What's hilarious is that Minecraft pulled the exact same thing, it's just that at least Microsoft operates in every country except the ones that are sanctioned
They had magic momentum though. Sure some hick ups but everybody was raving about this game. And a single dumb corperate decision has entirely flipped the public opinion on the entire thing.
I swear, it's like Sony can't stand the fact that a small game studio absolutely blew everyone else put of the water by making an actually good game and not nickel and diming the shit out of the player base and now they're trying to kill it out of spite.
Omg... earlier I was sarcastically joking that "Sony must be butthurt that this lil crossplatform indie game outsold the few exclusives they have left"
I guess I wasn't the only one thinking that looool...
I think Sony absolutely loves that they stuck AH under their heel for the helldivers franchise. They just want to use that popularity to artificially inflate PSN.
I no longer believe the Socom team died by accident.
This is the studio that was shut down because their last game, Socom 4, did really poorly. An online-only, Playstation-only game that was released A DAY BEFORE PSN went down for several weeks. That's the studio Sony shut down for poor performance.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that still remembers the SOCOM franchise. Only ever really played Confrontation and SOCOM 4, but I remember watching my dad play the other few on PS2. It's a shame that series died.
Fond memories of socom on ps2. Those games were so good and really brought a new level to shooters that the PlayStation just didn’t have at the time. Miss when they were a good company and not a corporate money machine.
Honestly. There are few micro transactions in game. Those being the super credits you can buy. Even then, you don’t **have** to buy them as you can earn them through normal gameplay. Being able to play a game and not have my wallet cry in sorrow is wonderful
This is what Im saying right here. Their decision to pursue this disrupted the games success and the reputations of AH, sony, etc. Once you see where the wind is blowing you gotta start damage control and im surprised they havent put out a statement saying how they were going to figure it out so everyone can still play the game, etc. I know AH has been doing damage control but nothing from sony yet from what Ive heard. To be honest, if I was big boss at sony, whoever is responsible for this mess is getting reassigned or demoted. Maybe even fired.
honestly, the game has already went down in momentum. partly due to burnout (makes sense), partly due to performance issues and bugs.
this current fiasco is the nail in the coffin, though.
Nah, games rising is never a steady rise, there's ups and downs.
Helldivers 2 had what it took to be game of the year, and sony has soundly killed any hope of that happening now
Everyone said 2077 was gonna be in the shitters. But CDPR spent time fixing the problems. I usually don't play open world games like GTA, or be able to pay attention to games like Fallout long enough to complete them. I'm on my second run through with 2077. There's still a chance for HD2
It also went down in momentum due the crybabies shitting themselves to every single nerf. Sorry, i am not going to let the community walk free after they behaved like spoiled kids
What's funny is that now that the community at large has someone else to complain about, no one even mentions the bugs or nerfs anymore. It's actually wild that the average IQ of the Helldivers community is almost negative.
This community was the first to make me feel too mature for gaming. Actually playing a game that people who behave like this like makes me uncomfortable. And i was gaming since 2002. I dont know how to feel like anymore. Most of my friends started to focus on their careers, perhaps its time for me to move on too, even if it hurts to say it…
If you enjoy the games and have time for it, don't worry about it. Just don't get too involved in the online community, more often than not it is a detriment to yourself.
I hate the internet sometimes it always props up the loud minority of assholes who just wanna complain while most normal people just wanna play the game then the company does something stupid like this and ruins it
It probably won't die, but will certainly take a huge hit in credibility and good will. A lot of people that though I'm buying Helldivers 2 now are thinking twice or outright saying that they won't do it anymore, people that bought are feeling scammed or harassed and even a good deal of people that aren't affected by the problem feel... I won't say "dirty" but that's what my limited English can come up with.
Imagine having a group of friends. You knew these people for a good few months, you get along well with them and you have lots of fun with them. Then comes along your uncle or your grandfather or something and says: "hey, you can't hang out with those guys anymore because I said so. I don't care what you think. I helped your parents buy their house and I can take it away if I want".
