PC gamers have eagerly waited for a God of War Ragnarök PC port, and now Sony finally confirmed it. Unfortunately, the game seems set to repeat mistakes from previous PlayStation ports.
God of War Ragnarök was released on November 9, 2022, for PS4 and PS5. Many fans, myself included, had an amazing time seeing how the story of Kratos and his son Atreus continued after the brilliant reboot of the series in 2018.
The best way to play that first game is probably on PC now (it's on Steam, and luckily it's one of the few PC ports that run properly and look great), even though everyone knows that God of War is a PlayStation-exclusive series. The PC port of the first game was a real success and made a fantastic game even better.
Fans had to wait a while for the sequel to make that jump, almost two full years in fact. But it's finally happening: God of War Ragnarök is coming to PC on September 19! Excitement is in the air, but the hype unfortunately already dampened a bit after the announcement.
| God of War Ragnarök PC: Quick Facts | |
| Release: | September 19, 2024 |
| Platform: | PC (Steam, Epic Games Store & More) |
| Developer: | Santa Monica Studio, Nixxes |
| PlayStation Sales: | More than 15 million copies worldwide (according to Statista) |
God of War Ragnarök: PC Port Looks Great, With One Big Catch
The PC version of God of War Ragnarök was revealed with a PC features trailer, which reveals all the neat features and goodies that are coming with the port. And we got them all here: AI upscaling via DLSS, FSR and more, Ultrawide support, unlocked framerates and more. Everything the PC heart desires.
That's all great, isn't it? Well, Sony had one last trick up their sleeves to hamper the fun. According to the game's Steam page, a PlayStation Network account is required to play the game. Which is confusing, as Ragnarök has no multiplayer features and is a singleplayer-only game.
This immediately caused a bit of a backlash, and understandably so. Just a few weeks prior, Sony got into hot water for forcing Helldivers 2 players to have an PlayStation Network account to play the game - which was reversed after a huge backlash. However, that story isn't fully resolved yet and players are still upset.
It seems like Sony has not taken the warning after the
A PC port was always very likely, considering Sony's strategy of slowly bringing their first-party catalog to Steam and Co. However, everyone involved was very coy about the whole thing until now. Cory Barlog, co-creator of the series and director of the 2018 reboot, was asked about a PC version of Ragnarök in an interview by Game Informer shortly after the first game was released on Steam, and he was really low-balling back then:
"I have no idea. Right now, we’re taking it one game at a time, kind of looking at each one and determining, “Okay, is this the best thing?” And we’ll gauge how it does. Do people enjoy it? Did we do it right? Is there anything we did wrong? What can we do better in the future if we do this again? But at the end of the day, ultimately, it’s Sony’s decision."
Hopefully, Sony will address these issues as they did for Helldivers 2. Fans already had to wait a while for this version of the game, and now it seems weighed down by frankly unnecessary limitations.
If you got sick of waiting, then we got bad news for you. In an interview published shortly after the original release of Ragnarök, Herman explained: "I think going forward we'll see at least a year between releases on PlayStation and on the PC platform, possibly with the exception of live service games". Ragnarök now took around two years, which people can expect to be the norm for these ports.
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