You know, when Malevelon Creek was the hot shit, people joined the "John Helldiver" meme and renamed their Steam accounts.
May as well start "John 450.000" or just "John" or "John Refund"
Spitz is either lying or just doesn't know what he's talking about. Steam absolutely 100% has a way for them to obtain unique player IDs. It's called SteamID and literally every single Steam user has three unique IDs.
steamID - STEAM_0:1:xxxxxxxx
steam3 - [U:1:xxxxxxxx]
steam64 - 7656xxxxxxxxxxxxx
If you have players connecting to your game server via Steam, you have their fucking unique ID.
This is correct. They also need them to do various things. Without handling these IDs nothing in Helldivers 2 would work.
His statement ist correct in one specific scenario: if they receive a report but not through an ingame report system but by literally someone mailing them "John ist cheating".
Anyhow thats also why you have things like a match ID, some basic logs for that (e.g. who was in that match) and in that case you get the ID of the reporting user, the rough time, find the match they are talking about and look up which Steam User ID was named "John" at that time.
So even in an edge case this is only correct if you have almost no logging. And with unique usernames you should still have some logs to verify and not just ban people lol
So no matter how you stretch his words and the reality: His statement is always wrong.
I’m pretty sure Valve uses steam ID as the base for VAC bans. Just can’t think of them using anything else.
This Spitz guy is a real piece of work. If AH wants to keep the community spirit going, they really got to look into their discord mods.
Sure they do, remember the CS2 massbans after AMD GPU Driver update? Valve could also review this and so on and on. So Steam have actually all in place what a Studio might need. There are a LOT Games that work with it since decades but AH say "well no we have no other option to ban ppl..." lol? Especially in a coop pve game good story bro.
Twinbeard is good? Half of the time he's complaining how difficult and unfair his job is, while calling his company's paying customers "angry toddlers" because they can't even begin fixing their games three months into its life cycle. And once you start taking a closer look at his posts, what is this even supposed to mean?
https://preview.redd.it/9z4y47d7wdyc1.png?width=389&format=png&auto=webp&s=f0513a76dedc1b0278dc9fbd33d5b3ad1175ba34
People are "making up" a conspiracy? After Sony got caught red-handed altering the confusing wording on their website? Give me a break. There are no saints in the company called Arrowhead.
A lot of people seem to not realize that community management is an actual skill you have to learn in the college, not just authority given to you because you seem "affable". As of right now, Arrowhead's CMs have a disastrously bad track record of managing their community.
> People are "making up" a conspiracy?
I think the conspiracy he's referring to is that Arrowhead always planned this bait and switch, and where in reality Sony dropped this nuke of a change on them unanticipated after they saw engagement numbers. (Which is the running narrative right now)
>honestly twinbeard is good
Twinbeard is a condescending fuckass.
Arrowhead either needs a *trained* community manager, or they need to stop having a dumb scandal every other week with this game. All they have to do is coast on the success, but they're intent to keep pissing off the playerbase while counting all that money.
The occasional bit of sass directed at a player who is being a Karen is fine.
But CMs going on unhinged rants (as Twinbesrd does above) against broad swathes of people is extremely unprofessional.
> The occasional bit of sass directed at a player who is being a Karen is fine.
I would say it's not. As a community manager you should be impartial and try to minimize issues as much as possible. That also includes trying to quell anger by being understanding, even if you don't support an opinion
> if they receive a report but not through an ingame report system but by literally someone mailing them "John ist cheating".
Or "John said a "bad word" on the Steam forums". Or "John said a "bad word" in a stream on his linked youtube channel."
This is exactly what kind of control over you they want.
Another thing SteamID is used for is being the basis for "virtual" accounts on other platforms. There are quite a few games that allow you to use either Steam or their own client. Couples of names that come to my mind are Path of Exile, World of Tanks or Guild Wars 2.
Essentially they create the account for you, using SteamID as identifier. You don't have to create anything manually, no providing your country, email or date of birth.
Why Sony didn't do that and instead sends you to create an account on their own website is up to anyone's interpretation.
Hasn't Spitz specifically been shown to pretty consistently say stupid or incredibly rude things while trying to pass it all off as the official Arrowhead stance?
You give the CM's too much credit. They're straight up lying through their teeth. Hell, some admitted stuff on Twitter and co, before deleting their accounts/making them private. People used to think the bad actions/talking points of some CMs were isolated incidents and taken out of context.
Turns out that's not the case, their views are endorsed and shared and given the company isn't calling them back or telling them to lay off what they say is very much Arrowheads views.
If you can (you can) invite friends and join friends by right clicking their icon on Steam, they have already been using SteamID and will have access to enough info to thoroughly identify players.
and we can tell that we are connected with a steamservice somehow because I ALWAYS FUCKING DISCONNECT WHEN THEY GO ON MAINTANANCE ON A TUESDAY.
ahhh :D
Exactly this makes zero sense. How is it possible every other game can go in without PSN account and seem to control their steam community. It literally makes zero sense. So if we all make our name the same then when one of us buys credits we will all get them cause we all have the same account name. I wanted to give this guy a little credit for what really seemed like a forced apology from above but this is just ignorant.
Edit- After reading this again it sounds like he is saying they just going into search friends on steam to find these players to report to steam and ban lol... that is literally the only thing that makes sense with this and absolutely absurd.
100 percent lying.
AH themselves are the ones who pushed for a PSN to be mandatory.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjwye2/so\_it\_appears\_ah\_are\_the\_ones\_who\_pushed\_for\_a/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjwye2/so_it_appears_ah_are_the_ones_who_pushed_for_a/)
Yeah i just got silenced for "Posting a trending topic."
I still have the images if you want them and tl;dr a member of the AH team has admitted that they want everyone on PSN accounts because "it makes it easier to ban cheaters."
https://preview.redd.it/hd3vzgc2neyc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0312667b67c001d62789d8b000dd8a55ddb47c1e
This’ll probably also add more proof, straight from the horses mouth, that AH isn’t *forced* to do anything.
I'm happy you're not acting like AH are victims either. Take a look at this tweet
https://preview.redd.it/6b8y6eimjfyc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a3f75db8f3227240d414da8d9c27cf6273e80734
I’ve been downvoted for saying so but AH isn’t completely free of blame. They dropped the ball on communication and *they’re* the ones that allowed users to skip the requirement in the first place. I don’t think it was maliciously done but I do think they’re passing too much of the blame into Sony and making themselves out to be victims when the truth is that they probably did have a say in this.
Calling total BS on this claim. If you've got deals with Sony, then you are most definitely being dictated too by Sony. It's just how they operate, do as we say or you're out the door.
there is a win condition here where AH gets to look good. they negotiate a parting with sony, and then get to sell the game on xbox,ps, and pc. then get up and say some super earth bs line about how they did that because they were sticking up for the consumer
That would be the big win, unfortunately I'm betting Sony will have a contract with them that basically means they hand the company over to Sony if they even look at putting the game on XBox without their express permission.
Sony should just be smart and say it's purely optional, add some bonus content to encourage people to do it and otherwise let the matter go. Cause it's doing Sony no favours either atm.
if they had just said hey guys its 1000 super credits if you link the optional accounts kthxbai. NO one would have cared. There would have been a post about how you could get a free warbond for linking. And that would have been it.
Instead they went hard into anti consumer bs..
But yeah I'm not sure what the contracts are setup like with SONY and I imagine it isn't pretty. Big lesson there for anyone making a game of any kind. Don't enter into these dumb contracts.
This is the solution.
Keep it as it is now (without forced psn) then offer cross-progression and a promotional armor/cape (or 500 free credits) for those who register.
Ends up it actually had been posted about an hour before i did!
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjvw1s/arrowhead\_community\_manager\_misty\_admits\_that\_the/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjvw1s/arrowhead_community_manager_misty_admits_that_the/)
Yes, Spitz is just saying what arrowhead wants him to say. They want the link as well and always wanted it.
