The Last of Us Part 2 requires a PSN account if you want to play it on PC

Despite releasing to PS5 in 2020, The Last of Us Part 2 is only just about coming to PC. On the one hand, it will be the remastered version when it is released (it’s up to you to decide whether a four-and-half-year-old game even needs remastering). However, if you’re planning to get your gritty zombie action on via Steam or Epic Games Store, you won’t be able to escape Sony’s clutch.

As noted by VGC, if you want to play The Last of Us Part 2 on PC, you’ll need to connect a PlayStation Network account in order to do so. Indeed, if you look on the game’s Steam page, you can see it says so on the right-hand column.

This is despite two things:

1. TLoU is a single-player game, so it doesn’t make sense to require a PSN account.
2. A similar tactic was tried last year with Helldiver 2. Guess how that went down…

It seems Sony has learned nothing

As the report from VGC also points out, having to have a separate account in order to play through Steam or Epic renders the game useless in countries that don’t have PSN. Obviously, this means a lot of people around the world won’t be able to play The Last of Us Part 2 (remastered or not) when it comes to PC this April.

While Sony has reneged on this decision in the past – doing a complete U-turn when it tried to introduce it to the aforementioned Helldiver 2 – the company also admitted it was “still learning what is best for PC players.” However, this doesn’t appear to be the case if Sony goes forward with PSN requirements for a PC port of a single-player game.

There was also the incident in September 2024 when a mod for God of War Ragnarök removed the PlayStation Network requirement altogether. This alone should show how unpopular it is. Will Sony relent for The Last of Us Part 2? It seems well within its best interests to do so. Sadly, I have no influence over that decision.