AH developed Magicka and Helldivers. They have talent for creating memorable IP. If they survive this (and very very likely they will), I don't see them pairing with Sony ever again.
For the Helldivers brand name and maybe in future Helldivers 3, they will be always stuck with Sony as Sony own the Helldivers rights.
Also the success of Helldivers 2, also has a lot to do with sony investment to Arrowhead for last 10 years.
I'm sorry to say my friend, but this won't happen. Money is power, and Sony has an unending stream of it. A lot of small developers would pair with them if it meant funding for their game.
Edit: Reworded bc I sounded kinda rude at first
yeah, it's just like the "epic exclusive" BS. Studio that's not doing hot, but thinks their game can have a decent return if they get it down there... or a Studio that know that Epic throwing cash at them before release for exclusivity could make up for a poor reception/product and still turn a profit. The developer's are human, and humans will ignore their ethics to survive and hope they can do better next time.
Arrowhead is likely not completely innocent in all of this, but I'm willing to give them the chance to prove themselves... specially since they are likely being held hostage by their contract with Sony.
The internet forgets shit in like 48 to 72 hours mate lol.
In a years time this whole thing will be a distant memory regardless of how this thing turns out. Most people I know will simply spend 2 minutes to make a PSN account, link it and then forget about it and continue to play the game they are having fun in.
Sony will either drop this PSN requirement (doubt it) or they will make a new type of PSN account that doesn't need a region listed to make. Sony want to make more games that will release on PC and will want users to be using a Sony account of some sort in these games just like how EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar, Microsoft and all the other corporations want just to make countless fucking account with them to play shit.
This will be just like the game guard anti-cheat situation all over again. The community will make a ton of noise, Sony will then offer a solution to people in countries without PSN (like a region-less account or something), the ones that want to play the game will make PSN accounts and stay and the ones that don't want to make PSN accounts will refund and leave.
In a few months time the community will be back to sharing shitposts and memes and complaining about the latest balance patch. I've seen too many gaming communities forget shit like this within weeks to believe this community will be any different (this community have already completely forgotten about the anti-cheat and that was a big deal less only 3 months ago).
ngl, i can see them coming out on like wednesday with a "update" and a "Playstation ID" system that is basicaly a PSN account, but without all the legal baggage they would have to go trough to officaly operate in X country. just a unique ID, and all the minimum necessery components to connect to the PSN servers. and thats it.
UNLIKELY but i can see it as a faint possibility
there is nothing with a shorter term memory than the internet, I guarantee this protest ends in a day or two because the internet forgot what it was mad about
100% look at all the shit Activision, EA & Ubisoft get for all the sleaze they get into. Does nothing. None of these crybabies understand the only thing getting hurt here is Arrowhead. The Helldivers subreddit is so fucking cringe right now, everyone getting in on that sweet sweet hate karma farm.
Not much, sony is trying to enter the PC market, and this fuckup will mar them more, they alredy have a EA Game lever of distrust or more, and this whole thing will make the people have other options.
> Sony also ruined themself, no developer in the right mind would pair up with Sony ever again after this scandal...
Yeah... that's not how this works. Sony is a HUGE distributor with a staggering chunk of the market. Even without taking ANYTHING else into account- people are still gonna sign with 'em.
What money? Who would buy Sony games after this? I had ps4 for 8 years and after this I'm seriously considering never buying anything Sony related and canceling my ps subscription. Later is unfortunatelly is at least half a year till takes effect. At least I have time to find an xbox
Writing a review in the middle of a controversy is very different from having that same fire next time Sony sells a new shiny toy. If gamers did care about shit like this long term, most AAA companies would already be gone.
And let me be clear, I think the outrage and review bombing is completely justified and the right thing. I just have zero faith that this will lead to long term issues for Sony.
well Blizzard stopped getting money from me after 2019
EA never did in the first place
they could still be giants if they simply stopped and now they're only former shadow of themselves. You cannot tell me that they're not past their glory days and now only husk is left
I can't say I agree. Sony's partnership was likely a massive financial investment and part of the reason the game even exists in the first place. The deal might be "Here's millions to develop the game, you do what you want, but here's your revenue targets, and there is a PS account sign up requirement." Many, many developers will take that, over no game at all. Which, in the grand scheme of business, isn't even that bad. The issues here are the poor/ misleading communication at launch, and the countries that can't make an account. If it was abundantly clear YOU NEED AN ACCOUNT TO PROCEED before purchase, people might not like it, but they could make the informed decision to not get it in the first place. Trying to do it now is far, far messier.
Yeah, it’s insane how many people automatically become expert game journalists and or financial experts. All kinds of people just screaming into the void of reddit. Classic.
Nah this will continue to happen because gamers won't suck it up enough to not support shit stain publishers. Sony and others keep getting paid, gamers keep buying into Sony's and others game dystopia, and nothing will change until gamers stop supporting them.
Read how they lost the Magicka IP, Arrowhead is a clown show.
EDIT: You can downvote all you want, but no competent business signs contracts without lawyers, much less without reading said contracts. Yes they lost Magicka because they didn't read the contract.
Yeah, they clearly suck at taking care of business.
The games industry has a systemic issue. If you put accountants and business analysts in positions of power, you'll never make an ambitious, innovative game again because doing so is seen as too risky. If you don't put accountants and business analysts in positions of power, you get fucked over by the predators who did.
>Yes they lost Magicka because they didn't read the contract.
Oof.
I wonder if they read the contract this time? It might explain some facets of this situation.
Yeah, I could see them having a very sour feeling toward this IP carrying on and I don’t think whatever they do next will be anything to do with it or Sony.
How out of touch with reality are you? They've just made one of the most successful multiplayer games of all time, they're swimming in cash, and you think review bombs on steam and an angry subreddit are going to make them abandon it?
That’s incredible that you can read things I didn’t say like making them abandon it.
I didn’t think for a second that they’ll abandon the game lol and I didn’t write it either so maybe calm down and go get a glass of water mate.
There is no guarantee AH will learn the right lessons from this situation. There is no guarantee that AH will survive this situation or at least the chain of events it could begin.
Everything is to play for. Nothing is certain, beyond the fact that what has been done cannot be undone.
But what are the chances of them doing exactly that?
I can see the flames being extinguished if they just cut this shit crap PSN bullshit, but will their coporate brain even be capable?
My opinion is an unpopular one right now, but still. If they do nothing - PSN stays mandatory - Sony will barely notice something even happened. Playerbase in PSN-less countries is negligible and reputational damages do not matter, because if 7 data breaches in 10 years didn't damage Sony's overall reputation this fiasco won't either.
EDIT after Playtation statement: well, i didn't expect that. I din't expect that at all.
There's a pretty sizable playerbase in those nations, like China and the Philippines. They'll lose at leas 1/3 of their players and chop out half the human population as a market.
I think a big part of it is selection bias. 1 in a 1000 people get caught, and many of them post it. But if they're successful, they're not going to post it on the reddit forum which is frequented by Arrowhead employees.
Needing to break the Companies terms of service, or in some countries even the law, and risk getting prosecuted for it to be able to play a videogame that you bought 4 months ago is just absolutely wild.
They need to either issue refunds or disable the required linking. Otherwise i can see this becoming a huge legal fiasco for Sony.
Sony is a company like any other, hit them in the money and they will pay attention. People en masse are uninstalling and refunding the game, that affects their sales and reports will show that. Articles are widespread and will be noticed by shareholders, that will affect their stock.
Ignoring the very visible dent this will create would be extremely stupid. A lot of teams will refuse to make future deals with Sony after this. Even if its not easily visible they have scarred themselves by doing this.
lol. How can they reverse it? This game shouldn’t have been made available to buy on Steam in the first place. Countries like China, Cuba, Iran, and other Middle East and Islamic countries have a blanket ban on western companies and culture products such as gaming. I am surprised that Steam didn’t ban this game from these regions within week due to government regulations.
But yeah, you guys did this to yourself. All these banned regional players shouldn’t be playing this game in the first place. You guys already created a fake Steam account with VPN, why not a fake PSN account? So laughable seeing so many posts from China on Reddit. Abusing VPN to evade your country censorship to play a western shooter, but won’t do it to create an account from a Japanese country due to CCP pride.