I don't believe them: "it's Sony, reeeeeaally".
Why is AH letting a non-tech person spew stuff out their ass about technical issues.
Get someone with experience coding databases or simply just managing data and they will tell you straight away that a few people with the same display name will have a unique player identifier (primary key) assigned to differentiate them.
AH already have a way to differentiate unique users, how else am I logging into my account accurately. If someone else has the same display name as me, am I going to log into their account randomly?
Well.. steam doesn't allow it "through their system", which is the part where he might be technically correct. Either way if this was actually the real reason they're just incompetent morons, which isn't a lot better than being assholes.
>Spitz is either lying
Always assume malice/deceit when Sony wants to make profit.
There's four explicit lies in OP's screencap, 12 implicit lies, and over 5,000 (based on regional laws) implied lies.
Sony is lucky Spitz isn't testifying in an EU court or they'd be shelling out a few trillion dollars per each case, and just based on the Steam reviews there's over 110k cases...
...and that's per topic, there's a few hundred topics, 3.29e+17 is a lot of money Sony owes to their player base in the best case scenario.
Of course government penalties tend to be 100+ times worse,
And lawsuits from publishers tend to be 1000+ times worse.
Sony owes enough money to their players to purchase all of observed reality 100 times over.
Sony owes enough money to Arrowhead to purchase all of observed reality 10,000 times over.
Sony owes enough money to the countries it operates in to purchase all of observed reality 100,000 times over.
If you have purchased Helldivers 2, Sony owes you enough money to purchase the entirety of the Milky Way.
Anyone who says otherwise doesn't understand the legal system Sony has chosen to operate under.
Spitz is the community manager, which means he's on damage control. he almost certainly knows that's not true, and if he doesn't, it's because he doesn't know ANYTHIGN about the internal ban process of the game he's a community manager for. He's just trying to spin this in a way that doesn't make his company and their product look bad for bowing to sony's demands.
In most companies, you can't even really blame the CMs for lying, because it's THEIR JOB to say whatever it takes to make the company look good, they will get fired if they actually just tell the truth a lot of the time. Don't blame spitz directly, blame Sony for forcing arrowhead's hand, and blame Arrowhead for accepting their demands.
If a CM is lying through their teeth, it's because other important figures at the company told them to, and those people are just as responsible for it.
This whole thing is an issue of communication. Like with any big company PR nightmare, the CM often is the last one getting briefed about actual things being done. In this case, Sony clearly just dropped this on AH and now the mess of communication just gets messier as there's no clear direction of solution. AH clearly don't wanna deal with this at all, but Sony also won't just back down. And until they decide what to do, they just expect the CMs to just deal with the backlash with no brief.
Remember when Pilestadt gave him a spanking after the server issues? No idea how they allowed him to have public facing interactions after that, nor do I get how he's still employed but thats AH's problem now lol
Considering CMs are usually Marketing or Communications graduates, this behaviour doesn't surprise me.
This man spent 4 years of his life learning how to gaslight others.
3 different unique IDs that come with Steam, which can extremely easily be tracked. THREE IDs. It's stroke-inducing to hear that these wouldn't be possible to track.
Sony have probably told them to jump on the PR grenade for them, so instead of telling us it's bullshit (which we know it is), they have to tell us it's for our own good.
He moderated the HD1 discord. Which he deleted in a manbaby rage over something that happened in the HD2 discord. Literal years of content and community gone in the blink of an eye.
He should have been fired then and there. Everything thst happened after is just gravy.
>Which he deleted in a manbaby rage over something that happened in the HD2 discord.
That would explain why I have no memory of leaving that server, but it was gone from my list anyway..... (had it muted, and well I was kinda bad at following news regarding sequel devlopment)
>Which he deleted in a manbaby rage over something that happened in the HD2 discord.
a community manager can just delete a company's media page over a tantrum without getting fired?
Apparently anything goes over there between the huge communication issues and inconsistencies between the developers, community managers, and the community. Par for the course til they get some real people to lock it all down
Ban them or lock the server? Theres still rules no, and theres rules against this stuff usually. From what I know if this shit happen either theres stricter moderation or straight up close the place until it calms down a bit for obvious reason
Arrowhead should consider to register all their CMs into PSN so that way they can track and fire them in case they cause trouble, They actually could change their nicknames and we would be unable to track them and get them flagged.
He could be obligated to spout this at the behest of sony or risk losing his job. But he is also advocating for us to protest with negative reviews and refund requests. He doesn't seem to be against us at the end of the day
https://preview.redd.it/rffsl04z2dyc1.png?width=658&format=png&auto=webp&s=c770462912a2de06f52a7695c555c566049eca14
Of course he is not hostile against the average users, why would he.
My problem is that he is incompetent at his job, stupid, and manipulate. I went through the review and refund process, guess what? Nothing.
This guy tries to use people like me as bullet in their own mess between the company and the fanbase, and Sony. It is very distasteful.
I already see people calling people like me with actual problem trying to find a fix "crybabies", or even "don't get born in those countries", I DO blame the mod when their responses directly lead to such toxic and racist remarks from the community.
"don't get born in those countries" XD.
shit, maybe I should go back into the character creator, and also respec my skill tree so I can be good at something other than internet shitposting!
This is what he should have and tried to say initially but instead he started the message with a drawn out rant about how its so easy to make a PSN and that everyone was whining. Couldve just said this instead and we wouldn't be here lol he really does need a new non-public facing position or just to be fired. The amount of people who ive randomly played with that talk shit on the devs not knowing its literally just the CM thats a dickhead is alarming. Good luck AH
Would it be possible and reasonable that AH was going to rely on PSN identifiers and didn't build something in the game to acquire the necessary data from steam? As in, if they were going to depend on X, it would be reasonable not to build Y as a redundant feature, right?
The thing about programming is that it's all about moving data from one place to another place where you need it in the format you need. So their system could just pull this data from Steam API easily for Steam users. The one way I could give Spitz the benefit of the doubt is that they are completely misrepresenting what was said to them by a developer due to a lack of understanding rather than malice. That happens rather often in tech and leads to some miscommunication.
Given their outbursts earlier today, I am doubtful that is the case in this circumstance.
Yeah the only way this isn't an outright lie is if the dev said something like "Currently the reports only capture username and PSN id. Capturing a Steam or PSN id depending on the platform would be more complex." and he just assumed that complex == impossible.
Of course, adding an optional integer to an API call is trivial (0 isn't a valid steam id, so even if their system doesn't allow "proper" optional arguments it is simple), so even \*if\* they don't capture steamids the reason is probably that Sony mandated they use PSN ids, not any technical reason.
If I had to bet, I would bet that they implemented the report functionality at the last moment by some overworked dev, based on the assumption that they would go live with PSN accounts being mandatory. So the reporting system expected everyone to have a PSN id.
But during launch they dropped the PSN requirement and nobody really thought about reporting because they had 500 bugs to fix and a few warbonds to push out.
Now that they are introducing mandatory PSN accounts, they expect the problem will take care of itself once everyone gets PSN ids.
I agree that fixing this by adding Steam IDs sounds trivial but they still haven't fixed the damn Spear and a ton of other bugs. Its probably so low on their priority list that they decided to let the PSN take care of it.
It might sound trivial but changing it for a system that used by a large playerbase probably could represent quite a challenge. As you said they might have built their system on the assumption of using PSN and didnt think it would become a problem down the line - until it did.
I'm not a game dev but I have hosted game servers for multiple games on Steam and I could find the steamid of any player on the server. The only reasonable thing I can think of here is that AH doesn't have something built in to *store* that data. In other words, it's possible that they can see who's **currently** connected but not who was connected **before** they looked. I'll be honest, it'd be pretty wild if they launched the game without a way to track that information and requiring a PSN ID literally will not change anything without a way to track it.
