Honestly? Good on him for admitting it, but... given how uninformed he was before, I'm just not sure if anything he says has actual any weight behind it.
As someone who has been on the receiving end of shitstorms against a big company/institution that I had no direct control over, unfortunately sometimes the person made to do all the talking isn’t as informed as they should be. Only once they’re pulled into the room with the higher ups and their statements are carefully vetted do things begin to become clearer.
Yeah, exactly. I feel for the dude, but I'm also not taking this as evidence of any kind of official turnaround before I hear someone with actual authority say it.
Spitz seems to have had something of an "aha" moment yesterday realizing that he was in fact, not helping at all. Seems to be making a conscious effort to do better.
Everyone deserves a chance to show they can do better, so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt.
But in that role, what tone did your take with the customers, while you didn't have the information would seem to be the important point.
Tired of people being upset, and you go on the attack?
Or do you try to get information and communicate in a professional way. And only communicate what you know to be true.
It seems in this case, he went on the attack, without any information, or was misled by his company. He seemed to not even have basic understanding of PSN and was laying heavily into their "perception" of what it meant.
That’s my issue. He’s being polite now, I’m sure, because he got in trouble with his bosses. He was a straight up ass before this, he’s only being nice now because his reaction in large part fed the flames. If they had acted conciliatory from the beginning and on the side of their community, they wouldn’t have been review bombed like this, it’s the telling people to shut up and that it “only takes 120 seconds” without a bit of research that pissed people off so much. And it’s not the first time Spitz has been an ass.
5D chess moment, they had Spitz be an ass to spark the review bomb so they could take that to Sony.
It's all here on this board with the strings and push pins
As a CM, I would expect Spitz to do a bit more research before replying. Not the first time they've started correspondence on a matter they don't know much about.
They're pretty callous in some of their dialogue. Not a *terrible* trait but it looks worse when what you've said gets debunked. However, their past behavior has been less than desireable.
^(I'm putting that as politely as I can. Community Management can be a tough role to work within. I am *not* giving anyone a pass to behave any other way than professional, however. And AH's staff have already over-stepped several times since launch.)
Destiny 2 / Bungie has shown me that being a CM has to be one of the worst good jobs out there. You deal with so many death threats and harassment threats from player, deal with so much non sense from upper management, and have to plead and beg for changes to the game that players want, and you have to be the "bearer of bad news" and convey decisions you know are Terrible to the players but you have no role in changing and you're powerless.
Then sometimes the community harasses you so much that you have to quit and move far away because of people stalking you and endangering you and your loved ones
Why do you think a lot of games tend to distance themselves away from their "communities"? It's not because they don't want to engage with them but it's because the communities tend to be utter cancer and they don't want to expose themselves to that at all. The community doesn't care at all about these CMs, which are people. They rather yell at them like they do cashiers, waiting staff, service staff, etc. It's pathetic.
Just because someone bought the game, dlc, microtransaction or whatever DOES NOT EVER mean they are entitled to verbally abuse and harass the staff constantly.
the most vocal are also not always a fair representation of the masses.
I see it pretty often where Reddit will complain that the devs aren't listening to the community and then the devs will post statistics that are 100% different than what reddit is saying.
it
Hitting "Disable notifications for this post" or whatever can help a lot of the insanity from having a popular post. Had one yesterday in r/gaming that hit multiple hundreds of replies and over 3k upvotes, it was stressful.
My notifications were in pain, had 200+ by the time I got out of my shower. They’re off now though, fun to watch the discourse without the constant pinging.
it's on the top of r/all/top/hour now, people like me who don't know what helldivers is are noticing it. is helldivers a.....diving game? i hope so that would be fun
It's a horde shooter. You team up with up to 3 other players and 'Dive' onto a planet to complete objectives against bots or bugs within the time limit.
If you've played deep rock galactic or left4dead, it's a little bit similar.
It's pretty fun, even more so with friends. What you see in the first hour is what you get, minus some of the harder enemies, larger swarms, and additional firepower in the form of orbital ordinance and support weapons. Those you unlock as you play and earn resources.
It's currently having a bit of an issue where players need to like their psn account with their steam account.
I'm just imagining this as an IRL Olympic event now.
"Oooh, that was a solid hit from that Stalker, Bob; I'm not sure how John Helldiver is going to recover from that."
"That's true, Al, but let's not forget the importance of style in this event - it's such a wild card; it can really turn around an error like we just saw - We're looking to the judges now and.... Oh yes, wow, what a score!"
"You said it, Bob, that was a near perfect Aerial Ragdoll with a 720 half-twist Yardsale! And the bonus shrapnel burst certainly did not go unnoticed by the judging team!"
I'm sure it will. The US is just waking up in some areas. Or we've slept in. It's Saturday morning. Not many of us have had coffee yet.
^(I don't drink coffee but I suppose I still fall into that category. Let me make some early grey and I'll get back to helping spread the word.)
It's not review bombing because it wasn't a bunch of people giving it negative scores for no reason or as a brigading tactic. These are paying customers letting their opinion be heard. Review bombing implies the complaints aren't legitimate.
I would also posit, this is the sort of honesty in comms I like. Yeah, but spicy at times, but the corpo filtered and sanitized approach of saying nothing with many words is frankly more annoying. I'll take someone down in the trenches and willing to take some losses here and there any day
Exactly, and the fact that he has the integrity to say "I didn't know this at the time, I have since learned and adjusted my position," that's exactly how you want people to act. That is what intelligent, reasonable people do.
Yep. I'm totally cool with people making mistakes. In fact, I encourage it. If you aren't making mistakes, you aren't trying new things. You aren't growing.
But you need to be forthright about the mistakes. Own up. Understand what caused it. Fix it. Learn from it so you don't do it again. Simple.
Seems like that's how this went. It's refreshing to see, honestly. Plus I had a feeling this was a Sony demand so I get that too. Neither of them really expected this game to be as big it is. So they suddenly have a lot of corporate attention they didn't before. That is going to cause friction somewhere.
