Help me understand why PSN is needed to play this game.

[Niwashi]

Your SE account is connected to your psn account. I think when you registered for your SE game on the playstation it "linked" your account to your PSN account. No working PSN, no way to connect to that linked account.

That just pushes the question over to why do we need our SE accounts to be linked to a PSN account in the first place. For PC players, their name and password (and security token if they use one) are enough to identify them to SE's servers. Why should any more authentication than that be required to play the same game from a console? SE can keep track of who has which version of the game and who has a current subscription, just as they do with PC players. There's no reason for Sony to be involved in any of that, and yet, they somehow are anyway. After all, Sony isn't providing any online features here. It's SE that's hosting the game, and our individual ISPs getting us online to be able to reach SE. Sony's just sticking their head in to ask what's up, when it's really none of their business as they aren't involved in providing any of it.

[Huntington]

That just pushes the question over to why do we need our SE accounts to be linked to a PSN account in the first place. For PC players, their name and password (and security token if they use one) are enough to identify them to SE's servers. Why should any more authentication than that be required to play the same game from a console? SE can keep track of who has which version of the game and who has a current subscription, just as they do with PC players. There's no reason for Sony to be involved in any of that, and yet, they somehow are anyway. After all, Sony isn't providing any online features here. It's SE that's hosting the game, and our individual ISPs getting us online to be able to reach SE. Sony's just sticking their head in to ask what's up, when it's really none of their business as they aren't involved in providing any of it.

Pretty much this, you explained it better than I ever did.

[stuscott]

snip.

It has nothing to do with having the accounts "linked" - this is the way Sony goes about setting their system up and what SE has to deal with to have their product on this console. We use PSN to connect to SE - if you don't like that set-up, don't use a console and play on PC.