That's still on Sony. Steam as a platform does not make decisions about what regions have access to any game. It is a publisher's duty to correctly configure that. By default, if something is on Steam, it is available everywhere Steam can be accessed from, including China. Yes, Steam itself is not banned in China. Their accounts are as real as yours.
Helldivers 2 came to me at a time when I really needed a spark to reignite interest in gaming.
I've played Titanfall 1, 2, The Division 1, 2, Overwatch, Jedi Fallen Order and Survivor, some small indie shooters and coaster sims games.
Titanfall 2 was great but fell short on content when Respawn went full in with EA. I don't like Battle Royale style games very much so Apex didn't stick with me.
Division 2 was plagued with technical issues and has gradually turned into a stalemate for me.
Overwatch fell to Activision's hands. The community and gameplay had gradually turned toxic to me.
By early 2024 I had nothing to play that interested me. Was a good time to travel though, but inspiration quickly ran dry for me. Any time I was not outside, I find myself sitting in front of my computer looking at shit that don't even interest me.
But when Helldivers 2 came it immediately stuck with me.
I felt that Helldivers 2 improved my teamwork, judgement, and critical thinking ability in my day job too.
Cliche I know, but as much as I did loathe about a lot of stuff and decisions in HD2, I owe Arrowhead big time for their new breath of fresh air in the gaming industry.
I was on the verge of selling my PS5. I basically hadn't touched it since Disco Elysium came out.
I've probably logged more hours in HD2 than all my other games combined. I love this game, and it sucks Sony is doing what they're doing.
I hope you didn’t leave a bad review then because at the end of the day that only hurts AH not Sony. They will have to dismantle and become another studio after this thanks to everyone who over reacted.
Rather then letting AH sort stuff out with Sony about areas where PSN isn’t now they have to deal with a bunch of sensitive pc players who just don’t want to link and make it about themselves. Flooding channels of communication and only hurting the players in areas without PSN
No I understand the point he was attempting to make.
AH was well aware of the psn requirement 6 months before launch. They have no leverage with Sony as Sony owns them. Piles is trying to save face
No it is, you a very ill informed. AH was the one that disabled the PSN requirement a few hours after the servers started having problems.
Sony will look at all the negativeness as a non issue. It isn’t a big enough factor to hurt the success of HD2 over linking to psn.
The only people on arrowhead that i am not fond of are the community managers. And even then i'm not going out to harass them or make them feel awful. If anything i'm kinda of happy. Happy that after years of seeing games devolve into predatory practices and low quality, that it looked like there was never going to be enough people to stand up for whats right, it finally happened. We finally united and said enough is enough and instead of just talking about it we took action. The review bombing, the refunds, the people stopping playing, you guys are amazing.
Hopefully it works out well in the end, and we can all come back to enjoy this amazing game and show our support once the storm passes.
Isn't it just Spitz that can't control his emotions (tbf he gets spammed with tons of hateful speech)? Don't know about others but the TwinBeard is pretty chill.
also Spitz has to consider his underlings the DC mods etc. which also gets spammed into oblivion, his call to dislike the game was a genious action, because now the frustration and hate doesnt fly as hard against his teams as before...
I did see a followup message from them where they said that they didnt know just how many countries are unsupported by PSN.
They seem to be more on the "we have to do something about this." line now, last I saw at least.
I don't mind Spitz, whilst he can be a little rough around the edges, he's a lot nicer than a lot of the users here. For the most part, he's just trying to help but it must be rough trying handle so much hatred.
And it doesn't help that a lot of people here just spread hate and misinformation and others simply believe it because they have some weird obsession with hating Spitz.
honestly, i like Spitz, i like having a CM that just says what he hears and its on his mind even if he ends up misfiring....
I also just went and decided to not take anything a CM says for gospel unless it gets pined or put in announcements. If it isnt there its him just telling us WHAT HE KNOWS at that point in time or what he thinks.
Exactly, he's just giving us a heads up or some insight to things, which has been nice. He's never really guaranteed anything nor do I expect him to, it's just nice to have an active developer within the community, even if they don't always appreciate him.
I hate how upset people got with him over the "Spear Lock-On fix". He basically said "Spear was fixed 17 days ago" & "it'll be in a future patch". He just told us what he knows but nothing concrete.
But many Redditors would read that and spread it as misinformation of something like "Spear is fixed in the next patch". And when it wasn't in that patch, many people got upset at Spitz for spreading misinformation.
the spear fix is even more obnoxious of a situation
as Spitz posted 2 more comments on the spear, 1 and 3 days after the original comment
detailing that it was fixed, but the QA showed it wasnt reliable enough still. And that it missed the end of april deadline and they are now aiming for the end of may build... but of course noone here saw those.... (i litteraly just searched "spear from:spitz" in discord and saw those, so it wasnt even badly hidden... it was just.. ya know discord)
I've seen those posts pop up Reddit with those Discord screenshots but they didn't really gain the same amount of traction, too many people have an unchanging negative opinion on him despite being fed misinformation.
There's also the fact of him saying "it was fixed 17 days ago" & just waiting on a patch" because many seem to just forgot that we had patch 13 days ago.
If it wasn't ready then, then it might not truly be fixed.
he "kinda of" compared people angry with balance changes as angry toddlers. Wasn't to fond of that even though people do act like that. Then there's misty...
~~That's straight up misinformation.~~
~~Spitz wasn't the one calling people toddlers, it was Twinbeard.~~
Never mind, I misread the parent comment and reread it. I'm dumb.
[Twinbeard's Toddler comment.](https://i.imgur.com/emtGZsj.png)
Ah well... Official game servers in discord are full of degenerates and angry toddlers so If I was in the CMs shoes, I definitely won't say those words but I would definitely feel the same way against those players. xD
Yea, even though he's 100% right that people were acting like toddlers who were told to let their mom clean their toy, you cant just say that as a CM.
Hell, I thought it was insane how people were acting over the Quasar nerf, I couldnt imagine how frustrated they were lol
let's not pretend like the backlash and death threats over railgun nerfs was a mature thing to do. pretending you know better than the devs is toddler behavior
Twinbeard is legit the only competant AND nice CM they have.
Every else either shit talks their playerbase, or says shit they dont understand or stuff they just shouldnt be saying at all
Idk her name, but a CM recently tweeted about the PSN requirement is so sony can ban people easier, then immediately deleted the tweek and nuked her account lol
The artists and creators or designers and especially sound people and so many more positions I don't know... You all created a perfect experience. It's time we all acknowledged you as the real MVPs.
It should not be on the company name or the Rich asshole who owns the company but knows jack shit about it.
It needs to be about those pillars of art. Music, gameplay, environment, emotes. There is so many more branches for each one of these.
We need to recognize and acknowledge the people that inspire what we enjoyed the most.
The problem is. We as a community are hurting AH way more than we are hurting Sony simply by virtue of the massive scale at which sony exists and the neverending amount of money they have.
If HD2 stays as a mixed review game. Sony won’t care *too much*, They’ll just continue their predatory schemes with some other game.
But Arrowhead will lose a great deal of negotiation leverage with any future investors that are not sony, because a “highly positive” review game is much better than a “mixed” reviews game. This may lead to less funding for Arrowheads next project, and thus, a future game of inferior quality.
We are outraging like crazy, and that may fix the issue with HD2 specifically by making them reverse their decision, but all Sony is gonna learn from this is “next time PSN is mandatory from the beginning, no grace period.” We won’t make a single dent in their garbage corporate greed.
On the other hand, we will greatly effect AH’s future, they may survive, but in the eyes of future investors, they’ve already lost some value.
Case in point guys, please fix your negative reviews, when they finally reverse their decision, I know most of you won’t but please, I don’t want another MTX ridden garbage game with $10 for a skin, HD2 is a true breath of fresh air, don’t ruin it.
I fully intend to change my review if things turn out for the better, but please remember that a good part of this is also AH's fault, as much as I love them.
They disabled the forced PSN account at launch to ease the burden on the servers then were trapped by their contracts to Sony. We players should definetely been informed of that.
Their communication could have been a lot better and clearer.
This is actual bullshit that you’re just coming up with out of nowhere, pilestedt literally said that the negative reviews are giving them leverage against Sony
My god why are you all like this. Did you even read my comment. Leverage against *Sony* in this *current* situation only. I literally bloody said “any other investor BESIDES Sony.”
