After the upcoming Stellar Blade’s Steam version was reported to be blocked in over 120 countries due to reasons that are still currently unknown, developer Shift Up has stated in their official Twitter/X account that they are “closely discussing the region locked issue” with Sony as of right now.
And while there’s still no official explanation as to why the PC version of Stellar Blade is blocked in all those countries including Egypt, Vietnam, Cuba and many more, at least the devs are investigating the issue which means it’s likely to get solved within several weeks, perhaps. And maybe then we’ll know the reason behind Stellar Blade’s current predicament which is definitely bizarre if not unfortunate. According to Shift Up, they’re “doing our BEST to resolve most of it as soon as possible”, which is assuring nonetheless.
The devs also confirmed that PSN connectivity with Stellar Blade hasn’t really been the reason for the block, stating “PSN connecting [is] entirely optional and NEVER required”.
In the same post, Shift Up has also assured PC players that the DRM in the game wouldn’t affect performance at all, saying “As shown in the test chart below, the DRM has been hard tuned to maintain the same average frame rate, with even higher minimum frames in some cases,” the studio further added that modding is also “fully supported without any restrictions.”
This should help clear out any worries as to the PC version of Stellar Blade exhibiting persistent stutters and other woes for it’s usage of DRM, which has happened to a lot of games using DRM in the past.
The upcoming PC version of Stellar Blade also comes with a whole suite of PC-specific features such as unlocked framerate, AI upscaling via Nvidia’s DLSS 4 and AMD’s FSR 3, both Japanese and Chinese voiceovers, ultrawide display supports, higher resolution environment textures, and DualSense support for haptic feedback and trigger effects. The game also has a bonus Boss battle in the PC version, along with 25 new in-game outfits for the main character.
Shift Up has also previously stated that they expect far more sales on the PC platform than on the Playstation 5, where the game was first launched.