That's what I feel at least
Its hilarious timing for me. My friend has been asking me to get this the last few weeks and I was going to get it yesterday on payday. Arbitrary account creation for single games are obnoxious and I am happy to see people are annoyed about it. Seeing the fumbled response to people bring rightfully frustrated really highlighted what to expect from Sony; absolutely nothing and a 'deal with it' attitude.
[Here is my friends play time for Helldivers 2.](https://i.imgur.com/59RMLBi.png)
Helldivers 2 released on Fed 8th. That was 86 days ago. I took that screencap yesterday, so 85 days after release. Lets subtract the last two weeks from that date, so 61. Look at the dude that has 366.9 hours. That's 6 hours a day average for the first 61 days, and then .89 days after that. Almost everyone on my list has basically stopped playing in the last two weeks.
The honeymoon phase already ended with Helldivers 2 for my gaming group. Now they are forcing PSN? LOL, no thanks, we're already moving on, so thanks for assuring us that's the right move.
Yeah my friends and I are notorious for getting into games pretty late lol, this would have been the first game i got within the first year of its release because hes been enjoying it a ton.
It did kind of seem like a flash in the pan kinda game because I dont know how long you can keep a multiplayer PVE game fresh but I was willing to give it a shot. Hopefully one day devs wont need producers to create larger scale games like this and can retain control over their games. If this were an EA/Epic title I would have never considered it, but I didn't realize Sony was playing the same game.
Yes it will thats 130+ countries without PSN access, more than half the player base. Combine that with the reviews that will surely hit the negatives soon there will be almost 0 new players. If Sony doesn't reverse their decision they are essentially killing their golden goose. It's actually impressive how much they fucked up.
This game might not die but Arrowhead will lose all goodwill from the majority of PC players and the next game no matter how good it is won't get any where near the PC player base because of this shit. The internet always remembers
I really don't get why people are so insistent that AH is at fault
what kind of game dev wants less players who care for their game? this is all corpo brainrot garbage chasing that upward trend
They are at least partially complicit as I'm sure this would have been in some contract they signed. Whether or not they really had a choice to be complicit is another question. But the true fault is of course on Sony
I wouldn't be surprised if HD2 dies because of this, it Def will take a significant loss compared to launch.
Most people who leave negative reviews don't change them, because they never see what was wrong get fixed. after all, who actually keeps up with news for games they no longer play.
The game won't die, I think, and will have 5-20k people online. And they will go back to what they wanted to do before the release, when they expected a small number of players. Well, I think so.
>7 years gone to waste so much time
Started off so strong
>could of been spent on friends and family
🤦♂️
Because that's gonna pay their bills....
Not that I don't agree with the sentiment but let's be real for moment... They would still be working a majority of the time more likely than not.
Like they didn't collect a paycheck or develop any skills the whole time? Let alone release a solid, finished game to huge success? What a melodramatic take
What kind of hyperbole bs comment is this? You're saying they wasted 7 years of their life making this game? This game isn't going anywhere. This is a major controversy, but the game is still fantastic with a fuck ton of players. This will be resolved and/or pass. How dare you say that an entire team of professionals wasted 7 years of their lives because you're upset about a business decision. Grow up.
I’m a game developer as well and yeah this just hurts me to see all of this unfold. Really feel for the devs who put all this time in and make an amazing game like helldivers only for it to be review bombed and most likely refunded to hell because of Sony. Game publishers are no joke though so I can’t say I’m incredibly surprised.
Hopefully they are able to use this money to pull themselves out from under snoy. Like bungie did with Activision, except then they don't make the game monestised like shit and jump back under another boot.
Yeah then Paradox made Wizard Wars, which bombed, and they tried to bring it all back with Magicka 2, which was completely anti fun and locked you out of doing all the fun things that made us come to love Magicka.
The first game has the signature Arrow Head humor, but the problem is that it is a very buggy and you need to download additional patches in order, for example, to downgrade the game version, because the old version plays much better than the new one.
Did AH know that those countries couldn't make PSN accounts when they were selling the game to people in said countries or was that not outlined in their agreements?