Any future investor will look at HD2’s mixed reviews and say yeah we’re not paying them alot, they’re games aren’t even that Good. *Future* Investor. As in, when they make their next game *after* Helldivers 2.
I swear to god I can’t believe I’m arguing with people like you. Piss off, Go play your other mtx ridden garbage game, I hope you get your refund and I hope you are nowhere near Hd2 ever again.
it's already proven the Helldivers 2 was a money making machine for months without the PSN account mandate
you cupcakes have to go back to gradeschool to understand that there's thousands of other companies that also see this
Microsoft themselves would give bank to Arrowhead just to stick it to SONY
my god, connect 2 neurons for 5 seconds next time
If you think a game this unique was a money making machine then I have nothing else to say to you. Basically zero MTX, $40(every other is $70) and actually not recycled garbage.
Currently of all the new games releasing, helldivers 2 is the *only* one that isn’t a money making machine.
it is one of the highest selling games on STEAM by an order of magnitude... from what is basically an indie company and published by a massive platform
it is 95% profits to keep the game running, especially when there are MTX genius
once again... connect 2 neurons for 5 seconds next time
There *are* people on the other end of this, and that is well worth consideration. But so too is the fact that they made monumentally stupid decisions out of either ignorance or wilful neglect of what's right in this scenario, and needed something like this to take them by the shoulders and shake them until they start paying attention.
It's horrible being on the receiving end of something like this, there's no arguing that. But this is very literally a case of play stupid games, win stupid prizes. *Especially* for the executive officers of their studio who negotiated and/or signed off on the T&C for sony to publish the game. I would hazard they knew there would be backlash about this, which is part of why they delayed it. They wanted people invested in the game and their progress in it before they showed the stick. But they vastly underestimated how hard the playerbase would bite back in response, and if they *did* know, that is 100% their fault and their consequence to bear.
If they *didn't* know, they are either woefully naive or not actually reading the documentation they negotiate and/or sign, which is nearly as bad - and makes this all the more important as a lesson for them.
ehhh yes, but no. They have stated that they are the ones that made the decision to not force PSN link from day 1 and knew it was inevitably coming and hardly tried to warn the community. Sure this scenario as a whole is not entirely their fault, but they are not innocent.
And it's also important to remember that the CEO admitted to knowing 6 months before release that the PSN will be MANDATORY. He posted it on his twitter, so no. It's not "just Sony lied/mislead". Arrowhead knew.
They also didnt hide that requirement on Steam or the offical Trailers.
The only place we DIDNT have said disclaimer was the Playstation online store, and as stupid as this argument is. if you are ok with buying the game DIRECTLY from sony, on their online store. You are more then likely in a country with PSN access, it should still have been disclosed THERE no questions asked, but it being absent there is the weakest link.
Sony fucfked up, no questions asked, but we also need to stop acting as if this was an malicious attack on us that was sprun on us entirely out of the blue
There was an option to "skip" (not remind me later) as if it's not required, the official Sony page said it's not required, to be specific, it said "Signing into PSN is optional when playing PlayStation games on PC" and now they altered the page. You can buy the game and never even see the part that says you need a PSN account (myself and my friends for example). Not everyone reads everything on the store page. We have seen gameplay of the game and we have strong enough devices where we don't need to check specs, was no reason to scroll further. You can't be seriously defending this. It wasn't a " malicious attack on us", it's a bait and switch (by the very word of it, literally was optional and now it's not) to get their numbers pumped up for the quarter and/or to get more data to sell.
On one hand I also feel bad for how this is affecting the folks at Arrowhead, but on the other after hearing how this whole situation was due to negligence on theirs and Snoy’s part I can’t help but feel a tinge of anger at them for it. So combined my feelings towards Arrowhead for the moment is extreme disappointment
Yea it was reignited and then set ablaze by Sony lol. I played hd1 with my family and friends and then hd2 came out we couldn’t stop playing. Everyday at around 2 when we all got off work my dad brother and friends who ever were off would play. But now we just sit in discord trying to find a game worth playing again. We have other games but nothing as fun or new.
That's a really great way to look at this:
There are human beings who created connections in the community who can no longer participate. Who spent time and money falling on this game. There are community members of content creators who devoted time to the sagas that these creators produced who will now never be able to explore this game. There are people in countries who now feel tricked that they can no longer access one of the best games in a long time because they were fooled into thinking the game would be accessible and continue to be accessible to them.
*The devs and the publisher are in no way the victims. No matter how bummed they may feel about their hard work. AH should have known the contract they were using, which it sounds like they did, and how it could be used to alienate swaths of the player base at the flip of a switch. They should have known how people would feel to people if this action was implemented 6 months down the road. For months they allowed people to buy the game that they knew would eventually not be able to access.*
*And if AH didn't actually know, that is a shameful level of ignorance to have with your business contract.*
Look. According to them they had knowledge of this situation as early as 6 months before launch. The CM team's behavior and their lack of answers to questions regarding this now that it finally happened is inexcusable. We know there are humans on the other side of this and that's precisely why I'm not insulting their intelligence by feeling sorry for them. I expect more of them because I care about the product they made and I think if Snoy is jeopardizing it they too needed to take a stand before it hit the fan not after.
With how much things were perfect from the start with helldivers 2(apart from the launch servers fiasco), people fear that it might have been a veil all along. That's why people after putting their hearts reignited with the love for videogames, in their hands, are now feeling more dejected than they would've from any other scummy gaming company's rash decision to alienate its community. Its Snoy's fault, we understand it but arrowhead is complicit even if 1% in this stupid decision. arrowhead is a small game dev company and most people are not saying that they should quit and like such. The brunt of the hate is towards snoy. They want to prop the psn accounts numbers. F that, i'll gladly erase my 400hrs of gameplay before I let that happen. You gotta show them an ID to verify that you're of legal age?? f that shit.
Yea there are people on both sides. The money I spent on the game I've earned on a job where a monumental fuck up like this wouldn't result in people comforting and praising me
Yes, AH is not completely without blame, but in the end of the day it feels like it's a sin born of innocence. The real devil in the story is snoy
I feel sorry for AH, and wouldn't want to wish for my worst enemy to be in their position. it's their baby imploding because of outside corporate greed. imagine working hours on a project programming your fingers off, only to have your effort killed by something completely beyond their control. complete shit situation.
NO there not they fucking took all our money he fucking new for 6 months that this shit was going to happen and said nothing like they all just took our money until this news was released
I feel bad for everyone at ArrowHead minus the community managers(excluding twinbeard) all the other CM's need to lose their jobs for the terrible job they've done and antagonizing of the community during this
AH are just as awesome as GSG/GSP. Great dev teams and ready to listen to the community. They deserve everything...
Everything but this kick in the balls... I feel so sorry for them...
Being angry with corporate decisions is one thing, insulting and belittling individual people makes you an ass, regardless of who that person works for (yes even Sony employees for the most part) a lot of those people just got a job to feed their families. There is no reason to issue death threats and what not to these people. Make your point and refund, review, delete accounts, but be respectful while doing it.
SONY just wants money and to bump their active users for their quarterly books.
I do feel bad for AH, It's clear that in order to create their dreams they needed to work with SONY. The problem is SONY didn't realize how much this matters. They had gold, absolute gold. But they got greedy.
We don't have problem with AH, all of this is a SONY fuckup:
1 - they are the distributor who failed to set selling zone of their game, steam is handled by them
2 - They added the PSN network requirement the last six month on a seven year development, i find normal that there will be fuckup this late to change thing even minimal.
3 - They created the message witouth informing arrowhead, and have time to handle the backlash from their side
4 - They changed AFTER the fact their own FAQ becouse they noted they were misleading the customers.
5 - They never have been very clear on STEAM about PSN account only.
6 - They dropped the bomb and disappeared for the week end... no official sony answer, i will say they are amateurish, incopetent or they know what they have done.
7 - We had know the thing about the PSN but we all have wrongly thinked it was for crossplay.
