Death Stranding 2 New Zealand trick explained

Death Stranding 2 is right on the horizon, and excitement amongst fans is at an all-time high. The official release date is set for June 25, 2025, with a 48-hour early access release available for Digital Edition buyers. However, some fans have found an interesting way to jump into the game earlier than others. This trick could allow players to gain early access by taking advantage of the time zone difference.

On that note, here's everything you need to know about the New Zealand trick to play Death Stranding 2 early.

How to play Death Stranding 2 early using the New Zealand trick

Since New Zealand is one of the first countries to enter a new day, the players of that country would be able to access Death Stranding 2 before the rest of the world. For global players, this led to an interesting workaround.

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To access the game early, you can follow these steps:

Create a new PSN account and set the country to New Zealand.
Proceed to buy Death Stranding 2 using the new account.
Use a method that supports foreign currency, such as New Zealand Dollars (NZD) in this case.

Simply changing your console’s time zone and using your main account won’t work, as Sony locks the game access based on the region that you set while making the account initially. If you purchased the game on your main PSN account, then unfortunately, there's no way to play the game early. There are no workarounds to sync your new account's achievements and progress with your previous one either.

Additionally, it is to be noted that the payment method you use must support international transactions, so that you can buy Death Stranding 2 in NZD.

The New Zealand trick has been infamous in the gaming community for a while, especially for PC players, as services like Steam or Epic Games don't restrict you from changing your region. Thus, players are able to play new games way before the expected release time in their region. For example, there's an 8-hour difference between Eastern Time and New Zealand Standard Time.

That's everything you need to know about the New Zealand trick. While it technically works, it's not really that convenient for PlayStation users. If you are interested, purchase the game here.

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About the author

Harshit Singh is a gaming journalist at Sportskeeda, with Fortnite, Counter-Strike 2, and Marvel Rivals being his areas of specialization. A final-year B.Des (Visual Communication) student at Delhi Technological University, he is always eager to pursue creative endeavors. Harshit aims to deliver news and up-to-date content promptly to players around the globe. To that end, he acquires information from reliable forums and social media pages and religiously tracks the latest coverage of Fortnite — a game he has been playing since 2018. He is often found testing the new meta in-game or spectating competitive tournaments.

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Harshit is an ardent fan of esports titles like CS, Rocket League, and Valorant, with Fnatic, EDG, G2, and Astralis being a few of his favorite orgs. Counter-Strike pro Xantares and Benjifishy, an esports athlete who has mastered both Fortnite and Valorant, are inspirational figures for him.

Harshit works as a music producer under the alias Hysaze. He is extremely passionate about EDM and has garnered over 40 million streams across all platforms. He is also a regular contributor to Fandom’s EDM Wiki.

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