entirely.

Sony had made it clear on God of War Ragnarok's Steam page that a PlayStation Network account was required to play Sony's single-player-only adventure Santa Monica, but that didn't prevent a number of negative reviews from criticizing the policy highlighted.

A modder named iArtorias took matters into his own hands by removing the PSN requirement. iArtorias' NoPSSDK mod, which was downloaded thousands of times by Nexus Mods before it was removed, “completely removes the PlayStation PC SDK runtime requirement for God of War Ragnarok.”

However, since the mod removed the PSN overlay from the game while mimicking an offline mode, it was used to bypass the linking requirement between PSN and Steam account. IGN verified that the mod worked before removing it.

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In a post earlier this week on Nexus Mods, iArtorias promised to keep his mod even if Sony updates God of War Ragnarok to combat it. “I will try to keep the tool even if something changes, but hopefully nothing decisive happens,” they said.

But today, September 26th, the mod is no longer available on Nexus Mods or Github. In a tweet, Nexus Mods insisted that NoPSSDK had been removed from its website “by the author” and tried to find out why. It's likely that Sony judged the iArtorias mod poorly, but it's unclear at this point whether the company has contacted the mod to request its removal or whether iArtorias has taken it upon itself to do so . IGN attempted to contact iArtorias about Nexus Mods and has reached out to Sony for comment.

Prior to the mod's removal, iArtorias had received requests to release a similar mod for other recently released Sony PC games such as: Ghost of Tsushima. Ghost of Tsushima requires a PSN account for Legends online multiplayer and use of the PlayStation overlay, but is not required to play the single-player game.

With the release of Arrowhead's explosive PC and PS5 co-op shooter, Sony's PSN account requirement for its PC games came into the spotlight Helldivers 2 Earlier this year. Helldivers 2 suffered a bombshell review campaign on Steam after Sony made PSN accounts mandatory for PC gamers on Valve's platform (Subsequently, Arrowhead decided to convert the Steam user rating history graph into a cape, which is ready to launch but has not yet been released).

Sony eventually backed down and revoked the PSN account requirement for Helldivers 2but the game remains unavailable in the many countries where there is no PSN. And in fact, all of Sony's PC games now suffer from this issue, meaning God of War Ragnarök is not available on PC in over 100 countries.

Wesley is the UK news editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].

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