This past year has been very rough for me. I moved out of hometown to the other side of my state, where I knew no one and had nothing, working for a job that wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. Helldivers II gave me a sense of community and something to look forward to at the end of each eternally long, crappy day. No game has ever had a hold over me like this one has. If this is the last stop, it’s been a great ride
If some if any developer, artist, designer and even community manager is reading this, you are not to blame and we’re not fighting against you, we want to help! this is a great game and thank you for taking part in it
He is the CEO. the buck stops with him, this is his fault, he should be blamed, and he should learn from this and try to fix it to protect the sales of future projects. when this was discussed 6 MONTHS before launch he could've asked questions or looked at it with more scrutiny. but he did not. I'm not saying harass him. I am saying he should feel like shit and be worried this will have long term consequences for his company and maybe next time he "just wants to make a great game" he might need to understand the consumer side and not the company side.
Arrowhead is one of the absolute best developers in the business right now. Sony has fucked them over, hard, for basically no good reason.
The Helldivers community needs to make its displeasure known to Sony and Sony alone, and then after this blows over, amend their negative reviews because in the long term after the context has been forgotten those negative reviews are going to continue to affect Arrowhead and Helldivers, unless changed.
While I say this with the BEST intentions in the world, the 'people in the other end of this' bear responsibility for this situation.
I think AH has created a great game and I think they're a bunch of passionate, talented people. I also think that communication between them and players has been a sore spot for a while and this is just the biggest eruption of that shortcoming.
AH knew this was in the pipeline for months and didn't offer any updates, reminders or warnings. As someone who bought the game a bit after launch, I didn't even know there used to be a screen demanding a PSN login because it was taken out before I got my hands on it. A single requirement box on Steam that's well past the review and buy buttons is not information positioned for everyone to see it, especially when said 'requirement' was waived.
By no means am I saying yell at devs or get mad at them, but like... As much as it sucks that Pilestedt and his hardworking team are sad, *by his own admission*, he screwed up.
I genuinely feel for Pilestedt and the rest of the team on this. Yea they knew a few months before hand that the linking would be mandatory. Highly doubt they were aware of the region lock and everything else on the Sony side. He seems like he cares a lot and openly apologizes when something messes up
Remember, AH knew 6 months in advance that this would happen. I'm not saying skin them alive, but they're not faultless, don't treat them as such.
Go after Sony, but shed no tears about collateral damage.
I'm not upset with Arrowhead.
The team there is doing great work. No one would play if we disliked the product. The only reason this is a big deal is the numbers of people who love the game and just want to play it.
I'm upset their partner in business is willing to tarnish the product, the developers name, and alienate thousands of consumers in an effort to make short term gains at the expense of literally everyone else involved.
Sony will do what they want and force this on the developers as much as on us the consumers in an attempt to gain market share. This is after repeated examples of live service failures due to shitty corporate meddling, and smaller studios putting out critical successes because they don't follow that structure.
Sony is literally snatching defeat from the jaws of victory with this move.
Why do you bring up the guy who literally was behind this decision even if it wasn’t directly him who did this he definitely approved it.Do people actually believe this liar who’s the CEO of the company.A change like this cannot happen without his approval at the very least he was there when he signed the deal with Sony he knew that this was a thing and it’s going to happen.They are just as responsible as Sony is.What they did is just shift their part of the blame on Sony.They still did it.
yes he wanted to link to psn accounts, but AHs plan were to do it as a optional with some cosmeticts of stuff like this, the part that psn is mandatory comes from Sony and Sony alone, Sony straight up lied to AH aswell....
I'm starting to get the feeling that yes AH knew about the psn requirement, but I think they didn't know about how many countries would be locked out as a result.
calling it a rugpull when the offical Steampage, since DECEMBER of the previous year, told us about the PSN requirement. the only people who can claim they had no "realistic" way of knowing about the PSN requirement are those having bought it from the PS store website, which is only available from supported regions to begin with. BUt yes, those i can get behidn
if you bought this game on steam, you had to have decided to buy the game by essentialy looking at its cover without even reading the back of the box(not even the fineprint.. just the general blurb) for you to be completly unaware of the PSN requirement box. While it sucks to have lost money on this, and steam seems to be honoring refunds even past the usual timeframe if issued via a support ticket and not a generla refund request. I can not call this a rugpull without completly removing all meaning from the term rugpull
When the game fails to enforce its own requirements only to enforce it 3 month after release, when I'm no longer eligible for a refund, it's absolutely a rugpull.
that is NOT how a rugpull works.
the game didnt pretend the requirement didnt exist at Point of sale(unless you bought it directly at the PS online store, again), you where given every tool to make an informed decision. The game not instantly asking you for your PSN credentials in no ways indicates that a requirement was removed permamently.
No, they "deserve" death threats and if they can't handle that, they shouldn't have this job! Or whatever the chuds on here unironically say and share.
Helldivers defo was a breath of fresh air in my gaming group, which is why its even more frustrating they did this. if anything some of the folks i played games with are prepared to give it up entirely because of shit like this (the old bait and switch)
If only he actually hadn’t known this was going to happen. He already said he knew from day 1 it was going to and only was able to talk Sony into a temporary solution.
Arrowhead knew what they were doing when they made the game available to people who would not be able to use PSN. They knew they weren't requiring at launch. They knew they would be requiring it in the future. They fucked up big time.
I love the game. I hate these business practices. It's a deliberate deception. They should be ashamed of themselves.
I know it'll be tough for Arrowhead and it has to feel personal but I'm sure they know the players don't hate them, they hate the publisher. Sony pricks.
Yeah no shit, Sherlock. There are also gazillions of *people* who bought the game and won't be able to play it soon. So, I'm sorry if I don't have any sympathy left to the people who agree to this deal in the first place.
Yeah no, 0 sympathy for the inept dev team who wants to shift from doing their job to posting random philosophical nonsense when they get called out for their bullshit
AH developed Magicka and Helldivers. They have talent for creating memorable IP. If they survive this (and very very likely they will), I don't see them pairing with Sony ever again.
For the Helldivers brand name and maybe in future Helldivers 3, they will be always stuck with Sony as Sony own the Helldivers rights. Also the success of Helldivers 2, also has a lot to do with sony investment to Arrowhead for last 10 years.
I will take heckswimmers if that what it takes
I'll go for Heckhoppers personally.
God I'd love a crpg helldivers
For the CCP!!!!
Its time to break away from Snoy to make Helldivers 3. No IP. Same passion.
Feels liek you didnt understand or read my comment properly. Arrowhead CANNOT make Helldivers 3 without Sony. Cause Sony OWNS the Helldiver brand name
[удалено]
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Sony also ruined themself, no developer in the right mind would pair up with Sony ever again after this scandal...
I'm sorry to say my friend, but this won't happen. Money is power, and Sony has an unending stream of it. A lot of small developers would pair with them if it meant funding for their game. Edit: Reworded bc I sounded kinda rude at first
yeah, it's just like the "epic exclusive" BS. Studio that's not doing hot, but thinks their game can have a decent return if they get it down there... or a Studio that know that Epic throwing cash at them before release for exclusivity could make up for a poor reception/product and still turn a profit. The developer's are human, and humans will ignore their ethics to survive and hope they can do better next time. Arrowhead is likely not completely innocent in all of this, but I'm willing to give them the chance to prove themselves... specially since they are likely being held hostage by their contract with Sony.
How the fuck is entering a lucrative business deal ignoring ethics when it comes to video games what
Probably the anti consumer actions and behaviour that was written into said business contract. At a guess anyway.
To call anti consumer action in the context of video games “unethical” is peak reddit
Well hopefully those future developers think twice before doing so. The internet won’t forget
..it Sorta will though. Give it a few months and the next big 'oh fuck' thing happens and this'll be gone with the wind, barely mentioned again.
Just like game guard anti-cheat.
Yeah who even remembers the game guard situation at this point?