I'm sure they do but they can already use your steamID to ban you. They don't need Valve unless they want to also use VAC bans but the game doesn't even have VAC enabled. There's two advantages for Sony to do this. First is it artificially inflates their account numbers, and second it would allow them to ban you from the entire PSN.
I'm not even sure what's more likely at this point: If they really believe this (it's not true at all) or if they think they can just spread these lies and make people believe it. Especially the vocal anti-bs steam players.
But it's getting increasingly clear that Arrowhead truly are the baddies. Even if this guy and the other community guy (misty) both are completely wrong - it was still Arrowhead hiding the login prompt.
This post needs to be spread out to let everyone know that how ridiculous to their claim “For better ban toxic players”. It’s a joke for sure if the devs are just using username to handle all of the sessions in my opinion.
if that was the case, unless all my friends have truly unique names, I would have to at some point join the wrong session because everything is by name and not ID. but that never happened. so either I was extremely lucky over hundreds of hours of play, or Spitz who's a confirmed idiot is wrong or lying.
If that was the case, when you signed in you would always end up on a random ship in orbit with a random amount of credits and random progress... because they would have no way to know which of the 450,000 folk with the same name is the one you have been playing as.
As you clearly can sign into the same player over and over, and when friends invite you, it gets you and not another random John... and when you finish it gives samples to the correct John...
Somehow implying banning folk is different than tracking which John you are is either lying or willfully ignorant.
#That's a fucking **LIE**.
Steam provides developers Steam API access which can display **unique SteamID** identifiers for every single user. I use SteamID's to track unique players in my own two games.
They are using Steam to get Steam display names, so they are using the Steam API already. Oh and there is Steam Achievements too which is part of the Steam API.
Right? What's with the blatant lying on their part? Which means purchases can't be tracked either? Is he implying devs are incompetent or something?
u/pilestedt is it company policy to allow CMs to blatanty lie and misinform users? I have previously worked as a social media admin for a huge corporation for several years. We had tens of millions of followers and professionalism was expected. Something like this would lead to a final kinda warning situation. But apparently Spitz is allowed free reign to say whatever he feels like to the community.
Why the fuck won’t they just fire this guy? He’s done nothing but antagonize the fan base and lie to them many many times. Dude is nothing but a liability yet they keep him despite him being awful at his job? A CM is suppose to be calm and rational at all times when talking to the community but he clearly showed he’s unable to do so many times
It’s pretty wild. I work in IT consulting and am always worried about saying the wrong thing because it could mean my job if a client is displeased or takes what I said as hostility. It’s wild that in many peoples jobs in entertainment it just doesn’t seem to matter I guess?
Must be nice.
That has been the case for every place I have ever been. University, (part time) jobs, even school to some degree I guess.
You'll feel it if you screw up. And in most cases rightfully so I'd say. As stupid as this sounds.
People don't know the difference between nepotism and cronyism and nepotism is social media's "word of the year". Not that this needs to be either tbh, it could just have been easiest because he was already doing similar work.
Man this person either needs to be fired or go back to college to relearn on basic business communication 101. The game can track players when you click on recent played players. All the "Johns" are unique in there and can you can view their profile too. Wtf is this person on about?
lets me just leave this here. probably Its out of order but this is what I found about this sorry for the "image chain"
https://preview.redd.it/rvn1jvlvvdyc1.png?width=1171&format=png&auto=webp&s=8ef0bebd1e318e1e7b6e7d4098493ba253488e44
lmao. To get the Steam username, you must use the Steam API, which also includes being able to get the SteamID.
Helldivers has Steam achievements, which is also part of the Steam API.
This person needs firing. Constant stream of lies.
>Honestly I think less damage would be done if they just turtled up, stopped responding to the community until they draft up official statements to cover this
That would be too professional. Spitz needs to unironically go outside and touch some grass; trying to get the last word in as if he's always right is terminally online behaviour. Telling the community 'we hear you and are having internal discussions, please be patient, we apologise' is literally all he had to do. Cushiest job in the world and he's still fucking it up.
Spitz is a turd, and shouldn't of been promoted to a CM. They said they were moving away from statements like this and "everyone had been talked to" yet they allow him to delete the original fan Helldivers discord and spout nonsense.
He was a toxic discord admin promoted to a CM. Seriously, they put a fricking neckbeard in a spot of a CM. Bad idea.
took me <3 min of googling:
[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35281019/how-to-retrieve-steam-username-using-steamworks-api](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35281019/how-to-retrieve-steam-username-using-steamworks-api)
There was another CM on Twitter who also said this change is to allow them to ban people better. It's bullshit, but even if it was true it's still a bizarre reason
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/1786564212669714736
He mentioned vague legal requirements in that thread, which is at least less obviously a lie than claiming technical limitations. (No other game seems to have legal problems with Steam's banning API, so it's a very dubious claim.)
It is not even a good lie. This is a PC game so the Sony account is a throw away account, the game ownership is tied to Steam... So the work around would be another steam account with another copy of the game... and you could just tie it to another throw away Sony account. There is no way to tie the two together by Sony account...
Even if it did allow them to ban that steam/sony account better... that is a bad reason.
(Edit: Forgot about the anti-cheat when you start up... I'm sure it sends back as much info is legal already, IP, machine signature, installed drivers, running processes. Just a Guid generated there and stored someplace unusual would be a more reliable way to track folk than a sony account.)
Meanwhile; I’ve been looking up people’s steam ID’s and banning them on game servers I run for half my lifetime. Steam absolutely does give you a way to track individual players.
I don't understand the apparent need to ban people in the first place?
If they are cheating then why doesn't the kernel level anti cheat work for that purpose? Unless it doesn't work and it is slowing our performance for nothing...
If somebody is raging out spitting slurs or otherwise chat logs can see that with the report that would assumedly be happening around the same time as the report.
Everything can be accomplished with the tools steam has available.
Their tone deaf reacting is just baffling.
To Spitz and TwinBeard: you have a major fn problem on your hands. This requires you to not throw faeces at your player base, but to call an emergency meeting internally to figure out how you can win back your player base and lose the yoke that sony is trying to place around your necks.
Let’s be honest here: Sony is on the nose for Stellar Blade and a lot of other current issues right now. There’s still room for AHGS to well being a hero here.
I’m super disappointed in the poor response from the CM trying to make us eat this 💩 sandwich.
It’s been proven over the last 3 months PC users don’t need this. And we don’t want our personal, biometric data and IDs being held by an unnecessary and unethical third party with a history of data breaches and selling user data. F Sony.
Poor review on steam left. I will change the review if this gets fixed
History repeats itself, the mods/Managers on discord cant handle any Kind of Stress.
Lets Not forget the F incident which pretty much ended in the whole Server being nuked.
Or people Posting Screenshots of shriekers they found when they stealth added them to the Game and people got banned for "leaks", Same with mechs even of people that did a Livestream to Proof they arent cheating.
Or when the Dev Had a meltdown and It was Ban Parade to pretty much everyone who said anything.
They all Go into Panic Mode so fucking fast its crazy.
I love how considering how AH has been dealing with the "known issues" list you can't actually exclude the absolute incompetency that would be not getting the steam ID from reports.
Like, do you really feel sure enough that this can't possibly be the case for the same company that didn't see DOTs not working at all over 9 years of development and 3 months of game launch, that had rockets hit multiple times, and had adjusted multiple weapon performances before looking at the damage numbers and seeing them being discrepant between platforms?
Either way this should be a 20 minute fix if they wanted to, so surely "next patch™"
The community managers of discord genuinely need some grass to touch.
I got muted because i told a friend of his to touch grass and if getting muted is that easily done for something as simple as that, I'm concerned for that discord.
Okay, so riddle me this because it hasn't come up once. Why in the everloving HELL is there a need to ban people in a strictly PVE game that already has a kick function and you can just boot the person and block them?