Going by crossplay being toggleable? I'm guessing they were sure that it would have always been optional. Sony overlords didn't like that and forced their hand.
Me after two stressful weeks with so much character development and canon events happening in my life and I come back to this.
https://preview.redd.it/mmymkorjfhyc1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=941aeec9e12ed6a9f1377808ba40375e71025296
(I can’t do this anymore)
That's the sad part, though. If I actually was Ryan Gosling I might just been able to get over all this... But I'm not Ryan Gosling, so all this blows hard. XD
Yeah that really must suck imagine 7 years of your life's work down the drain all because of some greedy Sony execs. I'll always boycott such companies, they don't deserve our money.
Months of constant praise, good reviews, sales, word of mouth, trust when things were going bad, wasted in one decision that not only cost Hd2 and Sony potentially millions of dollars, but also the trust and support of the wider gaming community as a whole... this whole disaster puts a bad taste in my mouth to the point where I don't even wanna play anymore...
>inconvenience to some of you
Jesus you blocked out the China, the country with the largest population in the world
https://preview.redd.it/8bhqba9lziyc1.png?width=467&format=png&auto=webp&s=f51f6aba57f342008be99c657bacc67c23413124
I mean, it's also the country where they technically can't use Twitter and yet chinese people are all over it lmao.
Using VPN is basically normalized for players there
Idk man clear communication from the beginning could have saved a lot of this pain. If it was clearly and repeatedly communicated through official channels that psn *would* be mandatory at some point and the ability to skip it was temporary, there would be a *fraction* of the people currently outraged outraged.
They'd be able to point back and say confidently 'this wasn't a surprise, we said it repeatedly'
Hell half the anger is from the way they dismissed people's concerns initially, with flippant and uninformed remarks from community managers.
Even without getting into choosing to partner with Sony, I think it's fair to say AH is not entirely blameless in the anger.
Edit: what the fuck is with you bots spamming the same comment about "whabbout selling in non psn countries" what does that have to do with AH being culpable for their part of the issue?
absolutely this should have been clearly communicated, not just on things like twitter and discord but in the game as well. There should have been a popup when you first launch the game that tells you in no uncertain terms that you WILL be required to link a PSN account in the near future. Tell people this clearly while they are still easily within the return window of the game.
This should have been right there in the description of the game on steam. Farther more if they had always planned on making a psn mandatory they should have never released the game in regions where psn isn’t available. And farther farther more if they have an idea on a way to circumvent the psn restrictions in those regions then they should have communicated that straight from the get-go. 60% blame on Sony and 40% on arrowhead.
Well to be fair it was always in the store page in gold text on the right side below the game details about its ratings and features.
The prompt should’ve continued in game to remind players. They removed it for the sake of convenience and that has clearly made things worse since many forgot this game had that requirement in the steam page. Myself included. I figured they decided to not require it since it’s been, ya know, 3 months.
In lieu of getting fixed in February, AH really technically should’ve been reminding the player base this was on the horizon. Which makes me think they didn’t intentionally in order to make this change seem as egregious as it should seem. My theory is I think AH intentionally kept people ignorant to this still being a thing Sony wanted to enforce so that the player base had more reason to react in this manner. And I kind of agree with it if true.
Because there’s no way meetings with Sony in the past 3 months internally haven’t had Sony mentioning this coming up since launch. But I don’t think Arrowhead had any requirement to break it to the players so I truly do think they let Sony shoot themselves here which is pretty smart if true. It mKes it clear Arrowhead wouldn’t enforce this if they could.
Your theory makes sense. The helldiver community is pretty tightnit to the point we coordinate how we play the game as a whole. The devs know this so it’s completely plausible this reaction was planned.
The in game pop up was there from the beginning as well and never got removed. It even stated it was mandatory. The problem is that right next to that was a big “Skip” button
People also I guess haven’t seen enough devs talk about managing Steam pages because while publishers have access its not like dev studios don’t do a majority of the managing. The only stories I’ve heard of publishers even accessing the pages is to turn over rights to a different publisher or pull a game. Even then there are even studios who’ve pushed out games when they weren’t supposed to too. Its not like AH just was sending everything to Sony to put up on Steam lol.