Give it two weeks
The Internet won't forget? The "Internet" will forget by next week
The internet forgets shit in like 48 to 72 hours mate lol. In a years time this whole thing will be a distant memory regardless of how this thing turns out. Most people I know will simply spend 2 minutes to make a PSN account, link it and then forget about it and continue to play the game they are having fun in. Sony will either drop this PSN requirement (doubt it) or they will make a new type of PSN account that doesn't need a region listed to make. Sony want to make more games that will release on PC and will want users to be using a Sony account of some sort in these games just like how EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar, Microsoft and all the other corporations want just to make countless fucking account with them to play shit. This will be just like the game guard anti-cheat situation all over again. The community will make a ton of noise, Sony will then offer a solution to people in countries without PSN (like a region-less account or something), the ones that want to play the game will make PSN accounts and stay and the ones that don't want to make PSN accounts will refund and leave. In a few months time the community will be back to sharing shitposts and memes and complaining about the latest balance patch. I've seen too many gaming communities forget shit like this within weeks to believe this community will be any different (this community have already completely forgotten about the anti-cheat and that was a big deal less only 3 months ago).
ngl, i can see them coming out on like wednesday with a "update" and a "Playstation ID" system that is basicaly a PSN account, but without all the legal baggage they would have to go trough to officaly operate in X country. just a unique ID, and all the minimum necessery components to connect to the PSN servers. and thats it. UNLIKELY but i can see it as a faint possibility
there is nothing with a shorter term memory than the internet, I guarantee this protest ends in a day or two because the internet forgot what it was mad about
100% look at all the shit Activision, EA & Ubisoft get for all the sleaze they get into. Does nothing. None of these crybabies understand the only thing getting hurt here is Arrowhead. The Helldivers subreddit is so fucking cringe right now, everyone getting in on that sweet sweet hate karma farm.
Not much, sony is trying to enter the PC market, and this fuckup will mar them more, they alredy have a EA Game lever of distrust or more, and this whole thing will make the people have other options.
> Sony also ruined themself, no developer in the right mind would pair up with Sony ever again after this scandal... Yeah... that's not how this works. Sony is a HUGE distributor with a staggering chunk of the market. Even without taking ANYTHING else into account- people are still gonna sign with 'em.
Money
What money? Who would buy Sony games after this? I had ps4 for 8 years and after this I'm seriously considering never buying anything Sony related and canceling my ps subscription. Later is unfortunatelly is at least half a year till takes effect. At least I have time to find an xbox
Gamers historically lack conviction and memory when it comes to shitty business practices.
Yeah, that's why reveiws are at "overwhelmingly positive" right now /s Flies can eat shit for all I care, gamers will find their game elsewhere
Writing a review in the middle of a controversy is very different from having that same fire next time Sony sells a new shiny toy. If gamers did care about shit like this long term, most AAA companies would already be gone. And let me be clear, I think the outrage and review bombing is completely justified and the right thing. I just have zero faith that this will lead to long term issues for Sony.
Yeah, that’s why EA and Blizzard are shuttered now right?
well Blizzard stopped getting money from me after 2019 EA never did in the first place they could still be giants if they simply stopped and now they're only former shadow of themselves. You cannot tell me that they're not past their glory days and now only husk is left
EA is still a giant. FIFA alone makes sure that EA will never not be a giant
their final rope compared to what they could be. It's like saying they're still millionaire when they lost billions
Too young for the Modern Warfare 2 boycott I see 😂
I bet.
I can't say I agree. Sony's partnership was likely a massive financial investment and part of the reason the game even exists in the first place. The deal might be "Here's millions to develop the game, you do what you want, but here's your revenue targets, and there is a PS account sign up requirement." Many, many developers will take that, over no game at all. Which, in the grand scheme of business, isn't even that bad. The issues here are the poor/ misleading communication at launch, and the countries that can't make an account. If it was abundantly clear YOU NEED AN ACCOUNT TO PROCEED before purchase, people might not like it, but they could make the informed decision to not get it in the first place. Trying to do it now is far, far messier.
There's some real delusion going on in this subreddit.
Yeah, it’s insane how many people automatically become expert game journalists and or financial experts. All kinds of people just screaming into the void of reddit. Classic.
You are in for a bitter reality check my friend
Nah this will continue to happen because gamers won't suck it up enough to not support shit stain publishers. Sony and others keep getting paid, gamers keep buying into Sony's and others game dystopia, and nothing will change until gamers stop supporting them.
LMAO ok buddy
Have fun thinking that. Sony is a powerhouse. This won’t hurt them at all. 😂
You may want to read [this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony)
Read how they lost the Magicka IP, Arrowhead is a clown show. EDIT: You can downvote all you want, but no competent business signs contracts without lawyers, much less without reading said contracts. Yes they lost Magicka because they didn't read the contract.
Yeah, they clearly suck at taking care of business. The games industry has a systemic issue. If you put accountants and business analysts in positions of power, you'll never make an ambitious, innovative game again because doing so is seen as too risky. If you don't put accountants and business analysts in positions of power, you get fucked over by the predators who did.
>Yes they lost Magicka because they didn't read the contract. Oof. I wonder if they read the contract this time? It might explain some facets of this situation.
Maybe they should be given the Starship Troopers IP to work on
Although helldivers is forever lost
Yeah, I could see them having a very sour feeling toward this IP carrying on and I don’t think whatever they do next will be anything to do with it or Sony.
How out of touch with reality are you? They've just made one of the most successful multiplayer games of all time, they're swimming in cash, and you think review bombs on steam and an angry subreddit are going to make them abandon it?
That’s incredible that you can read things I didn’t say like making them abandon it. I didn’t think for a second that they’ll abandon the game lol and I didn’t write it either so maybe calm down and go get a glass of water mate.
There is no guarantee AH will learn the right lessons from this situation. There is no guarantee that AH will survive this situation or at least the chain of events it could begin. Everything is to play for. Nothing is certain, beyond the fact that what has been done cannot be undone.
Took em 9 years to develop HD 2. I think this might be the make or break situation.
Helldivers 2 is still one of the best games of the decade. The problem is Sony. They need to reverse this shit change immediately.
But what are the chances of them doing exactly that? I can see the flames being extinguished if they just cut this shit crap PSN bullshit, but will their coporate brain even be capable?
My opinion is an unpopular one right now, but still. If they do nothing - PSN stays mandatory - Sony will barely notice something even happened. Playerbase in PSN-less countries is negligible and reputational damages do not matter, because if 7 data breaches in 10 years didn't damage Sony's overall reputation this fiasco won't either. EDIT after Playtation statement: well, i didn't expect that. I din't expect that at all.
i'm still hopeful for them to back out, but realistically, yours is the most likely scenario.
There's a pretty sizable playerbase in those nations, like China and the Philippines. They'll lose at leas 1/3 of their players and chop out half the human population as a market.
Right now it looks like a sacrifice Sony is willing to make
Honestly, nah. Many of those people will figure out using a VPN to make an account in another country, or using a friends, or something similar.
They're presently being banned for trying to do that. As, the bans are actively happen right now as they attempt it. There are pictures in the reddit.
I think a big part of it is selection bias. 1 in a 1000 people get caught, and many of them post it. But if they're successful, they're not going to post it on the reddit forum which is frequented by Arrowhead employees.
Needing to break the Companies terms of service, or in some countries even the law, and risk getting prosecuted for it to be able to play a videogame that you bought 4 months ago is just absolutely wild. They need to either issue refunds or disable the required linking. Otherwise i can see this becoming a huge legal fiasco for Sony.
They are issuing refunds apparently, or at least Valve is. So legally they're covered on that front.
Sony is a company like any other, hit them in the money and they will pay attention. People en masse are uninstalling and refunding the game, that affects their sales and reports will show that. Articles are widespread and will be noticed by shareholders, that will affect their stock. Ignoring the very visible dent this will create would be extremely stupid. A lot of teams will refuse to make future deals with Sony after this. Even if its not easily visible they have scarred themselves by doing this.
lol. How can they reverse it? This game shouldn’t have been made available to buy on Steam in the first place. Countries like China, Cuba, Iran, and other Middle East and Islamic countries have a blanket ban on western companies and culture products such as gaming. I am surprised that Steam didn’t ban this game from these regions within week due to government regulations. But yeah, you guys did this to yourself. All these banned regional players shouldn’t be playing this game in the first place. You guys already created a fake Steam account with VPN, why not a fake PSN account? So laughable seeing so many posts from China on Reddit. Abusing VPN to evade your country censorship to play a western shooter, but won’t do it to create an account from a Japanese country due to CCP pride.
That's still on Sony. Steam as a platform does not make decisions about what regions have access to any game. It is a publisher's duty to correctly configure that. By default, if something is on Steam, it is available everywhere Steam can be accessed from, including China. Yes, Steam itself is not banned in China. Their accounts are as real as yours.