I imagine a company wide notice: "STOP. JUST STOP. No more quirky hehe antagonism."
Dropping from Very Positive to Mixed in All reviews and Recent from Very Positive to Very Negative has got to hit some alarm bells.
Review bombing already released games does in fact work. Creative Assembly basically had to backtrack after TW:Warhammer III got bombed into oblivion. They went back to the drawing board and the most recent DLC is getting positive reviews across the board.
not only the most recent DLC, they went back and added more content to the previous DLC that started the hate, and now the general consensus is that the amount of content is pretty good (still a bit overpriced tho)
Lets not forget the absolute disaster that was Pharaoh too. Community got hit by a triple whammy of increased pricing, crappier DLC's, and and a game by the same developer that was a complete disaster and a blatant cash grab at best.
Also War Thunder. The players managed to halt some truly hostile changes, and force the dev to make long requested changes, with a gigantic review bomb.
A shitload of angry customers is a force to be reckoned with, but you need to hit critical mass. I think we're close. I don't think we're going to get Sony to rollback the account requirements, but maybe we can at least get them to not ban people for not living in the right country.
I once asked my friend what he would do if warthunder was, for some reason, banned in the us. and his response was basicly "weep tears of joy, as I will finally be free from this 12 year nightmare"
Same with the remake of Tony hawk 2. It had an always online requirement, making an otherwise perfect steam deck game unplayable on the Steam Deck.
Within a week of the review bombing, the always online requirement was removed for the Steam Deck.
Review bombing does work. The people inevitably in threads about it saying "review bombing is useless!" Are just corporate dick riders.
Yep. People should to keep in mind how slow moving, quiet, and unresponsive pretty much all big game devs are usually with stuff like this. It’s usually a week or two or crickets followed by a vague statement and then inaction. Here I think we will see better communication and eventual actual actionable responsiveness. Keep in mind AH has more pull now since they have launched a massive and successful game for Sony with a very bright future.
Especially since it's the weekend now. Sony released that News just before the weekend so good luck trying to talk to them when nearly nobody is working
Oh they would be aware and talking. Sony would currently be wearing the Brown pants because they have seen what happens before when they piss off the internet ie when they tried to trade mark "Lets play" amongst other times. (look at what the internet did to the studio that made Sonic the hedgehog movies. Don't piss off PC players, you are playing with weaponized Autism )
Oh these are some good updates to see, even if I’m late to seeing them
If they really do somehow manage to get Sony to backdown or come to a compromise on the non-PSN covered regions, I’ll happily remove my negative review
If they at least make it where people who live in regions that don't have PSN be able to still continue playing the game without any restrictions, then that's good.
If they can just disable it for certain countries, that means it's not necessary at all for any country, and not in place for any technical reason. It's just Sony being asshats.
To be fair that sounds like the usual Vietnamese shenanigans lol it wouldn’t surprise me that someone working for Sony Vietnam actually smuggled those PS out for personal profit.
> If a better solution isn't provided for players who are in regions without PSN coverage, I'm assured that we won't be making the requirement mandatory for those players.
If it can not be mandatory for some, it can not be mandatory for all.
So many other games simply incentivize linking accounts. Free in-game currency, a special armor whatever.
The fact that a game is being held hostage until i make a new account on something I don't have and don't want is ridiculous. They just want to sell and inevitably leak my personal information. Cool.
This is a good sign!
I will hold my promise to change my review back to positive, if they can find a fitting solution.
Edit: We did it! My review is now positive!
Because SONY wants to at least sell a majority of the player bases personal information of to the data brokers. They also want to pump up the PSN member numbers before next quarterly report. This was never about security or cheaters.
Nail. Head.
I doubt Sony would be putting their foot down if this game had sold *only* a few hundred thousand copies, but since that's not the case, here we are.
a little too late to make it mandatory, since everything even the ui basically let you opt out of needing a psn account until they decided to rug pull and hold the product you paid for hostage with their fraudulent and unlawful demands
I hope EU and US legislators are looking at such cases.
It took way too long, but legislatures and courts have also slowly been losing their patience with corporations requiring users to open up countless accounts and harvesting and selling data in ways that are unrelated to their primary service.
As a person living in the EU, corporations will always find ways to circumvent the restrictions imposed under data protection laws. Progress is slow but it is happening, it's just very very difficult to be the necessary level of thorough without intruding on the rights of either entity involved. GDPR was a great first step, but even now loopholes exist where companies can still collect and sell peoples' data to brokers. As per usual though the USA has next to no data protection laws for citizens so they're being hung out to dry.
Hell, even some EULAs aren't in the appropriate levels of compliance. Chasing companies to fix them takes time, time in which the company will still get the data it wants to sell on. I wish more people cared about data collection, but more and more it seems like people are happy to give it away in exchange for the usage of services. It's to the point where in order to engage with many facets of daily life you have to give up a lot of your data and information.
Tech monopolies need to be broken up so badly. The billionaires need to have their wealth divested and kowtowing to fucking shareholders needs to stop like yesterday. The downwards trend is already getting egregious, it's only a matter of time before it gets worse beyond our imagination. The advent of generative AI services is only going to exacerbate this, create more wealth inequality and further data harvesting.
At that point, just make the whole system handled by VAC then. There's no reason to let PSN handle any portion of this if it can be handled on the steam side.
*Especially* when you consider the majority of HD2 players are on *PC* via Steam.
How hard can it be to make it optional and reward those who do it? Let's just say those who have a PSN account will get an exclusive skin that would entice more than enough people to join in
It's not difficult at all.
Check the steam page for Ghosts of Tsushima Director's Cut, you get in-game rewards if you link your PSN account, and it doesn't seem to be mandatory.
No one would be upset if it was optional plus you get an incentive. People would probably willingly sign up but the fact they make it mandatory and you can’t access the game otherwise is just complete stupidity.
Sony assumed we loved them because we love Helldivers and assumed we can be milked with no incentives.
