Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls Is Blocked in 132 Countries on Steam Because Sony Still Has Not Learned From Helldivers 2

Arc System Works makes some of the best fighting games on the planet, and Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls looked like a serious crossover moment. The studio behind Guilty Gear Strive and Dragon Ball FighterZ is taking on Marvel's roster with full crossplay between PS5 and PC at launch. That combination should have made this one of the biggest fighting game releases of the year on Steam. Then the SteamDB page went live and players in 132 countries found out they cannot buy it. Not because the game is not coming to PC. Because PlayStation Network does not operate in their region, and Sony is using that as a wall.

What the Block Actually Looks Like

The SteamDB entry for Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls lists a "known restrictions" section with 132 countries. That list includes Jamaica, Egypt, Nigeria, Iran, Belarus, and over a hundred others. Those are not random. Every single country on that list is a country where PlayStation Network's online services do not function. No PSN availability means no account linking, and Sony's crossplay setup for the game requires that link. There is no opt-out, no offline workaround, and no indication from Sony or Arc System Works that a fix is coming before the August 6 release date. Players found this out through SteamDB data, not from any official announcement. The Steam store page itself lists the restrictions without explanation.

To put the scale of this in concrete terms: 132 countries represents a massive slice of the global gaming population. Nigeria alone has one of the fastest-growing gaming markets on the continent. Egypt, Iran, and the wider Middle East and North Africa region represent millions of PC players who regularly buy fighting games on Steam. Arc System Works has a genuine global fanbase built over decades. Guilty Gear Strive saw strong adoption in regions that Sony's PSN infrastructure simply does not reach. Those players are not getting Marvel Tokon on PC unless Sony changes course.

Sony Already Ran This Experiment With Helldivers 2

This is not a new problem. In 2024, Helldivers 2 launched on Steam without a mandatory PSN account requirement, became one of the fastest-selling PlayStation PC ports in history, and then Sony tried to retroactively force PSN account linking on all PC players. The backlash was severe. The Steam review page absorbed over 200,000 negative reviews in a matter of days. Players in PSN-restricted countries pointed out they would lose access to a game they had already paid for. Sony reversed the decision within 72 hours and framed the rollback as protecting access for those very players. The incident became one of the clearest examples of what happens when Sony's PC strategy collides with PSN's geographic gaps.

Two years later, Sony is applying that same restriction list to Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls before launch. The argument for doing it this way is that front-loading the restriction avoids the Helldivers 2 situation where players bought the game before the requirement was announced. That logic has a floor: it assumes the right response to the Helldivers 2 problem was to block access earlier rather than to stop using PSN as a hard gate for crossplay. Sony chose the former. The 132 blocked countries are the result.

Community Reaction and Who Is Getting the Blame

Players in blocked regions are directing anger at Arc System Works' social accounts even though the studio did not make this call. Posts from affected users are piling up on the official Marvel Tokon handles asking the developer to fix something that is entirely outside the studio's control. One player put it plainly: "We can't even preorder your game." Another referenced Helldivers 2 directly: "Sony didn't learn, did they?" The frustration is understandable but aimed at the wrong target. Arc System Works is a developer working under Sony's publishing terms. The PSN restriction is a publishing decision, not a development one.

The timing is also rough for Sony's broader PC narrative. The company has reportedly pulled back from releasing its major single-player titles on PC entirely, meaning live-service games like Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls are supposed to be the core of what PlayStation offers PC players going forward. Blocking the game in 132 countries on that exact platform sends a clear message about how much Sony values that audience. Kotaku reported the story today citing SteamDB data, and the response on social media has been consistent: negative, direct, and aimed at Sony's pattern of repeating the same mistakes.

Crossplay Is a Feature, Not a Requirement

The most defensible version of Sony's position is that crossplay between PC and PS5 requires matching accounts on both platforms and PSN is the only infrastructure for that. That argument has one obvious problem: crossplay is optional. Disabling crossplay by default for players in PSN-restricted countries would let them buy and play the game on PC against other PC players without touching PS5 matchmaking at all. Fighting games do this routinely. Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, and Mortal Kombat 1 all manage crossplay without hard-blocking countries that lack console infrastructure. Sony is choosing to deny access entirely instead of making crossplay opt-in for regions where PSN does not work.

That choice is harder to defend the more you look at what Arc System Works built. The studio made a game with Marvel's full IP weight behind it, developed with the same technical approach that made Guilty Gear Strive one of the most accessible modern fighting games for new players. The roster spans characters with genuine global recognition. The production quality is high. Blocking it in 132 countries over a matchmaking infrastructure problem that has a known technical workaround is not a decision that comes from the game. It comes from a publisher that has not solved its PSN availability problem and has decided player access is less important than account control.

What Needs to Happen Before August 6

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls releases on August 6. That is roughly a month away. Sony reversed course on Helldivers 2 in under three days when the response was loud enough. The difference here is that the restriction was applied before launch rather than after, which reduces the immediate financial pressure on Sony to act. There is no mass refund demand from players who already paid. There is just a block in place that will remain in effect unless Sony or Arc System Works makes a public change to how crossplay and account linking work for the PC version. The Kotaku report and the social media reaction are early signals. Whether they build into the kind of coordinated response that moved Sony on Helldivers 2 depends on how much attention this gets in the next few weeks.