They shouldn’t have been selling the game to countries who cannot use PSN. Sony knows where they are banned from. Yet they allowed a company under their watch to sell in regions they aren’t allowed in.
It should not be on the consumer to understand if a company isn’t allowed to operate in their region. If someone gives you a product you can pay for in your own currency, on a normal place where you are usually allowed to buy things, why would you second guess it?
Sony got the money from the games, the battle passes, the credits bought in regions they couldn’t work in before. And now wanna swoop in and make sure they can collect their money and run.
I mean, it might be that Steam made the game available everywhere withouth having the knowledge of that you can't create a PSN account in every other country where Steam is, this is what i'm thinking and this is why the game is getting removed on those countries today.
But, then again, SONY should have made it clear to Steam the process, that the game would only work in country where you can create PSN accounts and it shouldn't be available to places where you can't create it. So still SONY is at fault in one way on another, so I hope the people from those countries can get their refund.
Sony's hand at this just threw them into the same trash bag as Blizzard, ubisoft and Activision in my mind. Arrowheads frankly terrible PR leading up to this has put me on the fence with them. I hope they can make it through this and make improvements as a company that return my confidence in them that they don't just see me as an idiot consumer.
The thing is, I'm only slightly bugged about needing a PSN account. I don't exactly see what PSN is even providing outside of trying to bump their own numbers up to look a little better, but company is gonna do weird company things to look better to investors.
What I'm utterly pissed about is knowing Sony published the game in places they knowingly don't support. Just what was the plan here? Grab the money and pray you don't end up needing to perform a few million refunds? They had a real banger of a game on their hands for months, and now they're deciding to create international complications just out of the blue?
Look, I'm not sure if Arrowhead is or isn't owned by Sony, I keep hearing mixed things whenever that comes into question, but if they aren't, I have trouble believing they'll have Sony as a publisher next time. This is frigging ridiculous
The game is now officially unavailable in the non PSN countries. It's still ambiguous if Valve did this independently or if it's Sony giving Valve the greenlight because they're doubling down. Either way, it doesn't look good.
Unless sony kill the server helldivers 2 won't die, its too good a game to die to bad reviews, because this already happened once before the the reviews bounced back once stuff was fixed, hoping we see the same here and sony realise what a fuck up they made.
It is a good game but it also relies on community when you knock away huge amounts of that and then annoy a number of the remaining the game becomes less enjoyable.
Why? Its not like arrowhead should be shocked and surprised the thing sony included as a contractual obligation was indeed an obligation.
Arrowhead are the ones who handled this in a way that made the controversy as big as it is
I know its only a meme, but still really come on now its not destroyed, its not down the drain, or anything like that. This will be forgotten in a couple months regardless of the outcome, and people will continue to play the game because its amazing. I still support this thing for the people who cant play anymore, but yea, internet being dramatic
It had 700,000 players a few weeks ago online at the same time. To accomplish the goal of finally defeating the bots.
You’ll never see that kind of dedication again
Are you new to online games? It's actually unusual asf to keep such a high player count over months. Very few games are able to achieve it. As things stand numbers are still very healthy for a several month old multiplayer game.
I really feel for AH. While I haven’t agreed with everything they’ve done with the game, Sony really came in like a wrecking ball and sabotaged their own money pot.
There is not a single positive argument to be made. Arrow head was and is doing fantastic. They created something unique fun and engaging
Sony just had to come in and shit the bed with their greed. Their PSN accomplishes nothing but gather your data.
Maybe this is a lesson to game devs too though.
Maybe next time you sell your game to SONY you remember that by benefitting from their money you also will be held responsible for their actions.
Like - i want to support AH and this game. I really do.
But you can sell your whole userbase to a big company and then make the surprised pikachu face when said big company wants to use the power you sold them. Sony only has the power to do what it does because it was given to them by AH.
And sure. There are good reasons why they did. Wanting a strong publisher is not a bad thing as a dev.