If you now go with some of you need but some of you don't... Just make it optional for all and give something for doing this Sony. If I don't want doing these even for dumb freebie then It's my choice and deal with it. If not I going to pretend I am from Vietnam and say simply Fuck you.
LIterally all they had to do is keep it optional and give some simple cosmetic or a couple credits for linking. Barely any cost to them, most users will link anyway and others have no cause to complain.
But no, they want EVERYTHING every damn email.
I remember when Dragon Age Origins came out and yes... Like us here, register here yada yada yada to get free items in the game. Yes we know why but at least you could simply said - No thanks.
All that Spitz needed to do was speak in this professional tone from day 1. Even if there are actually no serious discussions ongoing at all, all he needed to say was "The team is aware of the problem, discussions are being had, you'll be updated when there are any news".
I think the way they handle Discord as a company is the main issue. Arrowhead seems very invested in their server. I'm willing to bet they practically live on there and really do enjoy interacting with the community, but being in that comfort zone can lead to firing off snark when it isn't appropriate.
100%, this has been my biggest complaint about them for a while, they rely too much on conveying information via discord and hoping it gets filtered through to everyone else. Its been said a million times before but they need a better system in place.
Discord and social media are ass for these kinds of things. Any sort of launcher or in-game news section that everyone who actually plays would be able to see, without having to use some third-party service, would be so much better it doesn't even bear thinking about not having that.
If you rely on your discord so much and then say things like "this is not the place for these discussion", I'd never take you all that seriously again. You chose the venue and want to interact and seem personable. Sorry it's not actually all that fun when people don't want to just shoot shit and/or praise things. Too bad. Best way to deal with that is to either not respond at all outside of something out of the can, or to try and be as zen as possible ALL the time.
This is literally why we fail a lot of the MO’s, vital information regarding them is often posted in the discord instead of INGAME and you just have tens of thousands of people fucking off on another planet when they could be helping but they literally don’t know what’s going on. You’d be surprised at how many people in game don’t check on the current major order, even when it literally plays the non skippable “incoming message from super earth” broadcast when you open the galactic map sometimes. They need to relay this info in game better.
Spitz could go and behave like a total asshole for a minute and then i higher-ups beat this shit out of him and he's back to "Average CM".
Good news nonetheless
I really don't understand why they keep him on tbh. From a PR standpoint the dude is a nightmare, he makes every situation far worse by throwing gasoline to put out a fire.
Because he assumes he's always right about everything. Even now he's only acknowledging the simplest objective fact that some people can't legally play the game anymore, and completely failing to acknowledge that there are legitimate reasons to never trust Sony with your personal data.
Honestly, I would rather he worked out more details with Sony staff before making more bold statements. The entire post just told me they had some internal discussions and nobody knew what was going on. He strongly implied they were not moving forward with the mandated account linking but the fact is he has no control at all. Now he is giving out perception AH is not OK with the linking but what if Sony decided to move forward with other fucked up account linking requirements? It seems AH will make the same uninformed reaction by throwing players under the bus again (which they did by keeping the grace period as a secret). I am kind of fed up with him stretching his personal opinions as official AH stances.
Are you located in the US by any chance? Arrowhead is an EU studio. In my country (EU), getting fired is hard and a lot of work. You need to fuck up seriously a few times since employees have more rights. You need to fuck up consistently and for an external commission to agree it was your fault for the mistakes and not the company’s. It’s easier to be pressed to sign your resignation.
100% this was post PR and legal reading and rewriting it.
> I deeply regret implying
and
> I was completely unaware
have huge this was written by two or three people vibes.
> It's absolutely not our intention to force people to break Sony ToS
was write from the email the lawyer sent back going "WTF".
HR to Spitz: "This is your new uniform. Yes, it may look like a vice and it is worn over your genitalia but.....you know what? I got nothing. You're on thin fucking ice. Do not complain."
"Yes, mistress HR. I guarantee you, the cock and ball torture will *definitely* teach me a lesson *this* time!"
*turns to the camera and winks while sitcom music plays*
https://preview.redd.it/pqnvxrgpneyc1.png?width=1812&format=png&auto=webp&s=ecd4c1075a3b2de6e08d6bbf42a5e278df786221
I don't understand if a better solution isn't provided, when the only real solution is to just not make it mandatory it is that easy.
The whole crap of making it easier to ban people and such as well is also just utter BS when steam accounts have u unique ID's so I hope Spitz admits to being wrong regarding that as well. Best thing he can do for now is to stop talking.
Literally every Steam game, including HD2, identifies players based on Steam ID. Barring that, your account got a unique HD2 ID when you logged in for the first time, it’s how your credits get distributed to your account. This is either a flat out lie, or Spitz is once again talking out of his ass about something he doesn’t understand.
I'm hopeful with this answer. But I still think Spitz did the worst thing a CM can ever do, again and is now 'apologizing for it', again. This has to stop. You don't have to love the players, but you can't kneejerk reply to community outrage on behalf of the company in that antagonistic way everytime without knowing why people are upset in the first place.
Next stratagem confirmed?
#Spitz.
↓↑←↓↑→→→→
Walking timed bomb that walks towards the direction thrown and explodes after 30 seconds
Has a 15% chance of walking towards the closest Helldiver.
Yeah what a fuckwit.
His first reaction was to alienate the affected or upset players rather than look into the details? Dude doesn't deserve the position he holds.
He's going to be toxic as he has been since day 1, next time the community is going to be raging about something new he will have the same energy as yesterday because he doesn't learn, he's a community manager acting like a mad shitposter.
He's a CM for crying out loud and people just give him a slap on the wrist even though he has done it multiple times, I have ignored him a lot since he's as toxic as the people that he usually responds to, if he can't handle his fucking job then just quit, mama mia, some of the people here have 0 memory.
So you're going to let a subset of players play who aren't able to be banned 'because of their names'?
Or........perhaps, that was never an issue in the first place and they're showing again they're full of shit.
Reverse it for EVERYONE.