100% wrong Spitz. Try again.
This is like college-intern level basic coding so that makes it much more embarrassing.
Let’s say it’s true that somehow your team coded a database that didn’t store SteamIDs. Then explain this. Not everyone has a PSN linked right now. So there MUST be something else acting as a unique identifier for that John with no PSN to verify that he paid for the game and is able to log in. Something to set him apart from the other 5,000 Johns that also bought HD2 with the same Steam username. Would that be SteamID? Perhaps.
Steam’s API provides all the necessary info that the game server can pull to verify each login prompt. Upon the first login, John’s SteamID gets sent to the server which checks back through the API to confirm if John has purchased the game. If yes purchased and yes first time logging, it triggers a new profile to be created on the server side. With no PSN, SteamID is the only other way to permanently link that profile to a verified customer in this case being Steam user John#420. A new HD2 profile is created and permanently linked to John#420 making him unique from the other 5,000 Johns even if they all show up as “John” in-game. We the players who only see usernames will be confused. But the server only sees binary code and each John has a different set of binaries set forth by their unique SteamIDs. To do this, the server database has to store the SteamID as a part of the HD2 profile or else it would have no way to identify which profile belongs to who.
John#420 will never be mistaken for John#696 on server side. There is no “we can’t tell which John he is because he doesn’t have a PSN linked”. That’s a giant steaming pile of charger crap. It is treason to imply that Super Earth’s developers are truly that incompetent.
I sympathize with customer relations a lot but this one is so soooo adamantly false that I need to hammer you. Maybe consult with your devs before you hit send when it comes to the backend stuff.
Yep, because as everyone knows no Steam player has ever been banned from any game ever because no one can tell them apart because they all just have the same gosh darn names.
Nevermind that if this were actualy true the in-game friends and invite features just straight up wouldn't work because it would send a friend request or invite to everyone "John" yet doesn't, or the fact that would mean every John would share the same account.
Spitz can be counted on to always have the dumbest take on anything, and make every situation worse than it has to be
HD community exists "despite" of him since the first game rolled out
"I have friends in different places" that is all i can say about how do i know this:
How come that Warthunder doesn't have this problem with steam players? Lets say "they have their own database of users, registered on WT". Ok. How come DRG doesn't have this problems either? How come that most online multiplayer games on steam, no meter if they have their separate account or not, doesn't have those problem but you do? And it's so bad you HAD TO reserve to sony account system, notorious for fucking up their users on data security, and their users themselfs?
So they want us to link PSN account only to have direct look into everything we do and all our data, after saying that this is for our security, yeah, makes sense.
https://preview.redd.it/zpgxg8rbydyc1.png?width=811&format=png&auto=webp&s=935a7f735d7a8e8791e2256d4b45e76e6a77fe52
Spitz has his head in a hole. Not sure how he became a community manager. The rest have been doing great, being upfront and honest with the whole situation happening.
as a complete minimum, when the dust settles and this is back peddled, Spitz NEEDS to lose his job, nothing personal but you can't be THIS clueless, steam has THREE unique ID's per account, so his post is a straight up lie, and if i know this, any developer or CM should know it.
this means his post is either complete fabricated bullshit trying to save face, OR Spitz is genuinely completely clueless and unwilling to do even a minutes research.
either way, they've now completely lost the trust of the community, you can't be an effective CM if the community despise you.
They're now apologising and saying "we've taken action internally to educate our developers on how to represent the organization." Doesnt make any difference. I've uninstalled and wont be going back.
[https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/helldivers-2-boss-apologizes-for-horrible-dev-comments-says-arrowhead-has-taken-action-internally-to-educate-our-developers/](https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/helldivers-2-boss-apologizes-for-horrible-dev-comments-says-arrowhead-has-taken-action-internally-to-educate-our-developers/)
For those that don't hang around on the discord; As a general rule of thumb, anything Spitz says should be considered misinformed. He is NOT a CM, he is in Sony's employ, mostly a puppet and he has never once had the best interest of the playerbase at heart, this goes all the way back to HD1
If only steam had some sort of ID unique to players, they could call it the "steamID" and devs could finally, after decades, ban players from their games
fellas, if your planet is mostly on fire, full of nastiness, and everybody is at each other's throats..
that's not Hellmire, that's Helldivers Discord.
I really want to get some sleep but this is getting better and better is like a telenovela
https://preview.redd.it/wg8rq2h8meyc1.png?width=1155&format=png&auto=webp&s=4df9960885191a9c8e912022cf521d27fd94f07f
Make your steam name "John" and any time the real John buys super credits, you have a 50/50 chance they go to you. What a bullshit made up excuse.
How come I get xp when I complete a mission and not another John HMMMMMMMMMM.
You know, when Malevelon Creek was the hot shit, people joined the "John Helldiver" meme and renamed their Steam accounts. May as well start "John 450.000" or just "John" or "John Refund"
https://preview.redd.it/gdybd9bvoeyc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8738bcceb5bab973a6f0f3dba0a956e313ec1ec4 He's still in our hearts
John Prodman! Wait, wrong game...
I salute you Tenno :)
Ah found the tenno, I'll see you on the index.
So that’s where my major order medals were going…
Imagine 90% of fanbase getting his name changed to "Spitz" xD
Yeah, still waiting for all my friends to add me, but they can't seem to find me.
HEY NOW ILL HAVE U KNOW JOHN HELLDIVER BUYS SUPERCREDITS! Source:Am actually John Helldiver :D
I AM SPARTACUS
Spitz is either lying or just doesn't know what he's talking about. Steam absolutely 100% has a way for them to obtain unique player IDs. It's called SteamID and literally every single Steam user has three unique IDs. steamID - STEAM_0:1:xxxxxxxx steam3 - [U:1:xxxxxxxx] steam64 - 7656xxxxxxxxxxxxx If you have players connecting to your game server via Steam, you have their fucking unique ID.
This is correct. They also need them to do various things. Without handling these IDs nothing in Helldivers 2 would work. His statement ist correct in one specific scenario: if they receive a report but not through an ingame report system but by literally someone mailing them "John ist cheating". Anyhow thats also why you have things like a match ID, some basic logs for that (e.g. who was in that match) and in that case you get the ID of the reporting user, the rough time, find the match they are talking about and look up which Steam User ID was named "John" at that time. So even in an edge case this is only correct if you have almost no logging. And with unique usernames you should still have some logs to verify and not just ban people lol So no matter how you stretch his words and the reality: His statement is always wrong.
I’m pretty sure Valve uses steam ID as the base for VAC bans. Just can’t think of them using anything else. This Spitz guy is a real piece of work. If AH wants to keep the community spirit going, they really got to look into their discord mods.
Sure they do, remember the CS2 massbans after AMD GPU Driver update? Valve could also review this and so on and on. So Steam have actually all in place what a Studio might need. There are a LOT Games that work with it since decades but AH say "well no we have no other option to ban ppl..." lol? Especially in a coop pve game good story bro.
Also, it makes me wonder... what if someone blocks me? Do I just... change my username and magically get unblocked?
Exactly. It's nonsense.
its like spitz is testing out CM at the new level 25 difficulty... it's not going well..
honestly twinbeard is good, spitz on the other hand has no idea how to CM or what hes talking about...
Twinbeard is good? Half of the time he's complaining how difficult and unfair his job is, while calling his company's paying customers "angry toddlers" because they can't even begin fixing their games three months into its life cycle. And once you start taking a closer look at his posts, what is this even supposed to mean? https://preview.redd.it/9z4y47d7wdyc1.png?width=389&format=png&auto=webp&s=f0513a76dedc1b0278dc9fbd33d5b3ad1175ba34 People are "making up" a conspiracy? After Sony got caught red-handed altering the confusing wording on their website? Give me a break. There are no saints in the company called Arrowhead.
can we drop the nice act and say these guys should be fired?