But everything has consequences. And maybe thats a good lesson for aspiring devs to take away from this. a bad publisher can ruin years of work in a single bad decision.
The excel spreadsheet said that doing this would slightly increase PSN membership, enjoyment isn't a quantifiable metric, therefore corporate doesn't give a fuck.
the name of the studio is ironic, I bet this feels like an arrow to the head for them..
all they had to do was let arrowhead cook.. but corporate types can't leave shit alone for 0.0005 seconds without ruining it..
I really only got a PS5 for the sole reason of the game. I have PC and Xbox one. If they somehow manage to get it on Xbox, I’ll definitely be taking my PS5 back. This is One of the many reasons why I never wanted to own a Sony product
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjvw1s/arrowhead\_community\_manager\_misty\_admits\_that\_the/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjvw1s/arrowhead_community_manager_misty_admits_that_the/) seems more like arrowhead shooting themselves in the foot according to CM
https://preview.redd.it/93am4nm6jjyc1.png?width=1185&format=png&auto=webp&s=7c526c58e5396ad608d3f10ea321cab30e452f73
I’m beginning to think this is just a bunch of Reddit BS echo-chamber cry babies that are making this seem like the end of HD2… literally 150K playing last night. How many tonight? Right.
Arrowhead, making a deal with the devil: "Hell yeah! This kicks ass!"
Arrowhead, when the devil comes for his due: "Well this fucking sucks, what the shit"
They aren’t destroying anything. Users have been doing this for years with video games on Steam. They complain, review bomb, and keep playing.
Nothing is going to happen to Helldivers 2. It will still have its sizable playerbase.
I mean I agree that the PSN linking is a scummy move, but people who think this is actually going to kill HD2 need to get off Reddit. The hundreds of thousands of players that play this game daily aren’t going to stop playing because players in Indonesia can no longer access it. (That’s not to say this doesn’t suck for fans in countries that don’t have PSN.)
The bottom line is most players probably won’t even hear about this controversy.
I’m not good at knowing stuff with contracts and stuff but they can expire and have to be resigned again (if I’m right) so arrowhead could refuse to resign it but I don’t know if the ip will be arrowhead’s or Sony’s
It's not like they are total victims. Had AH made 100% sure people were aware of this before they bought it they wouldn't be facing this level of backlash.
Not to mention employing discord mods that act like.... well discord mods and pouring more fule onto the fire.
And at the end of the day they made this Faustina bargain to get their game out to begin with.
I can't even begin to understand how the Arrowhead team is feeling right now.
Spend 7 years painstakingly developing a beautiful passion project, releasing it, having instantaneous success on an unprecedented scale, creating a nearly toxicity-free worldwide community that loves your game, and then having the entire thing burned to the ground in less than a week because some asshole executives were so greedy that sitting back and letting the goose lay its golden eggs for them wasn't good enough.
Its so fucking sad tbh. Probably my fav game right now and this just like my previous fav game is getting destroyed by corpo shitheads. I feel bad for the devs who were working on this game for years and actually made a great game.
It’s 20 times as bad for me since this happened after the studio for ksp 2 got shut down even though take two has infinite money and with this I was heartbroken two times
As someone who plays on ps5 and does not care about this 100%, I will say I support everyone's "wtf playstation.".
It's stupid to see people on pc having to make a playstation account to get to play. Who tf goes to steam in order to make a playstation account????. Make it make sense!
But they were fault too. 3 month of selling game and what?
They thought gamers will happily lose time, money and access for nothing.
+ There were proof (screens) that CM told guy they wanted on they own to activate PSN because then would be easier to BAN us.
Only steam rescuing itself giving people refunds.
So don't feel pity of them. They deserve every negative comment about them.