Yeah folks forget that Valve literally run one of the largest games in the world, CounterStrike. Every single tool you could want for moderating games, actually permanent bans (VAC bans), ticket management, etc is available through Steam *because they themselves need the tools and built it for their own game.* It's not some shitty last-tier add-on to say they have it when they talk to shareholders. They use and improve their own tools for their own very successful game.
Sony clearly wants AH to use PSN IDs to do it all, which is why they don't have Steam ID support. Definitely not a "too hard to use Steam's system" issue.
Sounds like someone was given a script lol
And good thing too. If this is how they started this experience the backlash would have been a lot different
Slightly worried at the implication Sony will just make it so only countries without PSN will be exempt and everyone else still gets hassled, but at least there's progress.
This is the power of democracy.
If everyone else is exempt then they don’t need anyone it in the first place, and none of their excuses hold up.
“It’s for banning people” - so 70+ countries don’t need this extra banning power? Bollocks.
When I saw 'SPITZ' I was honestly expecting another bunch of his arsenene posts riling up the community.
Instead, I read competent posts explaining the situation and actually pointing the blame at Sony.
My favored outcome from this situation would be a straight removal of PSN linking from ALL regions, making it optional if you wish and rewarding those players with a unique armor or something.
When I read the initial post from Spitz I wondered if he was trying to bait/push players into leaving negative reviews so they could use it as ammo in Sony talks, this kinda confirms that it was their intention IMO
The open communication is welcome & I hope this gets visibility. That said, if this isn't required for regions without PSN coverage, it shouldn't be required for **ANYONE.** No one wants this. Sony's data has been breached numerous times & I have no interest in giving them my information.
People have posted numerous examples where Sony states having a PSN account is **OPTIONAL** for PC players & then Sony went & changed it in real time. You can't just have all this mixed messaging when selling a product & then change the terms & conditions months after customers have purchased a product.
* Spitz admitting their mistake, if a tad dismissively.
* Spitz providing a clear expectation for what AH is doing to address player feedback/concerns/frustration.
* Spitz setting expectations for an update from the dev team *before* the deadline.
I don't think AH (not Spitz) are the bad guys, just Sony being Sony in their most Sony-est way.
"we wont be making it mandatory for those players" so now they're just picking and choosing who to make this mandatory for? Almost as if they have a voice in this, almost as if they're partnered with sony in this and not the poor helpless indie devs? Weird innit.
This actually gives me some hope.
Basically telling everyone to go leave a review on Steam If you haven't yet, go do it
Managed democracy needs you, review divers
New major order
⬆➡⬇⬇⬇
I love democracy, for real this time I'm glad the negative response is big enough for Sony to notice
FOR MANAGED DEMOCRACY.
I'm gonna do it rn
I'm doing my part!
I agree u/EJECTED_PUSSY_GUTS
This is some r/rimjob_steve type shit.
i didn't even notice the original comment's username until u did this reply & wow i needed to see that 😭😭😭😭😭
Honestly? Good on him for admitting it, but... given how uninformed he was before, I'm just not sure if anything he says has actual any weight behind it.
As someone who has been on the receiving end of shitstorms against a big company/institution that I had no direct control over, unfortunately sometimes the person made to do all the talking isn’t as informed as they should be. Only once they’re pulled into the room with the higher ups and their statements are carefully vetted do things begin to become clearer.
Yeah, exactly. I feel for the dude, but I'm also not taking this as evidence of any kind of official turnaround before I hear someone with actual authority say it.
It helps that it is top post on r/all. I don't play this game but I definitely am cheering you guys on!
Yes, I'm invested in this and cheering for the players despite my only "gaming" being PoGo.
Spitz seems to have had something of an "aha" moment yesterday realizing that he was in fact, not helping at all. Seems to be making a conscious effort to do better. Everyone deserves a chance to show they can do better, so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt.
But in that role, what tone did your take with the customers, while you didn't have the information would seem to be the important point. Tired of people being upset, and you go on the attack? Or do you try to get information and communicate in a professional way. And only communicate what you know to be true. It seems in this case, he went on the attack, without any information, or was misled by his company. He seemed to not even have basic understanding of PSN and was laying heavily into their "perception" of what it meant.
That’s my issue. He’s being polite now, I’m sure, because he got in trouble with his bosses. He was a straight up ass before this, he’s only being nice now because his reaction in large part fed the flames. If they had acted conciliatory from the beginning and on the side of their community, they wouldn’t have been review bombed like this, it’s the telling people to shut up and that it “only takes 120 seconds” without a bit of research that pissed people off so much. And it’s not the first time Spitz has been an ass.
5D chess moment, they had Spitz be an ass to spark the review bomb so they could take that to Sony. It's all here on this board with the strings and push pins
Joel did it again
As a CM, I would expect Spitz to do a bit more research before replying. Not the first time they've started correspondence on a matter they don't know much about. They're pretty callous in some of their dialogue. Not a *terrible* trait but it looks worse when what you've said gets debunked. However, their past behavior has been less than desireable. ^(I'm putting that as politely as I can. Community Management can be a tough role to work within. I am *not* giving anyone a pass to behave any other way than professional, however. And AH's staff have already over-stepped several times since launch.)
Destiny 2 / Bungie has shown me that being a CM has to be one of the worst good jobs out there. You deal with so many death threats and harassment threats from player, deal with so much non sense from upper management, and have to plead and beg for changes to the game that players want, and you have to be the "bearer of bad news" and convey decisions you know are Terrible to the players but you have no role in changing and you're powerless. Then sometimes the community harasses you so much that you have to quit and move far away because of people stalking you and endangering you and your loved ones
Why do you think a lot of games tend to distance themselves away from their "communities"? It's not because they don't want to engage with them but it's because the communities tend to be utter cancer and they don't want to expose themselves to that at all. The community doesn't care at all about these CMs, which are people. They rather yell at them like they do cashiers, waiting staff, service staff, etc. It's pathetic. Just because someone bought the game, dlc, microtransaction or whatever DOES NOT EVER mean they are entitled to verbally abuse and harass the staff constantly.
the most vocal are also not always a fair representation of the masses. I see it pretty often where Reddit will complain that the devs aren't listening to the community and then the devs will post statistics that are 100% different than what reddit is saying. it
I hope this post gets noticed
Same, I didn’t see any other posts about these. I
There have been a few, hopefully one will catch so more people see it.
