After Stellar Blade‘s Steam rollout was mysteriously blocked in countries like Egypt, Vietnam, Estonia, and Cuba, developer Shift Up said it was “closely discussing the region locked issue” with publisher Sony.
While there’s still no formal explanation on why sales have been blocked in over 100 countries around the world, it’s thought the list broadly matches that of places where PlayStation Network is not available — although neither PlayStation nor Shift Up has explicitly confirmed that. Instead, the developer insisted it was “doing our BEST to resolve most of it as soon as possible.”
“PSN connecting [is] entirely optional and NEVER required,” the studio added.
In the same message, Shift Up sought to assuage fears that adding DRM — an additional system to help protect against tampering and piracy — would adversely impact the game’s performance. It comes after players of Resident Evil Village essentially proved that the game’s anti-piracy technology was behind a persistent stuttering issue a couple of years ago.
“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 explained, adding modding is also “fully supported without any restrictions.”
🔸️We are closely discussing the region lock issue with the publisher and are doing our BEST to resolve most of it as soon as possible.
🔸️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… pic.twitter.com/JDimvKiKte— StellarBlade (@StellarBlade) May 16, 2025
At the time of writing (Monday, May 19), there has been no further update on the issue.
The PC version of Stellar Blade launches via Steam on June 11 along with a raft of PC-specific features, including AI upscaling via Nvidia DLSS 4 and AMD FSR 3, an unlocked framerate, Japanese and Chinese voiceover, ultrawide display support, higher resolution environment textures, and DualSense support for haptic feedback and trigger effects.
IGN’s Stellar Blade review returned a 7/10. We said: “Stellar Blade is great in all of the most important ways for an action game, but dull characters, a lackluster story, and several frustrating elements of its RPG mechanics prevent it from soaring along with the best of the genre.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter, critic, columnist, and consultant. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