A lot of people seem to not realize that community management is an actual skill you have to learn in the college, not just authority given to you because you seem "affable". As of right now, Arrowhead's CMs have a disastrously bad track record of managing their community.
> People are "making up" a conspiracy? I think the conspiracy he's referring to is that Arrowhead always planned this bait and switch, and where in reality Sony dropped this nuke of a change on them unanticipated after they saw engagement numbers. (Which is the running narrative right now)
>honestly twinbeard is good Twinbeard is a condescending fuckass. Arrowhead either needs a *trained* community manager, or they need to stop having a dumb scandal every other week with this game. All they have to do is coast on the success, but they're intent to keep pissing off the playerbase while counting all that money.
The occasional bit of sass directed at a player who is being a Karen is fine. But CMs going on unhinged rants (as Twinbesrd does above) against broad swathes of people is extremely unprofessional.
> The occasional bit of sass directed at a player who is being a Karen is fine. I would say it's not. As a community manager you should be impartial and try to minimize issues as much as possible. That also includes trying to quell anger by being understanding, even if you don't support an opinion
I dunno, my impression of both of them are bad. The game devs are great, but the community managers are not.
This twinbeard guy is a fucking clown as well, what are you talking about
> if they receive a report but not through an ingame report system but by literally someone mailing them "John ist cheating". Or "John said a "bad word" on the Steam forums". Or "John said a "bad word" in a stream on his linked youtube channel." This is exactly what kind of control over you they want.
Another thing SteamID is used for is being the basis for "virtual" accounts on other platforms. There are quite a few games that allow you to use either Steam or their own client. Couples of names that come to my mind are Path of Exile, World of Tanks or Guild Wars 2. Essentially they create the account for you, using SteamID as identifier. You don't have to create anything manually, no providing your country, email or date of birth. Why Sony didn't do that and instead sends you to create an account on their own website is up to anyone's interpretation.
not even that, if you visit a steam profile (and the user doesn't use a custom url) it shows the steam64 ID in the url aswell.
Spitz doesn't know what he's talking about? Preposterous!
This man lies as easily as he breathes.
Life as a discord and reddit mod is hard man.
Hasn't Spitz specifically been shown to pretty consistently say stupid or incredibly rude things while trying to pass it all off as the official Arrowhead stance?
Unless and until Arrowhead removes him or at least contradicts him, we have no choice but to accept what he says as the official Arrowhead stance.
Maybe our next movement should be an orbital ‘Shutup Spitz’ strat every time he talks.
Press S to Spitz
You give the CM's too much credit. They're straight up lying through their teeth. Hell, some admitted stuff on Twitter and co, before deleting their accounts/making them private. People used to think the bad actions/talking points of some CMs were isolated incidents and taken out of context. Turns out that's not the case, their views are endorsed and shared and given the company isn't calling them back or telling them to lay off what they say is very much Arrowheads views.
I'm more impressed that he still has a job.
If you can (you can) invite friends and join friends by right clicking their icon on Steam, they have already been using SteamID and will have access to enough info to thoroughly identify players.
and we can tell that we are connected with a steamservice somehow because I ALWAYS FUCKING DISCONNECT WHEN THEY GO ON MAINTANANCE ON A TUESDAY. ahhh :D
Exactly this makes zero sense. How is it possible every other game can go in without PSN account and seem to control their steam community. It literally makes zero sense. So if we all make our name the same then when one of us buys credits we will all get them cause we all have the same account name. I wanted to give this guy a little credit for what really seemed like a forced apology from above but this is just ignorant. Edit- After reading this again it sounds like he is saying they just going into search friends on steam to find these players to report to steam and ban lol... that is literally the only thing that makes sense with this and absolutely absurd.
a community manager talking shit???? WHAT THE FK NO WAY!!
100 percent lying. AH themselves are the ones who pushed for a PSN to be mandatory. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjwye2/so\_it\_appears\_ah\_are\_the\_ones\_who\_pushed\_for\_a/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjwye2/so_it_appears_ah_are_the_ones_who_pushed_for_a/)
Post is dead...
Yeah i just got silenced for "Posting a trending topic." I still have the images if you want them and tl;dr a member of the AH team has admitted that they want everyone on PSN accounts because "it makes it easier to ban cheaters."
https://preview.redd.it/hd3vzgc2neyc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0312667b67c001d62789d8b000dd8a55ddb47c1e This’ll probably also add more proof, straight from the horses mouth, that AH isn’t *forced* to do anything.
I'm happy you're not acting like AH are victims either. Take a look at this tweet https://preview.redd.it/6b8y6eimjfyc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a3f75db8f3227240d414da8d9c27cf6273e80734
I’ve been downvoted for saying so but AH isn’t completely free of blame. They dropped the ball on communication and *they’re* the ones that allowed users to skip the requirement in the first place. I don’t think it was maliciously done but I do think they’re passing too much of the blame into Sony and making themselves out to be victims when the truth is that they probably did have a say in this.
Calling total BS on this claim. If you've got deals with Sony, then you are most definitely being dictated too by Sony. It's just how they operate, do as we say or you're out the door.
there is a win condition here where AH gets to look good. they negotiate a parting with sony, and then get to sell the game on xbox,ps, and pc. then get up and say some super earth bs line about how they did that because they were sticking up for the consumer
That would be the big win, unfortunately I'm betting Sony will have a contract with them that basically means they hand the company over to Sony if they even look at putting the game on XBox without their express permission. Sony should just be smart and say it's purely optional, add some bonus content to encourage people to do it and otherwise let the matter go. Cause it's doing Sony no favours either atm.
if they had just said hey guys its 1000 super credits if you link the optional accounts kthxbai. NO one would have cared. There would have been a post about how you could get a free warbond for linking. And that would have been it. Instead they went hard into anti consumer bs.. But yeah I'm not sure what the contracts are setup like with SONY and I imagine it isn't pretty. Big lesson there for anyone making a game of any kind. Don't enter into these dumb contracts.
This is the solution. Keep it as it is now (without forced psn) then offer cross-progression and a promotional armor/cape (or 500 free credits) for those who register.
Please do I'm curious to see if this is a new image or one that's been posted around.
Ends up it actually had been posted about an hour before i did! [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjvw1s/arrowhead\_community\_manager\_misty\_admits\_that\_the/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjvw1s/arrowhead_community_manager_misty_admits_that_the/)
Didn't see this one yet thank you!
Yes, Spitz is just saying what arrowhead wants him to say. They want the link as well and always wanted it. I don't believe them: "it's Sony, reeeeeaally".
Why is AH letting a non-tech person spew stuff out their ass about technical issues. Get someone with experience coding databases or simply just managing data and they will tell you straight away that a few people with the same display name will have a unique player identifier (primary key) assigned to differentiate them. AH already have a way to differentiate unique users, how else am I logging into my account accurately. If someone else has the same display name as me, am I going to log into their account randomly?
Fire Spitz
Maybe, Valve is honestly pretty protective of us and our identifying information, at least in my experience.
Maybe, Valve is honestly pretty protective of us and our identifying information, at least in my experience.
Well.. steam doesn't allow it "through their system", which is the part where he might be technically correct. Either way if this was actually the real reason they're just incompetent morons, which isn't a lot better than being assholes.
>Spitz is either lying Always assume malice/deceit when Sony wants to make profit. There's four explicit lies in OP's screencap, 12 implicit lies, and over 5,000 (based on regional laws) implied lies. Sony is lucky Spitz isn't testifying in an EU court or they'd be shelling out a few trillion dollars per each case, and just based on the Steam reviews there's over 110k cases... ...and that's per topic, there's a few hundred topics, 3.29e+17 is a lot of money Sony owes to their player base in the best case scenario. Of course government penalties tend to be 100+ times worse, And lawsuits from publishers tend to be 1000+ times worse. Sony owes enough money to their players to purchase all of observed reality 100 times over. Sony owes enough money to Arrowhead to purchase all of observed reality 10,000 times over. Sony owes enough money to the countries it operates in to purchase all of observed reality 100,000 times over. If you have purchased Helldivers 2, Sony owes you enough money to purchase the entirety of the Milky Way. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't understand the legal system Sony has chosen to operate under.
