God of War Ragnar?k PSN bypass mod pulled by maker

UPDATE 25/9/24, 10.35pm: Nexus Mods has confirmed iArtorias removed their mod, which let players bypass PSN for God of War Ragnarök on PC, in order to "avoid any future action from Sony".

In a conversation between Nexus Mods and iArtorias, the creator said the mod had "got too much attention" following its release, and they ultimately thought it would be "better to remove it from public" use.

iArtorias added even though their mod did not alter "anything in memory related to Sony products", they felt it was "better [to] be safe than sorry" in this case, adding it was their decision to remove the mod from Nexus.

The original story continues below.

ORIGINAL 25/9/24, 3.46pm: Nexus Mods user iArtorias has removed their handy mod that let players bypass PSN for God of War Ragnarök on PC.

God of War Ragnarök was hit by negative Steam reviews upon its release, which in part took aim at Sony's controversial requirement for PC users to link to a PSN account. PC players being PC players, however, came up with a mod which could be used to negate Sony's controversial PSN linking requirement. The mod did this by removing the PSN overlay.

However, its creator iArtorias has now removed the mod from Nexus, with no explanation given at the current time.

According to the Nexus Mods social media account, iArtorias removed the mod themselves, and the site had nothing to do with this decision.

"By the way: We've noticed that the popular PSN-bypass mod for God of War Ragnarök has been removed from our site by the author, and so we've reached out to find out why," the account shared on X.

If you click through to the mod now, rather than being met with all the details on how to install and such, you are instead greeted with a message that reads: "The mod you were looking for couldn't be found."

When I looked through the mod's page earlier this week, there were requests from other users asking iArtorias to create a similar mod for the likes of the recently-released PC version of Ghost of Tsushima. It seems uncertain now if iArtorias will consider this a viable option.

At time of writing, there is no indication on whether the mod's removal from Nexus Mods was to do with Sony, however Eurogamer has asked for comment.

For more on God of War Ragnarök's PC release, Digital Foundry's Alex Battaglia recently spoke to Matt DeWald, lead producer at original developer Sony Santa Monica, and Steve Tolin, technical director of PC port developer Jetpack Interactive.