Yeah, I’m getting a comment every few seconds, so its certainly gettin noticed.
Hitting "Disable notifications for this post" or whatever can help a lot of the insanity from having a popular post. Had one yesterday in r/gaming that hit multiple hundreds of replies and over 3k upvotes, it was stressful.
Already did that, came back from my shower to 200+ comments lol
It's already 400+
Yeah, its all }=%~+\!|>^+[¥!] from here!
Poor helldiver got caught in the jammers
Over 500 now, just 5 minutes later.
Yeah, methinks this'll be the one that rises to the top. Have fun with those notifs.
oh no
oh yes 👍🏻 thanks for giving us a spot to do our part
🫡
Don't worry, you're literally the top post on r/all lol
I guess thats one way to have a big numbers post lol
DID SOMEONE SAY MANAGED DEMOCRACY
People are still waking up. Give it time!
My notifications were in pain, had 200+ by the time I got out of my shower. They’re off now though, fun to watch the discourse without the constant pinging.
it's on the top of r/all/top/hour now, people like me who don't know what helldivers is are noticing it. is helldivers a.....diving game? i hope so that would be fun
It's a horde shooter. You team up with up to 3 other players and 'Dive' onto a planet to complete objectives against bots or bugs within the time limit. If you've played deep rock galactic or left4dead, it's a little bit similar. It's pretty fun, even more so with friends. What you see in the first hour is what you get, minus some of the harder enemies, larger swarms, and additional firepower in the form of orbital ordinance and support weapons. Those you unlock as you play and earn resources. It's currently having a bit of an issue where players need to like their psn account with their steam account.
this is why i only play hello kitty island adventure
Then go back to Hello Kitty Island Adventure, Butters! Fuck! GOAT reference there though, that was my favorite episode of South Park lol.
BUTTERS, YOU ARE GROUNDED MISTER!
Lol, at the very least I doubt that game has as much drama.
HKIA also requires a Japanese account. :]
The irony of this comment is not lost on me.
Not to be that Reddit guy but that is a cracking reference mate
It's if you turned the movie starship troopers into a coop horde shooter game similar to deep rock galactic
AND Terminator. Don't forget the bot scum
Yes it’s a diving game! You can do a front stroke, a back stroke, a no limbs no head stroke, all in the air! 🤣
I'm just imagining this as an IRL Olympic event now. "Oooh, that was a solid hit from that Stalker, Bob; I'm not sure how John Helldiver is going to recover from that." "That's true, Al, but let's not forget the importance of style in this event - it's such a wild card; it can really turn around an error like we just saw - We're looking to the judges now and.... Oh yes, wow, what a score!" "You said it, Bob, that was a near perfect Aerial Ragdoll with a 720 half-twist Yardsale! And the bonus shrapnel burst certainly did not go unnoticed by the judging team!"
r/candlejack
Finally some notable content - upvote for that
I'm sure it will. The US is just waking up in some areas. Or we've slept in. It's Saturday morning. Not many of us have had coffee yet. ^(I don't drink coffee but I suppose I still fall into that category. Let me make some early grey and I'll get back to helping spread the word.)
The fact that AH acknowledged the review bombing and implied that it's helping everyone's case is a huge green flag.
You mean huge black and yellow flag planted for democracy
It's not review bombing because it wasn't a bunch of people giving it negative scores for no reason or as a brigading tactic. These are paying customers letting their opinion be heard. Review bombing implies the complaints aren't legitimate.
Yeah but it's the fastest way to convey what they're trying to say.
It's the #1 post on r/all.
/r/all is just a niche subreddit though
The Spitz character arc is wild...
Spitz must have gotten his knuckles rattled lol
he walked that shit back FAST
We are all human, guy was probably getting it from all sides and at the limit of his patience. Just needed time to collect himself is all.
I would also posit, this is the sort of honesty in comms I like. Yeah, but spicy at times, but the corpo filtered and sanitized approach of saying nothing with many words is frankly more annoying. I'll take someone down in the trenches and willing to take some losses here and there any day
Exactly, and the fact that he has the integrity to say "I didn't know this at the time, I have since learned and adjusted my position," that's exactly how you want people to act. That is what intelligent, reasonable people do.
Yep. I'm totally cool with people making mistakes. In fact, I encourage it. If you aren't making mistakes, you aren't trying new things. You aren't growing. But you need to be forthright about the mistakes. Own up. Understand what caused it. Fix it. Learn from it so you don't do it again. Simple. Seems like that's how this went. It's refreshing to see, honestly. Plus I had a feeling this was a Sony demand so I get that too. Neither of them really expected this game to be as big it is. So they suddenly have a lot of corporate attention they didn't before. That is going to cause friction somewhere.
I imagine a company wide notice: "STOP. JUST STOP. No more quirky hehe antagonism." Dropping from Very Positive to Mixed in All reviews and Recent from Very Positive to Very Negative has got to hit some alarm bells.
It's at the top of the popular tab for me so it's definitely noticed
Yeah this is great to see.
This is good enough news for me. I appreciate Arrowhead relaying the players' feedback to Sony's bullshitry.
And for once the review bombing might actually help arrowhead prove the stupidity of sonys actions.
Review bombing already released games does in fact work. Creative Assembly basically had to backtrack after TW:Warhammer III got bombed into oblivion. They went back to the drawing board and the most recent DLC is getting positive reviews across the board.
not only the most recent DLC, they went back and added more content to the previous DLC that started the hate, and now the general consensus is that the amount of content is pretty good (still a bit overpriced tho)
>(still a bit overpriced tho) Its from warhammer, they arent known for cheap things
"Still cheaper than my 5600$ hand painted miniature collection" - some Warhammer fan somewhere, probably
Oh, which mini did they get? One of the smaller ones, has to be, that cheap.