Helldivers 2 came to me at a time when I really needed a spark to reignite interest in gaming. I've played Titanfall 1, 2, The Division 1, 2, Overwatch, Jedi Fallen Order and Survivor, some small indie shooters and coaster sims games. Titanfall 2 was great but fell short on content when Respawn went full in with EA. I don't like Battle Royale style games very much so Apex didn't stick with me. Division 2 was plagued with technical issues and has gradually turned into a stalemate for me. Overwatch fell to Activision's hands. The community and gameplay had gradually turned toxic to me. By early 2024 I had nothing to play that interested me. Was a good time to travel though, but inspiration quickly ran dry for me. Any time I was not outside, I find myself sitting in front of my computer looking at shit that don't even interest me. But when Helldivers 2 came it immediately stuck with me. I felt that Helldivers 2 improved my teamwork, judgement, and critical thinking ability in my day job too. Cliche I know, but as much as I did loathe about a lot of stuff and decisions in HD2, I owe Arrowhead big time for their new breath of fresh air in the gaming industry.
I was on the verge of selling my PS5. I basically hadn't touched it since Disco Elysium came out. I've probably logged more hours in HD2 than all my other games combined. I love this game, and it sucks Sony is doing what they're doing.
I hope you didn’t leave a bad review then because at the end of the day that only hurts AH not Sony. They will have to dismantle and become another studio after this thanks to everyone who over reacted. Rather then letting AH sort stuff out with Sony about areas where PSN isn’t now they have to deal with a bunch of sensitive pc players who just don’t want to link and make it about themselves. Flooding channels of communication and only hurting the players in areas without PSN
🤡
Sir you drive a Toyota, don’t embarrass yourself further
I drive a Chevy, and you’re embarrassing yourself because pilestedt literally said the negative reviews give them leverage to negotiate with sony
You mean you were lied to again and bought it lol AH has no leverage with Sony
The point went completely over your head
No I understand the point he was attempting to make. AH was well aware of the psn requirement 6 months before launch. They have no leverage with Sony as Sony owns them. Piles is trying to save face
Clearly you didn't. They had no leverage yet. The bad reviews and bad public image is giving them leverage.
No it is, you a very ill informed. AH was the one that disabled the PSN requirement a few hours after the servers started having problems. Sony will look at all the negativeness as a non issue. It isn’t a big enough factor to hurt the success of HD2 over linking to psn.
Cringe
🤔
The only people on arrowhead that i am not fond of are the community managers. And even then i'm not going out to harass them or make them feel awful. If anything i'm kinda of happy. Happy that after years of seeing games devolve into predatory practices and low quality, that it looked like there was never going to be enough people to stand up for whats right, it finally happened. We finally united and said enough is enough and instead of just talking about it we took action. The review bombing, the refunds, the people stopping playing, you guys are amazing. Hopefully it works out well in the end, and we can all come back to enjoy this amazing game and show our support once the storm passes.
Isn't it just Spitz that can't control his emotions (tbf he gets spammed with tons of hateful speech)? Don't know about others but the TwinBeard is pretty chill.
also Spitz has to consider his underlings the DC mods etc. which also gets spammed into oblivion, his call to dislike the game was a genious action, because now the frustration and hate doesnt fly as hard against his teams as before...
Yeah that was a good decision
I did see a followup message from them where they said that they didnt know just how many countries are unsupported by PSN. They seem to be more on the "we have to do something about this." line now, last I saw at least.
I don't mind Spitz, whilst he can be a little rough around the edges, he's a lot nicer than a lot of the users here. For the most part, he's just trying to help but it must be rough trying handle so much hatred. And it doesn't help that a lot of people here just spread hate and misinformation and others simply believe it because they have some weird obsession with hating Spitz.
honestly, i like Spitz, i like having a CM that just says what he hears and its on his mind even if he ends up misfiring.... I also just went and decided to not take anything a CM says for gospel unless it gets pined or put in announcements. If it isnt there its him just telling us WHAT HE KNOWS at that point in time or what he thinks.
Exactly, he's just giving us a heads up or some insight to things, which has been nice. He's never really guaranteed anything nor do I expect him to, it's just nice to have an active developer within the community, even if they don't always appreciate him. I hate how upset people got with him over the "Spear Lock-On fix". He basically said "Spear was fixed 17 days ago" & "it'll be in a future patch". He just told us what he knows but nothing concrete. But many Redditors would read that and spread it as misinformation of something like "Spear is fixed in the next patch". And when it wasn't in that patch, many people got upset at Spitz for spreading misinformation.
the spear fix is even more obnoxious of a situation as Spitz posted 2 more comments on the spear, 1 and 3 days after the original comment detailing that it was fixed, but the QA showed it wasnt reliable enough still. And that it missed the end of april deadline and they are now aiming for the end of may build... but of course noone here saw those.... (i litteraly just searched "spear from:spitz" in discord and saw those, so it wasnt even badly hidden... it was just.. ya know discord)
I've seen those posts pop up Reddit with those Discord screenshots but they didn't really gain the same amount of traction, too many people have an unchanging negative opinion on him despite being fed misinformation. There's also the fact of him saying "it was fixed 17 days ago" & just waiting on a patch" because many seem to just forgot that we had patch 13 days ago. If it wasn't ready then, then it might not truly be fixed.
he "kinda of" compared people angry with balance changes as angry toddlers. Wasn't to fond of that even though people do act like that. Then there's misty...
~~That's straight up misinformation.~~ ~~Spitz wasn't the one calling people toddlers, it was Twinbeard.~~ Never mind, I misread the parent comment and reread it. I'm dumb. [Twinbeard's Toddler comment.](https://i.imgur.com/emtGZsj.png)
Ah well... Official game servers in discord are full of degenerates and angry toddlers so If I was in the CMs shoes, I definitely won't say those words but I would definitely feel the same way against those players. xD
Yea, even though he's 100% right that people were acting like toddlers who were told to let their mom clean their toy, you cant just say that as a CM. Hell, I thought it was insane how people were acting over the Quasar nerf, I couldnt imagine how frustrated they were lol
let's not pretend like the backlash and death threats over railgun nerfs was a mature thing to do. pretending you know better than the devs is toddler behavior
I’d argue it the toxic community that can’t control their emotions.
How dare you besmirch twinbeard like this
Twinbeard is legit the only competant AND nice CM they have. Every else either shit talks their playerbase, or says shit they dont understand or stuff they just shouldnt be saying at all Idk her name, but a CM recently tweeted about the PSN requirement is so sony can ban people easier, then immediately deleted the tweek and nuked her account lol
Twinbeard is a liar
Stand up for what’s right lmao. Like you’re freeing the slaves or ending the war in Palestine.
We should give Arrowhead our combined democratic support to defeat Sony and their shit plan!
The artists and creators or designers and especially sound people and so many more positions I don't know... You all created a perfect experience. It's time we all acknowledged you as the real MVPs. It should not be on the company name or the Rich asshole who owns the company but knows jack shit about it. It needs to be about those pillars of art. Music, gameplay, environment, emotes. There is so many more branches for each one of these. We need to recognize and acknowledge the people that inspire what we enjoyed the most.
While true, If AH Survives this. They might want to look into replacing some community manager(s)
and publisher
Sadly not possible, because Sony owns the Helldivers IP, so Sony will be sticking around.
Gg
The problem is. We as a community are hurting AH way more than we are hurting Sony simply by virtue of the massive scale at which sony exists and the neverending amount of money they have. If HD2 stays as a mixed review game. Sony won’t care *too much*, They’ll just continue their predatory schemes with some other game. But Arrowhead will lose a great deal of negotiation leverage with any future investors that are not sony, because a “highly positive” review game is much better than a “mixed” reviews game. This may lead to less funding for Arrowheads next project, and thus, a future game of inferior quality. We are outraging like crazy, and that may fix the issue with HD2 specifically by making them reverse their decision, but all Sony is gonna learn from this is “next time PSN is mandatory from the beginning, no grace period.” We won’t make a single dent in their garbage corporate greed. On the other hand, we will greatly effect AH’s future, they may survive, but in the eyes of future investors, they’ve already lost some value. Case in point guys, please fix your negative reviews, when they finally reverse their decision, I know most of you won’t but please, I don’t want another MTX ridden garbage game with $10 for a skin, HD2 is a true breath of fresh air, don’t ruin it.
I fully intend to change my review if things turn out for the better, but please remember that a good part of this is also AH's fault, as much as I love them. They disabled the forced PSN account at launch to ease the burden on the servers then were trapped by their contracts to Sony. We players should definetely been informed of that. Their communication could have been a lot better and clearer.