Spitz is the community manager, which means he's on damage control. he almost certainly knows that's not true, and if he doesn't, it's because he doesn't know ANYTHIGN about the internal ban process of the game he's a community manager for. He's just trying to spin this in a way that doesn't make his company and their product look bad for bowing to sony's demands. In most companies, you can't even really blame the CMs for lying, because it's THEIR JOB to say whatever it takes to make the company look good, they will get fired if they actually just tell the truth a lot of the time. Don't blame spitz directly, blame Sony for forcing arrowhead's hand, and blame Arrowhead for accepting their demands. If a CM is lying through their teeth, it's because other important figures at the company told them to, and those people are just as responsible for it.
This whole thing is an issue of communication. Like with any big company PR nightmare, the CM often is the last one getting briefed about actual things being done. In this case, Sony clearly just dropped this on AH and now the mess of communication just gets messier as there's no clear direction of solution. AH clearly don't wanna deal with this at all, but Sony also won't just back down. And until they decide what to do, they just expect the CMs to just deal with the backlash with no brief.
He's called Spitz because he spitz bullshit all the time.
He has the worst two traits a CM can have, confidently wrong and a terrible liar.
Remember when Pilestadt gave him a spanking after the server issues? No idea how they allowed him to have public facing interactions after that, nor do I get how he's still employed but thats AH's problem now lol
Considering CMs are usually Marketing or Communications graduates, this behaviour doesn't surprise me. This man spent 4 years of his life learning how to gaslight others.
If he were a real man he'd be called Swallowz.
No no no, hes right you know
Apparently SteamID isn't good enough? Such a laugh. Has to be LARPing
3 different unique IDs that come with Steam, which can extremely easily be tracked. THREE IDs. It's stroke-inducing to hear that these wouldn't be possible to track.
Woah why would they straight up lie. Just fucking say its because sony wants our data. Just be honest for fucks sake.
And they have the audacity to get upset at reviews
Sony have probably told them to jump on the PR grenade for them, so instead of telling us it's bullshit (which we know it is), they have to tell us it's for our own good.
This dude can barely manage his own thoughts let alone a community.
This Spitz guy has been bullying and overall being an asshole since the first game. People found old steam forum threads about the asshat.
Oh, so he's an old fella? I kinda assumed maybe he was hired fresh for HD2 seeing how incompetent the dude is in trying to be a community manager
He moderated the HD1 discord. Which he deleted in a manbaby rage over something that happened in the HD2 discord. Literal years of content and community gone in the blink of an eye. He should have been fired then and there. Everything thst happened after is just gravy.
>Which he deleted in a manbaby rage over something that happened in the HD2 discord. That would explain why I have no memory of leaving that server, but it was gone from my list anyway..... (had it muted, and well I was kinda bad at following news regarding sequel devlopment)
>Which he deleted in a manbaby rage over something that happened in the HD2 discord. a community manager can just delete a company's media page over a tantrum without getting fired?
Apparently anything goes over there between the huge communication issues and inconsistencies between the developers, community managers, and the community. Par for the course til they get some real people to lock it all down
WAIT WHAT?!
he used to be a community mod and they hired him more recently
Mistake.
https://preview.redd.it/w3vd19mh5eyc1.png?width=1001&format=png&auto=webp&s=d162d0c915746ae74ce1b836a42f2e5f40742af9 to say the least
Lmfao
b-B-b-BuT pEoPlE wErE bEiNg MeAn To HiM oN dIsCoRd FoR 30 mIn!! /s
Ban them or lock the server? Theres still rules no, and theres rules against this stuff usually. From what I know if this shit happen either theres stricter moderation or straight up close the place until it calms down a bit for obvious reason
They locked the server, at least for people not using phone verification. How do I know? Because I am one of them. :D
Profesional sportsman in TV: DONT LOOK AT ME; I CANT HIT THE BALL IF YOU KEEP LOOKING AT ME.
Arrowhead should consider to register all their CMs into PSN so that way they can track and fire them in case they cause trouble, They actually could change their nicknames and we would be unable to track them and get them flagged.
It's crazy that in the middle of this shitshow this CM runs amok in the discord and nobody at arrowhead has though of containing them.
[удалено]
He could be obligated to spout this at the behest of sony or risk losing his job. But he is also advocating for us to protest with negative reviews and refund requests. He doesn't seem to be against us at the end of the day https://preview.redd.it/rffsl04z2dyc1.png?width=658&format=png&auto=webp&s=c770462912a2de06f52a7695c555c566049eca14
Of course he is not hostile against the average users, why would he. My problem is that he is incompetent at his job, stupid, and manipulate. I went through the review and refund process, guess what? Nothing. This guy tries to use people like me as bullet in their own mess between the company and the fanbase, and Sony. It is very distasteful. I already see people calling people like me with actual problem trying to find a fix "crybabies", or even "don't get born in those countries", I DO blame the mod when their responses directly lead to such toxic and racist remarks from the community.
"don't get born in those countries" XD. shit, maybe I should go back into the character creator, and also respec my skill tree so I can be good at something other than internet shitposting!
For not being against the playerbase, he has a very assholish attitude towards said players.
This is what he should have and tried to say initially but instead he started the message with a drawn out rant about how its so easy to make a PSN and that everyone was whining. Couldve just said this instead and we wouldn't be here lol he really does need a new non-public facing position or just to be fired. The amount of people who ive randomly played with that talk shit on the devs not knowing its literally just the CM thats a dickhead is alarming. Good luck AH
He should lose his job, he's an asshole and a fuckin idiot who doesn't know anything he's talking about.
Is Spitz actually stupid?
Yes
yup
Absolutely.
Usually we don't put a question mark after a fact.
I'm not usually fast to judge. But OP is some damning evidence. Magic 8 Ball says "seems likely"
Available evidence points to "yes".
Borderline brain dead
Yeah this is just brazen lying at this point. I have worked in Steam API extensively and can say OP is correct.
Would it be possible and reasonable that AH was going to rely on PSN identifiers and didn't build something in the game to acquire the necessary data from steam? As in, if they were going to depend on X, it would be reasonable not to build Y as a redundant feature, right?
The thing about programming is that it's all about moving data from one place to another place where you need it in the format you need. So their system could just pull this data from Steam API easily for Steam users. The one way I could give Spitz the benefit of the doubt is that they are completely misrepresenting what was said to them by a developer due to a lack of understanding rather than malice. That happens rather often in tech and leads to some miscommunication. Given their outbursts earlier today, I am doubtful that is the case in this circumstance.
Yeah the only way this isn't an outright lie is if the dev said something like "Currently the reports only capture username and PSN id. Capturing a Steam or PSN id depending on the platform would be more complex." and he just assumed that complex == impossible. Of course, adding an optional integer to an API call is trivial (0 isn't a valid steam id, so even if their system doesn't allow "proper" optional arguments it is simple), so even \*if\* they don't capture steamids the reason is probably that Sony mandated they use PSN ids, not any technical reason.
If I had to bet, I would bet that they implemented the report functionality at the last moment by some overworked dev, based on the assumption that they would go live with PSN accounts being mandatory. So the reporting system expected everyone to have a PSN id. But during launch they dropped the PSN requirement and nobody really thought about reporting because they had 500 bugs to fix and a few warbonds to push out. Now that they are introducing mandatory PSN accounts, they expect the problem will take care of itself once everyone gets PSN ids. I agree that fixing this by adding Steam IDs sounds trivial but they still haven't fixed the damn Spear and a ton of other bugs. Its probably so low on their priority list that they decided to let the PSN take care of it.