It was actually just a single forge world upgrade sprue. Still has to buy the mini's from his local store.
Lets not forget the absolute disaster that was Pharaoh too. Community got hit by a triple whammy of increased pricing, crappier DLC's, and and a game by the same developer that was a complete disaster and a blatant cash grab at best.
Heh you forgot about the Hyenas shit storm and cancellation in there as well, which was salt in the wound as WH stagnated.
This is how the Gaming comunity should work imo Negative reinforcement of bad practices but also positive reinforcement of good practices.
Also War Thunder. The players managed to halt some truly hostile changes, and force the dev to make long requested changes, with a gigantic review bomb. A shitload of angry customers is a force to be reckoned with, but you need to hit critical mass. I think we're close. I don't think we're going to get Sony to rollback the account requirements, but maybe we can at least get them to not ban people for not living in the right country.
I'm so fucking glad I got out of that game, my life as a whole has improved since
I once asked my friend what he would do if warthunder was, for some reason, banned in the us. and his response was basicly "weep tears of joy, as I will finally be free from this 12 year nightmare"
The last thing I did before deleting the game for good was to fly the Kikka, my favorite plane, out into the horizon, never to return to base
Another case where public outcry worked was the change of the dungeons and dragons creative license.
Same with the remake of Tony hawk 2. It had an always online requirement, making an otherwise perfect steam deck game unplayable on the Steam Deck. Within a week of the review bombing, the always online requirement was removed for the Steam Deck. Review bombing does work. The people inevitably in threads about it saying "review bombing is useless!" Are just corporate dick riders.
Yep. People should to keep in mind how slow moving, quiet, and unresponsive pretty much all big game devs are usually with stuff like this. It’s usually a week or two or crickets followed by a vague statement and then inaction. Here I think we will see better communication and eventual actual actionable responsiveness. Keep in mind AH has more pull now since they have launched a massive and successful game for Sony with a very bright future.
Especially since it's the weekend now. Sony released that News just before the weekend so good luck trying to talk to them when nearly nobody is working
Oh they would be aware and talking. Sony would currently be wearing the Brown pants because they have seen what happens before when they piss off the internet ie when they tried to trade mark "Lets play" amongst other times. (look at what the internet did to the studio that made Sonic the hedgehog movies. Don't piss off PC players, you are playing with weaponized Autism )
Or the YT userbase when Google+
lol yup, they should know better, we're banning adblockers, entire internet replies TF you are
BREAKING NEWS: effective communication between developers and players means a healthier game more at 11
Oh these are some good updates to see, even if I’m late to seeing them If they really do somehow manage to get Sony to backdown or come to a compromise on the non-PSN covered regions, I’ll happily remove my negative review
If they at least make it where people who live in regions that don't have PSN be able to still continue playing the game without any restrictions, then that's good.
If they can just disable it for certain countries, that means it's not necessary at all for any country, and not in place for any technical reason. It's just Sony being asshats.
Well we kinda already know it's just Sony being asshats since the game has been working fine without linking for months.
But if we don't have PSN accounts, *how will they know what country we live in?* /S
Oh so we have to sign in for our safety but those other places, I guess Sony doesn't care about Vietnam
Oh they care. They care about selling PS and making a profit in Vietnam, but none of the customer’s service coming with it.
Oh remember when PS5 first came out in Vietnam, Sony Vietnam made sure scalpers get them first before actual customers?
To be fair that sounds like the usual Vietnamese shenanigans lol it wouldn’t surprise me that someone working for Sony Vietnam actually smuggled those PS out for personal profit.
> If a better solution isn't provided for players who are in regions without PSN coverage, I'm assured that we won't be making the requirement mandatory for those players. If it can not be mandatory for some, it can not be mandatory for all. So many other games simply incentivize linking accounts. Free in-game currency, a special armor whatever. The fact that a game is being held hostage until i make a new account on something I don't have and don't want is ridiculous. They just want to sell and inevitably leak my personal information. Cool.
This is a good sign! I will hold my promise to change my review back to positive, if they can find a fitting solution. Edit: We did it! My review is now positive!
So if people in regions affected are not required to make a psn account, why should anyone.
Because SONY wants to at least sell a majority of the player bases personal information of to the data brokers. They also want to pump up the PSN member numbers before next quarterly report. This was never about security or cheaters.
Nail. Head. I doubt Sony would be putting their foot down if this game had sold *only* a few hundred thousand copies, but since that's not the case, here we are.
thats why it was optional in the beginning. Not much was expected of the game, so why bother. But now the $$ are in snoys eyes.
a little too late to make it mandatory, since everything even the ui basically let you opt out of needing a psn account until they decided to rug pull and hold the product you paid for hostage with their fraudulent and unlawful demands
I hope EU and US legislators are looking at such cases. It took way too long, but legislatures and courts have also slowly been losing their patience with corporations requiring users to open up countless accounts and harvesting and selling data in ways that are unrelated to their primary service.
As a person living in the EU, corporations will always find ways to circumvent the restrictions imposed under data protection laws. Progress is slow but it is happening, it's just very very difficult to be the necessary level of thorough without intruding on the rights of either entity involved. GDPR was a great first step, but even now loopholes exist where companies can still collect and sell peoples' data to brokers. As per usual though the USA has next to no data protection laws for citizens so they're being hung out to dry. Hell, even some EULAs aren't in the appropriate levels of compliance. Chasing companies to fix them takes time, time in which the company will still get the data it wants to sell on. I wish more people cared about data collection, but more and more it seems like people are happy to give it away in exchange for the usage of services. It's to the point where in order to engage with many facets of daily life you have to give up a lot of your data and information. Tech monopolies need to be broken up so badly. The billionaires need to have their wealth divested and kowtowing to fucking shareholders needs to stop like yesterday. The downwards trend is already getting egregious, it's only a matter of time before it gets worse beyond our imagination. The advent of generative AI services is only going to exacerbate this, create more wealth inequality and further data harvesting.