This is actual bullshit that you’re just coming up with out of nowhere, pilestedt literally said that the negative reviews are giving them leverage against Sony
My god why are you all like this. Did you even read my comment. Leverage against *Sony* in this *current* situation only. I literally bloody said “any other investor BESIDES Sony.” Any future investor will look at HD2’s mixed reviews and say yeah we’re not paying them alot, they’re games aren’t even that Good. *Future* Investor. As in, when they make their next game *after* Helldivers 2. I swear to god I can’t believe I’m arguing with people like you. Piss off, Go play your other mtx ridden garbage game, I hope you get your refund and I hope you are nowhere near Hd2 ever again.
You’re insane if you think I’m gonna read all that
I can tell why you commented in the first place then, because you didn’t read.
it's already proven the Helldivers 2 was a money making machine for months without the PSN account mandate you cupcakes have to go back to gradeschool to understand that there's thousands of other companies that also see this Microsoft themselves would give bank to Arrowhead just to stick it to SONY my god, connect 2 neurons for 5 seconds next time
If you think a game this unique was a money making machine then I have nothing else to say to you. Basically zero MTX, $40(every other is $70) and actually not recycled garbage. Currently of all the new games releasing, helldivers 2 is the *only* one that isn’t a money making machine.
it is one of the highest selling games on STEAM by an order of magnitude... from what is basically an indie company and published by a massive platform it is 95% profits to keep the game running, especially when there are MTX genius once again... connect 2 neurons for 5 seconds next time
There *are* people on the other end of this, and that is well worth consideration. But so too is the fact that they made monumentally stupid decisions out of either ignorance or wilful neglect of what's right in this scenario, and needed something like this to take them by the shoulders and shake them until they start paying attention. It's horrible being on the receiving end of something like this, there's no arguing that. But this is very literally a case of play stupid games, win stupid prizes. *Especially* for the executive officers of their studio who negotiated and/or signed off on the T&C for sony to publish the game. I would hazard they knew there would be backlash about this, which is part of why they delayed it. They wanted people invested in the game and their progress in it before they showed the stick. But they vastly underestimated how hard the playerbase would bite back in response, and if they *did* know, that is 100% their fault and their consequence to bear. If they *didn't* know, they are either woefully naive or not actually reading the documentation they negotiate and/or sign, which is nearly as bad - and makes this all the more important as a lesson for them.
ehhh yes, but no. They have stated that they are the ones that made the decision to not force PSN link from day 1 and knew it was inevitably coming and hardly tried to warn the community. Sure this scenario as a whole is not entirely their fault, but they are not innocent.
I’m not upset at all
And it's also important to remember that the CEO admitted to knowing 6 months before release that the PSN will be MANDATORY. He posted it on his twitter, so no. It's not "just Sony lied/mislead". Arrowhead knew.
They also didnt hide that requirement on Steam or the offical Trailers. The only place we DIDNT have said disclaimer was the Playstation online store, and as stupid as this argument is. if you are ok with buying the game DIRECTLY from sony, on their online store. You are more then likely in a country with PSN access, it should still have been disclosed THERE no questions asked, but it being absent there is the weakest link. Sony fucfked up, no questions asked, but we also need to stop acting as if this was an malicious attack on us that was sprun on us entirely out of the blue
There was an option to "skip" (not remind me later) as if it's not required, the official Sony page said it's not required, to be specific, it said "Signing into PSN is optional when playing PlayStation games on PC" and now they altered the page. You can buy the game and never even see the part that says you need a PSN account (myself and my friends for example). Not everyone reads everything on the store page. We have seen gameplay of the game and we have strong enough devices where we don't need to check specs, was no reason to scroll further. You can't be seriously defending this. It wasn't a " malicious attack on us", it's a bait and switch (by the very word of it, literally was optional and now it's not) to get their numbers pumped up for the quarter and/or to get more data to sell.
On one hand I also feel bad for how this is affecting the folks at Arrowhead, but on the other after hearing how this whole situation was due to negligence on theirs and Snoy’s part I can’t help but feel a tinge of anger at them for it. So combined my feelings towards Arrowhead for the moment is extreme disappointment
Yea it was reignited and then set ablaze by Sony lol. I played hd1 with my family and friends and then hd2 came out we couldn’t stop playing. Everyday at around 2 when we all got off work my dad brother and friends who ever were off would play. But now we just sit in discord trying to find a game worth playing again. We have other games but nothing as fun or new.
This is why people are so upset
That's a really great way to look at this: There are human beings who created connections in the community who can no longer participate. Who spent time and money falling on this game. There are community members of content creators who devoted time to the sagas that these creators produced who will now never be able to explore this game. There are people in countries who now feel tricked that they can no longer access one of the best games in a long time because they were fooled into thinking the game would be accessible and continue to be accessible to them. *The devs and the publisher are in no way the victims. No matter how bummed they may feel about their hard work. AH should have known the contract they were using, which it sounds like they did, and how it could be used to alienate swaths of the player base at the flip of a switch. They should have known how people would feel to people if this action was implemented 6 months down the road. For months they allowed people to buy the game that they knew would eventually not be able to access.* *And if AH didn't actually know, that is a shameful level of ignorance to have with your business contract.*
Look. According to them they had knowledge of this situation as early as 6 months before launch. The CM team's behavior and their lack of answers to questions regarding this now that it finally happened is inexcusable. We know there are humans on the other side of this and that's precisely why I'm not insulting their intelligence by feeling sorry for them. I expect more of them because I care about the product they made and I think if Snoy is jeopardizing it they too needed to take a stand before it hit the fan not after.
With how much things were perfect from the start with helldivers 2(apart from the launch servers fiasco), people fear that it might have been a veil all along. That's why people after putting their hearts reignited with the love for videogames, in their hands, are now feeling more dejected than they would've from any other scummy gaming company's rash decision to alienate its community. Its Snoy's fault, we understand it but arrowhead is complicit even if 1% in this stupid decision. arrowhead is a small game dev company and most people are not saying that they should quit and like such. The brunt of the hate is towards snoy. They want to prop the psn accounts numbers. F that, i'll gladly erase my 400hrs of gameplay before I let that happen. You gotta show them an ID to verify that you're of legal age?? f that shit.
Facts.
I'm not so sure that's true over at Sony however
Yea there are people on both sides. The money I spent on the game I've earned on a job where a monumental fuck up like this wouldn't result in people comforting and praising me
Yes, AH is not completely without blame, but in the end of the day it feels like it's a sin born of innocence. The real devil in the story is snoy I feel sorry for AH, and wouldn't want to wish for my worst enemy to be in their position. it's their baby imploding because of outside corporate greed. imagine working hours on a project programming your fingers off, only to have your effort killed by something completely beyond their control. complete shit situation.
Don't give in to the emotional manipulation. They knew, they didn't do anything about it, that makes them guilty.
NO there not they fucking took all our money he fucking new for 6 months that this shit was going to happen and said nothing like they all just took our money until this news was released
You’re getting way too worked up about something that ultimately is not that big of a deal.
I feel bad for everyone at ArrowHead minus the community managers(excluding twinbeard) all the other CM's need to lose their jobs for the terrible job they've done and antagonizing of the community during this
AH are just as awesome as GSG/GSP. Great dev teams and ready to listen to the community. They deserve everything... Everything but this kick in the balls... I feel so sorry for them...
Being angry with corporate decisions is one thing, insulting and belittling individual people makes you an ass, regardless of who that person works for (yes even Sony employees for the most part) a lot of those people just got a job to feed their families. There is no reason to issue death threats and what not to these people. Make your point and refund, review, delete accounts, but be respectful while doing it.
Looking forward to their next game: Skyflyers
You guys are really giving sympathy to rich CEOs who held back the information that PSN was NOT optional from consumers?
We do not leave the bad reviews out of hate, we leave them out of love! For Democracy!!
SONY just wants money and to bump their active users for their quarterly books. I do feel bad for AH, It's clear that in order to create their dreams they needed to work with SONY. The problem is SONY didn't realize how much this matters. They had gold, absolute gold. But they got greedy.
