Earth Defense Force 6 drops controversial Epic account requirement for players on Steam

Earth Defense Force 6, the B-movie-themed third-person shooter about fending off an alien invasion of Earth, has removed a controversial requirement that forced players to have a linked Epic Games account in order to play online.

The Epic Games account requirement was first confirmed by D3Publisher in July, when EDF6 launched. "To enhance cross play and online functionality, online play requires signing in to your Epic Games account," the publisher said at the time. "We apologize for the lack of advance notice."

I have no great interest in complaints about the mere existence of the Epic Games Store or games that opt to use Epic Online Services for multiplayer functionality, but this was more egregious: Even if you owned the game on Steam and had no interest in crossplay with Epic, you had to have a linked Epic account in order to play online at all. No Epic account? Make one or stay alone.

As you might imagine, this did not go over particularly well. The EDF6 user rating on Steam crashed to "mostly negative" immediately after launch, almost entirely because of the Epic account requirement and the fact that D3Publisher didn't say anything about it prior to release. That second point in particular is fair: A little overstated in some cases, perhaps, but as a matter of practicality and principle, if an external account is going to be required to access a significant portion of a videogame, that should be stated up front, the same way system requirements let people know whether or not their rigs will be able to properly play a given game.

Anyway, happy day, because that's all gone now. "This application has been modified so that you can play online missions without signing in to your Epic Games account," D3Publisher said in a new update. "Signing in to your Epic Games account is no longer required. If you wish to unlink your Steam account from your Epic Games account, please visit Epic Games website in a web browser."

Do note, however, that if you unlink your Epic account, or don't bother to link it if you purchase EDF6 in the future, you'll be losing some functionality. 

"EDF 6 supports online cross-play with Epic Games Store players," D3Publisher said in a statement provided to PC Gamer. "As of the last update, even if you don't link your Epic Games account, you will still be able to play the game both online and offline. However, to use the 'Invite' and 'Friend' features for Epic Games Store players during online play, you must create an Epic Games account and link it to your Steam account."

The whole episode brings to mind the Helldivers 2 fiasco from earlier this year, when Sony began requiring players to have a PlayStation Network account to access the game. That situation was even uglier, though, because Helldivers 2 did not require a linked PSN account at launch and ran for months without it. Ironically, Sony had clearly indicated the PSN requirements ahead of Helldivers 2's release, but even so the blowback was so furious that it quickly gave up on the idea—but not before doing untold and unnecessary damage to the goodwill the game had enjoyed up to that point.

Frankly, I think you should have an Epic account. A bigger crossplay pool means more people to play with, and hey, Epic is still cranking out free games every week. (It's the woodlands B&B management sim Bear and Breakfast this week, by the way.) But I don't think you should be required to have an Epic account to play your Steam games online: If you're really dead-set against it for some reason, I figure you should be able to say "no thanks" to crossplay and get on with things within the confines of Steam. And now you can! Have fun.