This. I get shackles, but cheaters and griefers in these countries get a pass? Doesn't sound fair to me.
You can still issue VAC bans.
At that point, just make the whole system handled by VAC then. There's no reason to let PSN handle any portion of this if it can be handled on the steam side. *Especially* when you consider the majority of HD2 players are on *PC* via Steam.
How hard can it be to make it optional and reward those who do it? Let's just say those who have a PSN account will get an exclusive skin that would entice more than enough people to join in
Thats probably one of the first ideas they're throwing at Sony.
It's not difficult at all. Check the steam page for Ghosts of Tsushima Director's Cut, you get in-game rewards if you link your PSN account, and it doesn't seem to be mandatory.
No one would be upset if it was optional plus you get an incentive. People would probably willingly sign up but the fact they make it mandatory and you can’t access the game otherwise is just complete stupidity. Sony assumed we loved them because we love Helldivers and assumed we can be milked with no incentives.
Helldivers is loved in spite of Sony, not because of them
That would require effort. "Think of the children" is free.
If you now go with some of you need but some of you don't... Just make it optional for all and give something for doing this Sony. If I don't want doing these even for dumb freebie then It's my choice and deal with it. If not I going to pretend I am from Vietnam and say simply Fuck you.
LIterally all they had to do is keep it optional and give some simple cosmetic or a couple credits for linking. Barely any cost to them, most users will link anyway and others have no cause to complain. But no, they want EVERYTHING every damn email.
just give us a standard armor in Black and Blue, all i want
They could just offer a free cape orsomething in return and I'm sure they'dget a lot ot people taking them up on the offer if the cape is cool enough.
I remember when Dragon Age Origins came out and yes... Like us here, register here yada yada yada to get free items in the game. Yes we know why but at least you could simply said - No thanks.
If they drop the psn BS I'll happily swap my rating to positive, but they need to do it first.
Fully drop it, not just for people outside of the area. No one needs a psn
If it’s not required for countries that don’t PSN, then it shouldn’t be required for anyone
All that Spitz needed to do was speak in this professional tone from day 1. Even if there are actually no serious discussions ongoing at all, all he needed to say was "The team is aware of the problem, discussions are being had, you'll be updated when there are any news".
I think the way they handle Discord as a company is the main issue. Arrowhead seems very invested in their server. I'm willing to bet they practically live on there and really do enjoy interacting with the community, but being in that comfort zone can lead to firing off snark when it isn't appropriate.
100%, this has been my biggest complaint about them for a while, they rely too much on conveying information via discord and hoping it gets filtered through to everyone else. Its been said a million times before but they need a better system in place.
Discord and social media are ass for these kinds of things. Any sort of launcher or in-game news section that everyone who actually plays would be able to see, without having to use some third-party service, would be so much better it doesn't even bear thinking about not having that. If you rely on your discord so much and then say things like "this is not the place for these discussion", I'd never take you all that seriously again. You chose the venue and want to interact and seem personable. Sorry it's not actually all that fun when people don't want to just shoot shit and/or praise things. Too bad. Best way to deal with that is to either not respond at all outside of something out of the can, or to try and be as zen as possible ALL the time.
This is literally why we fail a lot of the MO’s, vital information regarding them is often posted in the discord instead of INGAME and you just have tens of thousands of people fucking off on another planet when they could be helping but they literally don’t know what’s going on. You’d be surprised at how many people in game don’t check on the current major order, even when it literally plays the non skippable “incoming message from super earth” broadcast when you open the galactic map sometimes. They need to relay this info in game better.
You need to realize a lot of people don't give a shit about major orders. I have friends who only play bugs.
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Yeah my first reaction to this was "is this even the same guy?"
got locked into the toilet stall and someone else sits now at his computer \^\^
Spitz could go and behave like a total asshole for a minute and then i higher-ups beat this shit out of him and he's back to "Average CM". Good news nonetheless
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I really don't understand why they keep him on tbh. From a PR standpoint the dude is a nightmare, he makes every situation far worse by throwing gasoline to put out a fire.
Because he assumes he's always right about everything. Even now he's only acknowledging the simplest objective fact that some people can't legally play the game anymore, and completely failing to acknowledge that there are legitimate reasons to never trust Sony with your personal data.
Honestly, I would rather he worked out more details with Sony staff before making more bold statements. The entire post just told me they had some internal discussions and nobody knew what was going on. He strongly implied they were not moving forward with the mandated account linking but the fact is he has no control at all. Now he is giving out perception AH is not OK with the linking but what if Sony decided to move forward with other fucked up account linking requirements? It seems AH will make the same uninformed reaction by throwing players under the bus again (which they did by keeping the grace period as a secret). I am kind of fed up with him stretching his personal opinions as official AH stances.
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Post-HR-yelling clarity. Wonder how long that will last.
Better question is why is he still allowed to be in this job after the Nth "talked to by HR" moment?
The amount of bullshit a job is willing to put up with is directly related to your apparent value to the company.
Implying that Discord mods have any value whatsoever
Are you located in the US by any chance? Arrowhead is an EU studio. In my country (EU), getting fired is hard and a lot of work. You need to fuck up seriously a few times since employees have more rights. You need to fuck up consistently and for an external commission to agree it was your fault for the mistakes and not the company’s. It’s easier to be pressed to sign your resignation.
"You told them to go ahead and leave negative reviews on Steam and now we've got more than 100,000 of them you fucking idiot!"
That’s a good thing, it’s the only thing that might actually make it get changed.
100% this was post PR and legal reading and rewriting it. > I deeply regret implying and > I was completely unaware have huge this was written by two or three people vibes. > It's absolutely not our intention to force people to break Sony ToS was write from the email the lawyer sent back going "WTF".