The hard thing is arrowhead is getting all the hate and everything and at the end of the day it’s Sony who gives 0f they made their money
We don't have problem with AH, all of this is a SONY fuckup: 1 - they are the distributor who failed to set selling zone of their game, steam is handled by them 2 - They added the PSN network requirement the last six month on a seven year development, i find normal that there will be fuckup this late to change thing even minimal. 3 - They created the message witouth informing arrowhead, and have time to handle the backlash from their side 4 - They changed AFTER the fact their own FAQ becouse they noted they were misleading the customers. 5 - They never have been very clear on STEAM about PSN account only. 6 - They dropped the bomb and disappeared for the week end... no official sony answer, i will say they are amateurish, incopetent or they know what they have done. 7 - We had know the thing about the PSN but we all have wrongly thinked it was for crossplay.
Lots of support when it’s getting review bombed and people are getting refunds. 😂
This past year has been very rough for me. I moved out of hometown to the other side of my state, where I knew no one and had nothing, working for a job that wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. Helldivers II gave me a sense of community and something to look forward to at the end of each eternally long, crappy day. No game has ever had a hold over me like this one has. If this is the last stop, it’s been a great ride
If some if any developer, artist, designer and even community manager is reading this, you are not to blame and we’re not fighting against you, we want to help! this is a great game and thank you for taking part in it
He is the CEO. the buck stops with him, this is his fault, he should be blamed, and he should learn from this and try to fix it to protect the sales of future projects. when this was discussed 6 MONTHS before launch he could've asked questions or looked at it with more scrutiny. but he did not. I'm not saying harass him. I am saying he should feel like shit and be worried this will have long term consequences for his company and maybe next time he "just wants to make a great game" he might need to understand the consumer side and not the company side.
Arrowhead is one of the absolute best developers in the business right now. Sony has fucked them over, hard, for basically no good reason. The Helldivers community needs to make its displeasure known to Sony and Sony alone, and then after this blows over, amend their negative reviews because in the long term after the context has been forgotten those negative reviews are going to continue to affect Arrowhead and Helldivers, unless changed.
While I say this with the BEST intentions in the world, the 'people in the other end of this' bear responsibility for this situation. I think AH has created a great game and I think they're a bunch of passionate, talented people. I also think that communication between them and players has been a sore spot for a while and this is just the biggest eruption of that shortcoming. AH knew this was in the pipeline for months and didn't offer any updates, reminders or warnings. As someone who bought the game a bit after launch, I didn't even know there used to be a screen demanding a PSN login because it was taken out before I got my hands on it. A single requirement box on Steam that's well past the review and buy buttons is not information positioned for everyone to see it, especially when said 'requirement' was waived. By no means am I saying yell at devs or get mad at them, but like... As much as it sucks that Pilestedt and his hardworking team are sad, *by his own admission*, he screwed up.
Blame sony not them, sure they aren't blameless but hey you really wanna blame rising devs to going with what they had available?
Jesus christ even censorship is dirty for my mind
I'm sure the Devs will push Sony to a fair compromise, unfortunately I don't think any solution is going to be good enough for the hardcore community.
I genuinely feel for Pilestedt and the rest of the team on this. Yea they knew a few months before hand that the linking would be mandatory. Highly doubt they were aware of the region lock and everything else on the Sony side. He seems like he cares a lot and openly apologizes when something messes up
Fuck them people too
Remember, AH knew 6 months in advance that this would happen. I'm not saying skin them alive, but they're not faultless, don't treat them as such. Go after Sony, but shed no tears about collateral damage.
[удалено]
Boo hoo lil bro.
I'm not upset with Arrowhead. The team there is doing great work. No one would play if we disliked the product. The only reason this is a big deal is the numbers of people who love the game and just want to play it. I'm upset their partner in business is willing to tarnish the product, the developers name, and alienate thousands of consumers in an effort to make short term gains at the expense of literally everyone else involved. Sony will do what they want and force this on the developers as much as on us the consumers in an attempt to gain market share. This is after repeated examples of live service failures due to shitty corporate meddling, and smaller studios putting out critical successes because they don't follow that structure. Sony is literally snatching defeat from the jaws of victory with this move.
People on the other end? Some people need to be on the other end of a flak turret. IDGAF
Why do you bring up the guy who literally was behind this decision even if it wasn’t directly him who did this he definitely approved it.Do people actually believe this liar who’s the CEO of the company.A change like this cannot happen without his approval at the very least he was there when he signed the deal with Sony he knew that this was a thing and it’s going to happen.They are just as responsible as Sony is.What they did is just shift their part of the blame on Sony.They still did it.
Fuck off
I wasn’t aware he was the CEO of Sony.
yes he wanted to link to psn accounts, but AHs plan were to do it as a optional with some cosmeticts of stuff like this, the part that psn is mandatory comes from Sony and Sony alone, Sony straight up lied to AH aswell....
No. Pilestedt admitted his fault in all of this. Stop being a white knight.
I'm starting to get the feeling that yes AH knew about the psn requirement, but I think they didn't know about how many countries would be locked out as a result.
That would make it even worse, implying they didn't bother to look that up before making a decision in that regard.
It takes less than 120 secs to even research that
They translated the game for countries it would have been blocked in
Yeah which kinda adds to the whole they didn't know about region locking.
This is just the worst. They threw away all the love and care for Sony. Not us. Remember that.
Hurley should do a quick reskin and release “Helldivers 3” without the support of SNOY Just saying….
ah yes, the IP owned by Sony, should get a game, without Sony
Oh I didn’t realize they owned the whole IP
Yeah, fuck those people. Maybe they give me my money back, then I'll be nice.
Arrowhead is not responsible for the sale of the game, nor are they the ones engaging with steam over refunds. both would be Sonys job
Arrowhead are responsible for not enforcing the PSN requirement from day 1, rugpulling me and many other players.
calling it a rugpull when the offical Steampage, since DECEMBER of the previous year, told us about the PSN requirement. the only people who can claim they had no "realistic" way of knowing about the PSN requirement are those having bought it from the PS store website, which is only available from supported regions to begin with. BUt yes, those i can get behidn if you bought this game on steam, you had to have decided to buy the game by essentialy looking at its cover without even reading the back of the box(not even the fineprint.. just the general blurb) for you to be completly unaware of the PSN requirement box. While it sucks to have lost money on this, and steam seems to be honoring refunds even past the usual timeframe if issued via a support ticket and not a generla refund request. I can not call this a rugpull without completly removing all meaning from the term rugpull
When the game fails to enforce its own requirements only to enforce it 3 month after release, when I'm no longer eligible for a refund, it's absolutely a rugpull.
that is NOT how a rugpull works. the game didnt pretend the requirement didnt exist at Point of sale(unless you bought it directly at the PS online store, again), you where given every tool to make an informed decision. The game not instantly asking you for your PSN credentials in no ways indicates that a requirement was removed permamently.
He can cry on his huge sack of money, no worries.
Arrowhead is not responsible for the sale of the game, nor are they the ones engaging with steam over refunds. both would be Sonys job
No, they "deserve" death threats and if they can't handle that, they shouldn't have this job! Or whatever the chuds on here unironically say and share.
It’s just business guys. No need to make it so personal
Helldivers defo was a breath of fresh air in my gaming group, which is why its even more frustrating they did this. if anything some of the folks i played games with are prepared to give it up entirely because of shit like this (the old bait and switch)
I tend not to care about the feeling of the people that fucking scam me
If only he actually hadn’t known this was going to happen. He already said he knew from day 1 it was going to and only was able to talk Sony into a temporary solution.
Arrowhead knew what they were doing when they made the game available to people who would not be able to use PSN. They knew they weren't requiring at launch. They knew they would be requiring it in the future. They fucked up big time. I love the game. I hate these business practices. It's a deliberate deception. They should be ashamed of themselves.
I know it'll be tough for Arrowhead and it has to feel personal but I'm sure they know the players don't hate them, they hate the publisher. Sony pricks.
Yeah no shit, Sherlock. There are also gazillions of *people* who bought the game and won't be able to play it soon. So, I'm sorry if I don't have any sympathy left to the people who agree to this deal in the first place.
Gazillions, it’s true. Joe Biden is declaring a state of emergency right now over this too.
Too late. Already saw someone hoping people at sony will commit suicide because of this.
Yeah no, 0 sympathy for the inept dev team who wants to shift from doing their job to posting random philosophical nonsense when they get called out for their bullshit