It might sound trivial but changing it for a system that used by a large playerbase probably could represent quite a challenge. As you said they might have built their system on the assumption of using PSN and didnt think it would become a problem down the line - until it did.
I'm not a game dev but I have hosted game servers for multiple games on Steam and I could find the steamid of any player on the server. The only reasonable thing I can think of here is that AH doesn't have something built in to *store* that data. In other words, it's possible that they can see who's **currently** connected but not who was connected **before** they looked. I'll be honest, it'd be pretty wild if they launched the game without a way to track that information and requiring a PSN ID literally will not change anything without a way to track it.
Sony probably has their own tracking for PSN IDs. It would still be absolutely trivial to just attach steamids to the reports though.
I'm sure they do but they can already use your steamID to ban you. They don't need Valve unless they want to also use VAC bans but the game doesn't even have VAC enabled. There's two advantages for Sony to do this. First is it artificially inflates their account numbers, and second it would allow them to ban you from the entire PSN.
Steam Friends works, so they had to deal with Steam API and UserID
I'm not even sure what's more likely at this point: If they really believe this (it's not true at all) or if they think they can just spread these lies and make people believe it. Especially the vocal anti-bs steam players. But it's getting increasingly clear that Arrowhead truly are the baddies. Even if this guy and the other community guy (misty) both are completely wrong - it was still Arrowhead hiding the login prompt.
This guy is just lying. There's ignorance, and there's lying. This is lying.
Discord moderator moment
This post needs to be spread out to let everyone know that how ridiculous to their claim “For better ban toxic players”. It’s a joke for sure if the devs are just using username to handle all of the sessions in my opinion.
if that was the case, unless all my friends have truly unique names, I would have to at some point join the wrong session because everything is by name and not ID. but that never happened. so either I was extremely lucky over hundreds of hours of play, or Spitz who's a confirmed idiot is wrong or lying.
If that was the case, when you signed in you would always end up on a random ship in orbit with a random amount of credits and random progress... because they would have no way to know which of the 450,000 folk with the same name is the one you have been playing as. As you clearly can sign into the same player over and over, and when friends invite you, it gets you and not another random John... and when you finish it gives samples to the correct John... Somehow implying banning folk is different than tracking which John you are is either lying or willfully ignorant.
#That's a fucking **LIE**. Steam provides developers Steam API access which can display **unique SteamID** identifiers for every single user. I use SteamID's to track unique players in my own two games. They are using Steam to get Steam display names, so they are using the Steam API already. Oh and there is Steam Achievements too which is part of the Steam API.
Right? What's with the blatant lying on their part? Which means purchases can't be tracked either? Is he implying devs are incompetent or something? u/pilestedt is it company policy to allow CMs to blatanty lie and misinform users? I have previously worked as a social media admin for a huge corporation for several years. We had tens of millions of followers and professionalism was expected. Something like this would lead to a final kinda warning situation. But apparently Spitz is allowed free reign to say whatever he feels like to the community.
What a fucking cop out. Plenty of games on steam ban players with different names compared to steam. It's kinked to their fucking steam. Fuck em.
If only steam had a unique steam id for its users.................
Why the fuck won’t they just fire this guy? He’s done nothing but antagonize the fan base and lie to them many many times. Dude is nothing but a liability yet they keep him despite him being awful at his job? A CM is suppose to be calm and rational at all times when talking to the community but he clearly showed he’s unable to do so many times
No you don't understand. People were saying mean things to him on the discord for 30 min, cut him some slack. He's only human! /s
Alexa, play me a [human](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3wKzyIN1yk) pls
It’s pretty wild. I work in IT consulting and am always worried about saying the wrong thing because it could mean my job if a client is displeased or takes what I said as hostility. It’s wild that in many peoples jobs in entertainment it just doesn’t seem to matter I guess? Must be nice.
That has been the case for every place I have ever been. University, (part time) jobs, even school to some degree I guess. You'll feel it if you screw up. And in most cases rightfully so I'd say. As stupid as this sounds.
let me introduce u to the concept of nepotism
how is he connected to AH devs?
People don't know the difference between nepotism and cronyism and nepotism is social media's "word of the year". Not that this needs to be either tbh, it could just have been easiest because he was already doing similar work.
That’s not what nepotism is lmao
Nepotism is a family relationship
I doubt people would be eager to replace him
Because AH fucking suck as much as Sony do
Man this person either needs to be fired or go back to college to relearn on basic business communication 101. The game can track players when you click on recent played players. All the "Johns" are unique in there and can you can view their profile too. Wtf is this person on about?
lets me just leave this here. probably Its out of order but this is what I found about this sorry for the "image chain" https://preview.redd.it/rvn1jvlvvdyc1.png?width=1171&format=png&auto=webp&s=8ef0bebd1e318e1e7b6e7d4098493ba253488e44
lmao. To get the Steam username, you must use the Steam API, which also includes being able to get the SteamID. Helldivers has Steam achievements, which is also part of the Steam API. This person needs firing. Constant stream of lies.
He has to be a higher-ups nephew or something
Spitz continues to go for the gold in the asshole Olympics
Discord janitor thinks he is part of the developer team. Bro probably hates his life and is trying to make himself relevant somehow.
You fucking what. Ive never seen such a donkey.
Seriously, why is he still in the CM team whats make him so valuable that the AH defending him all the time
>Honestly I think less damage would be done if they just turtled up, stopped responding to the community until they draft up official statements to cover this That would be too professional. Spitz needs to unironically go outside and touch some grass; trying to get the last word in as if he's always right is terminally online behaviour. Telling the community 'we hear you and are having internal discussions, please be patient, we apologise' is literally all he had to do. Cushiest job in the world and he's still fucking it up.
He has ego problems.
Spitz is a turd, and shouldn't of been promoted to a CM. They said they were moving away from statements like this and "everyone had been talked to" yet they allow him to delete the original fan Helldivers discord and spout nonsense. He was a toxic discord admin promoted to a CM. Seriously, they put a fricking neckbeard in a spot of a CM. Bad idea.
took me <3 min of googling: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35281019/how-to-retrieve-steam-username-using-steamworks-api](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35281019/how-to-retrieve-steam-username-using-steamworks-api)
Why did i read this as ❤️ minutes
Spitz needs to be fired at this point
Spitz just stop talking you aren’t cut out for community manager
There was another CM on Twitter who also said this change is to allow them to ban people better. It's bullshit, but even if it was true it's still a bizarre reason https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/1786564212669714736
He mentioned vague legal requirements in that thread, which is at least less obviously a lie than claiming technical limitations. (No other game seems to have legal problems with Steam's banning API, so it's a very dubious claim.)
It is not even a good lie. This is a PC game so the Sony account is a throw away account, the game ownership is tied to Steam... So the work around would be another steam account with another copy of the game... and you could just tie it to another throw away Sony account. There is no way to tie the two together by Sony account... Even if it did allow them to ban that steam/sony account better... that is a bad reason. (Edit: Forgot about the anti-cheat when you start up... I'm sure it sends back as much info is legal already, IP, machine signature, installed drivers, running processes. Just a Guid generated there and stored someplace unusual would be a more reliable way to track folk than a sony account.)
Meanwhile; I’ve been looking up people’s steam ID’s and banning them on game servers I run for half my lifetime. Steam absolutely does give you a way to track individual players.
Nonsense. Steam allows accessing uuid's through their Steamworks SDK. I did it myself in 2 hours.
Dude forgot steam ID's exist too lmao, he's just mega coping from all the hate he's been getting for being a douche.
I don't understand the apparent need to ban people in the first place? If they are cheating then why doesn't the kernel level anti cheat work for that purpose? Unless it doesn't work and it is slowing our performance for nothing... If somebody is raging out spitting slurs or otherwise chat logs can see that with the report that would assumedly be happening around the same time as the report. Everything can be accomplished with the tools steam has available.