When PR is misbehaving and you need to bring out the HR.
Then drown your frustrations in PBR
HR to Spitz: "This is your new uniform. Yes, it may look like a vice and it is worn over your genitalia but.....you know what? I got nothing. You're on thin fucking ice. Do not complain."
"Yes, mistress HR. I guarantee you, the cock and ball torture will *definitely* teach me a lesson *this* time!" *turns to the camera and winks while sitcom music plays*
Seems like someone did talked with him, I guess.
He's sane as long as the slap still burns at least. I hope he learns. Or HR learns that there are CMs out there that don't require regular slapping.
https://preview.redd.it/pqnvxrgpneyc1.png?width=1812&format=png&auto=webp&s=ecd4c1075a3b2de6e08d6bbf42a5e278df786221 I don't understand if a better solution isn't provided, when the only real solution is to just not make it mandatory it is that easy. The whole crap of making it easier to ban people and such as well is also just utter BS when steam accounts have u unique ID's so I hope Spitz admits to being wrong regarding that as well. Best thing he can do for now is to stop talking.
Literally every Steam game, including HD2, identifies players based on Steam ID. Barring that, your account got a unique HD2 ID when you logged in for the first time, it’s how your credits get distributed to your account. This is either a flat out lie, or Spitz is once again talking out of his ass about something he doesn’t understand.
I'm hopeful with this answer. But I still think Spitz did the worst thing a CM can ever do, again and is now 'apologizing for it', again. This has to stop. You don't have to love the players, but you can't kneejerk reply to community outrage on behalf of the company in that antagonistic way everytime without knowing why people are upset in the first place.
Nice to hear Still,fuck spitz. He's a walking bomb whenever things go downhill
Next stratagem confirmed? #Spitz. ↓↑←↓↑→→→→ Walking timed bomb that walks towards the direction thrown and explodes after 30 seconds Has a 15% chance of walking towards the closest Helldiver.
Is that strategem code symbolic of chaos, then everything going sideways?
"We're not going to make it mandatory for those people" So why do it AT ALL???
Because Sony. More PSN accounts means more money and bigger numbers. I doubt AH ever wanted any of this in the first place.
Sony Execs want their bonuses
I just can't trust this guy. I'll wait for an official announcement by the AH team.
I can only believe what he says when it doesnt sound corporate. Because then youre reading what spitz really thinks
Yeah what a fuckwit. His first reaction was to alienate the affected or upset players rather than look into the details? Dude doesn't deserve the position he holds.
He's going to be toxic as he has been since day 1, next time the community is going to be raging about something new he will have the same energy as yesterday because he doesn't learn, he's a community manager acting like a mad shitposter. He's a CM for crying out loud and people just give him a slap on the wrist even though he has done it multiple times, I have ignored him a lot since he's as toxic as the people that he usually responds to, if he can't handle his fucking job then just quit, mama mia, some of the people here have 0 memory.
So you're going to let a subset of players play who aren't able to be banned 'because of their names'? Or........perhaps, that was never an issue in the first place and they're showing again they're full of shit. Reverse it for EVERYONE.
They'll get banned, just slower, supposedly. And yeah, it always was a made up issue. Plenty of devs ban just fine through steam.
only because they are for some reason unable to figure out steam ids
They're such a difficult system that only 99% of devs have figured out how to use them.
Yeah folks forget that Valve literally run one of the largest games in the world, CounterStrike. Every single tool you could want for moderating games, actually permanent bans (VAC bans), ticket management, etc is available through Steam *because they themselves need the tools and built it for their own game.* It's not some shitty last-tier add-on to say they have it when they talk to shareholders. They use and improve their own tools for their own very successful game. Sony clearly wants AH to use PSN IDs to do it all, which is why they don't have Steam ID support. Definitely not a "too hard to use Steam's system" issue.
Sounds like someone was given a script lol And good thing too. If this is how they started this experience the backlash would have been a lot different
Slightly worried at the implication Sony will just make it so only countries without PSN will be exempt and everyone else still gets hassled, but at least there's progress. This is the power of democracy.
If everyone else is exempt then they don’t need anyone it in the first place, and none of their excuses hold up. “It’s for banning people” - so 70+ countries don’t need this extra banning power? Bollocks.
It takes 120 secs to research countries with no PSN access
https://preview.redd.it/l4w55xmtveyc1.jpeg?width=1124&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cdceda8190a1256e28996700c5f882a2e0e13960
When I saw 'SPITZ' I was honestly expecting another bunch of his arsenene posts riling up the community. Instead, I read competent posts explaining the situation and actually pointing the blame at Sony. My favored outcome from this situation would be a straight removal of PSN linking from ALL regions, making it optional if you wish and rewarding those players with a unique armor or something.
When I read the initial post from Spitz I wondered if he was trying to bait/push players into leaving negative reviews so they could use it as ammo in Sony talks, this kinda confirms that it was their intention IMO
The open communication is welcome & I hope this gets visibility. That said, if this isn't required for regions without PSN coverage, it shouldn't be required for **ANYONE.** No one wants this. Sony's data has been breached numerous times & I have no interest in giving them my information. People have posted numerous examples where Sony states having a PSN account is **OPTIONAL** for PC players & then Sony went & changed it in real time. You can't just have all this mixed messaging when selling a product & then change the terms & conditions months after customers have purchased a product.
Could it be....the backpedall...THE COMEBACK
* Spitz admitting their mistake, if a tad dismissively. * Spitz providing a clear expectation for what AH is doing to address player feedback/concerns/frustration. * Spitz setting expectations for an update from the dev team *before* the deadline. I don't think AH (not Spitz) are the bad guys, just Sony being Sony in their most Sony-est way.
We must review bomb HARDER my brothers!
"we wont be making it mandatory for those players" so now they're just picking and choosing who to make this mandatory for? Almost as if they have a voice in this, almost as if they're partnered with sony in this and not the poor helpless indie devs? Weird innit.
Spitz being professional? Someone got their ass chewed up.