Helldivers 2 has made headlines for the past two weeks, but as the fight for democracy and liberty spreads all over the universe, there’s a swath of gamers who are left on the outside looking. The entirety of the Xbox platform are banned from enlisting in the titular program, perhaps forever excluded from ever fighting for freedom, or are they?
A PlayStation-owned IP not being on Xbox nor Microsoft’s popular video game subscription service, Game Pass, isn’t surprising, but would you believe us if we told you that there’s precedent?
Two years ago, Kojima Productions did the unthinkable and brought Death Stranding to the Xbox Game Pass for PC, otherwise now just referred to as “PC Game Pass.
Much like with the Helldivers IP, Sony owns Death Stranding – not Hideo Kojima’s studio. This made for an awkward situation where one of the best PlayStation exclusives from a long-time partner came to a rival’s subscription service (albeit the PC-exclusive kind).
Sony later clarified that the deal to bring Death Stranding (the base game, not the Director’s Cut) to PC Game Pass was made between Kojima Productions and 505 Games, the publisher of the PC version of Death Stranding.
Given Sony is still publishing Death Stranding 2 and Kojima’s upcoming Metal Gear spiritual successor, it’s safe to say that there’s no bad blood between both studios.
With that said, unlike Death Stranding, both Helldivers games are published by Sony on PC and Playstation platforms – PlayStation PC LLC if you want to be more specific – making it extremely unlikely that Sony would ever let its most successful PC release ever go to a rival service, especially PC Game Pass. But while it didn’t sign off on Death Stranding‘s PC Game Pass release, it probably knows the numbers from the venture.
If the math made financial sense for Death Stranding and Phil Spencer comes to Sony with an attractive offer after calling out Helldiver 2’s exclusivity (while it keeps Palworld to itself), then who knows? If nothing else, Helldivers 2’s possible arrival on PC Game Pass and Xbox platforms aligns with what the company’s interim CEO just said about its aggressive pursuit of multiplatform releases.
For now though, Helldivers 2 will be exclusive to PlayStation 5 and PC for the foreseeable future. It’s more likely that we’ll see it come to PlayStation Plus sooner rather than later, but probably not before Arrowhead Game Studios is finished recruiting more patriots to help with the cause. Otherwise, we’re expecting the company’s CEO to lose sleep again as the servers constantly buckle under the weight of so many players trying to fight Terminids and Automatons.