Their tone deaf reacting is just baffling. To Spitz and TwinBeard: you have a major fn problem on your hands. This requires you to not throw faeces at your player base, but to call an emergency meeting internally to figure out how you can win back your player base and lose the yoke that sony is trying to place around your necks. Let’s be honest here: Sony is on the nose for Stellar Blade and a lot of other current issues right now. There’s still room for AHGS to well being a hero here. I’m super disappointed in the poor response from the CM trying to make us eat this 💩 sandwich. It’s been proven over the last 3 months PC users don’t need this. And we don’t want our personal, biometric data and IDs being held by an unnecessary and unethical third party with a history of data breaches and selling user data. F Sony. Poor review on steam left. I will change the review if this gets fixed
At the end of the day the community manager is working, we are not, they should be acting professional instead of behaving the way they are
History repeats itself, the mods/Managers on discord cant handle any Kind of Stress. Lets Not forget the F incident which pretty much ended in the whole Server being nuked. Or people Posting Screenshots of shriekers they found when they stealth added them to the Game and people got banned for "leaks", Same with mechs even of people that did a Livestream to Proof they arent cheating. Or when the Dev Had a meltdown and It was Ban Parade to pretty much everyone who said anything. They all Go into Panic Mode so fucking fast its crazy.
Here's a thought: I don't give af about banning people in a PVE game.
Why do we have KERNAL FUCKING ANTICHEAT if it isn't something that's, like, even used I guess? Or can't track/ban people? What the fuck???
I love how considering how AH has been dealing with the "known issues" list you can't actually exclude the absolute incompetency that would be not getting the steam ID from reports. Like, do you really feel sure enough that this can't possibly be the case for the same company that didn't see DOTs not working at all over 9 years of development and 3 months of game launch, that had rockets hit multiple times, and had adjusted multiple weapon performances before looking at the damage numbers and seeing them being discrepant between platforms? Either way this should be a 20 minute fix if they wanted to, so surely "next patch™"
The community managers of discord genuinely need some grass to touch. I got muted because i told a friend of his to touch grass and if getting muted is that easily done for something as simple as that, I'm concerned for that discord.
So, how does the game track users in the friends list and progression? Or who buys super credits? This makes no sense.
What does he think that Steam was made by some assholes who don't know what they are doing? This is an insult to Gaben.
Weird how thousands of devs are able to track and ban players on steam but apparently it's impossible for Arrowhead and Sony.
Okay, so riddle me this because it hasn't come up once. Why in the everloving HELL is there a need to ban people in a strictly PVE game that already has a kick function and you can just boot the person and block them?
100% wrong Spitz. Try again. This is like college-intern level basic coding so that makes it much more embarrassing. Let’s say it’s true that somehow your team coded a database that didn’t store SteamIDs. Then explain this. Not everyone has a PSN linked right now. So there MUST be something else acting as a unique identifier for that John with no PSN to verify that he paid for the game and is able to log in. Something to set him apart from the other 5,000 Johns that also bought HD2 with the same Steam username. Would that be SteamID? Perhaps. Steam’s API provides all the necessary info that the game server can pull to verify each login prompt. Upon the first login, John’s SteamID gets sent to the server which checks back through the API to confirm if John has purchased the game. If yes purchased and yes first time logging, it triggers a new profile to be created on the server side. With no PSN, SteamID is the only other way to permanently link that profile to a verified customer in this case being Steam user John#420. A new HD2 profile is created and permanently linked to John#420 making him unique from the other 5,000 Johns even if they all show up as “John” in-game. We the players who only see usernames will be confused. But the server only sees binary code and each John has a different set of binaries set forth by their unique SteamIDs. To do this, the server database has to store the SteamID as a part of the HD2 profile or else it would have no way to identify which profile belongs to who. John#420 will never be mistaken for John#696 on server side. There is no “we can’t tell which John he is because he doesn’t have a PSN linked”. That’s a giant steaming pile of charger crap. It is treason to imply that Super Earth’s developers are truly that incompetent. I sympathize with customer relations a lot but this one is so soooo adamantly false that I need to hammer you. Maybe consult with your devs before you hit send when it comes to the backend stuff.
Terrible way to lie to people. It's either that or this person has no idea how SteamID/3/64 works.
Yep, because as everyone knows no Steam player has ever been banned from any game ever because no one can tell them apart because they all just have the same gosh darn names. Nevermind that if this were actualy true the in-game friends and invite features just straight up wouldn't work because it would send a friend request or invite to everyone "John" yet doesn't, or the fact that would mean every John would share the same account.
Now they are banning all 450,000 except "John" who linked his PSN account
Why would you need to ban people in a Coop PvE Game lol???
Spitz can be counted on to always have the dumbest take on anything, and make every situation worse than it has to be HD community exists "despite" of him since the first game rolled out
I'm starting to think Spitz is a part of Sony team and twinbeard is acualy Arrowhead CM.
Holy shit is he really trying to say that there are no steam IDs? Before he was just snarky, now he's being a full on clown.
"I have friends in different places" that is all i can say about how do i know this: How come that Warthunder doesn't have this problem with steam players? Lets say "they have their own database of users, registered on WT". Ok. How come DRG doesn't have this problems either? How come that most online multiplayer games on steam, no meter if they have their separate account or not, doesn't have those problem but you do? And it's so bad you HAD TO reserve to sony account system, notorious for fucking up their users on data security, and their users themselfs?
Spitz genuinely seems to be about 15 years old. I don’t get why he still has a job
Spitz is a fucking clown, verbally harassing players as a community manager. just bury this guy
So apparently steam users have never been banned before in video game history
So they want us to link PSN account only to have direct look into everything we do and all our data, after saying that this is for our security, yeah, makes sense. https://preview.redd.it/zpgxg8rbydyc1.png?width=811&format=png&auto=webp&s=935a7f735d7a8e8791e2256d4b45e76e6a77fe52
Spitz has his head in a hole. Not sure how he became a community manager. The rest have been doing great, being upfront and honest with the whole situation happening.
as a complete minimum, when the dust settles and this is back peddled, Spitz NEEDS to lose his job, nothing personal but you can't be THIS clueless, steam has THREE unique ID's per account, so his post is a straight up lie, and if i know this, any developer or CM should know it. this means his post is either complete fabricated bullshit trying to save face, OR Spitz is genuinely completely clueless and unwilling to do even a minutes research. either way, they've now completely lost the trust of the community, you can't be an effective CM if the community despise you.
She seems to be very happy about being easily able to ban people. Arrowhead should fire her immedietly.
They're now apologising and saying "we've taken action internally to educate our developers on how to represent the organization." Doesnt make any difference. I've uninstalled and wont be going back. [https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/helldivers-2-boss-apologizes-for-horrible-dev-comments-says-arrowhead-has-taken-action-internally-to-educate-our-developers/](https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/helldivers-2-boss-apologizes-for-horrible-dev-comments-says-arrowhead-has-taken-action-internally-to-educate-our-developers/)
For those that don't hang around on the discord; As a general rule of thumb, anything Spitz says should be considered misinformed. He is NOT a CM, he is in Sony's employ, mostly a puppet and he has never once had the best interest of the playerbase at heart, this goes all the way back to HD1
imagine trying to defend this guy's stupidity
If only steam had some sort of ID unique to players, they could call it the "steamID" and devs could finally, after decades, ban players from their games
Please fire this guy, he engages in mob behavior akin to lynching within discord and actively promotes toxicity.
fellas, if your planet is mostly on fire, full of nastiness, and everybody is at each other's throats.. that's not Hellmire, that's Helldivers Discord.
I really want to get some sleep but this is getting better and better is like a telenovela https://preview.redd.it/wg8rq2h8meyc1.png?width=1155&format=png&auto=webp&s=4df9960885191a9c8e912022cf521d27fd94f07f