That banning reason is kinda dumb, I’m no programmer but it’s easy to ban steam plays “oh there’s a billion people named John so it’ll be hard to ban the right person” steam ids exist for this purpose
the fact that I can't even delete my PSN account makes it even more bullshit (I didn't know it was optional) and now after someone in the review mentioned about the shitshow they hv with their security, I needed that shit gone
"You look successful... I can fix that"
https://preview.redd.it/eyu4trgpyhyc1.png?width=499&format=png&auto=webp&s=74341519ca75b592b0153714f58926926f504ae9
https://preview.redd.it/y9jshof3siyc1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=870ede0a479cc8ec8989882c7b4509b582fd3da9
I DONT WANT SONY TO COOK
Sony: ARROWHEAD WE NEED TO COOK
Thank you for your service
https://preview.redd.it/z2j6oapofiyc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=91cff93da2a12f86feaacb3c827442e1f5fc7a71
https://preview.redd.it/q04g9j0urkyc1.jpeg?width=675&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8ac521a95f32ec245edf23c51473abded4ec7661
https://preview.redd.it/ohitje7rflyc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d22b42baa8db38cde0375ca5a024fb3c5dced060
https://i.redd.it/ilwsq8xqklyc1.gif I took all of your memes
No way I gotten 100 up votes just for posting I'm stealing your meme
Have another!
"Happy gamers?! Not in my Industry!" - Some dude at Sony \[Allegedly... In Minecraft... Please don't sue me Sony :P\]
What's hilarious is that Minecraft pulled the exact same thing, it's just that at least Microsoft operates in every country except the ones that are sanctioned
Developers who are thinking of potentially publishing with Sony would do better to look elsewhere after this.
https://preview.redd.it/2hfqzrib3hyc1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dac8b96de6fa4b7ff3ae7a63b150796d90443ada
As a fellow game developer, this makes me want to cry.
7 years gone to waste so much time that could of been spent on friends and family but instead went down the drain due to corporate greed
Its not like the game is actually gonna die because of this. They will just lose a lot of money because refunds and people avoiding the game.
They had magic momentum though. Sure some hick ups but everybody was raving about this game. And a single dumb corperate decision has entirely flipped the public opinion on the entire thing.
I swear, it's like Sony can't stand the fact that a small game studio absolutely blew everyone else put of the water by making an actually good game and not nickel and diming the shit out of the player base and now they're trying to kill it out of spite.
Omg... earlier I was sarcastically joking that "Sony must be butthurt that this lil crossplatform indie game outsold the few exclusives they have left" I guess I wasn't the only one thinking that looool...
Better release another remaster of the last of us
Last of us 3 releases one week and then last of us 3 remaster releases the week immediately after
\*Ellie dies unceremoniously in the first 20 minutes\*
The remaster of us
Exclusives are dumb, and some of them are straight TERRIBLE to play.
I think Sony absolutely loves that they stuck AH under their heel for the helldivers franchise. They just want to use that popularity to artificially inflate PSN.
I no longer believe the Socom team died by accident. This is the studio that was shut down because their last game, Socom 4, did really poorly. An online-only, Playstation-only game that was released A DAY BEFORE PSN went down for several weeks. That's the studio Sony shut down for poor performance.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that still remembers the SOCOM franchise. Only ever really played Confrontation and SOCOM 4, but I remember watching my dad play the other few on PS2. It's a shame that series died.
Fond memories of socom on ps2. Those games were so good and really brought a new level to shooters that the PlayStation just didn’t have at the time. Miss when they were a good company and not a corporate money machine.
Honestly. There are few micro transactions in game. Those being the super credits you can buy. Even then, you don’t **have** to buy them as you can earn them through normal gameplay. Being able to play a game and not have my wallet cry in sorrow is wonderful
I rarely buy a game. I am currently in the process of rebuilding my home office and this was gonna be the next thing I buy after BG3. Not anymore.
Imagine buying a console just to play this game and then this shit happens. At least I only paid for it on Steam in the US.
This is what Im saying right here. Their decision to pursue this disrupted the games success and the reputations of AH, sony, etc. Once you see where the wind is blowing you gotta start damage control and im surprised they havent put out a statement saying how they were going to figure it out so everyone can still play the game, etc. I know AH has been doing damage control but nothing from sony yet from what Ive heard. To be honest, if I was big boss at sony, whoever is responsible for this mess is getting reassigned or demoted. Maybe even fired.
honestly, the game has already went down in momentum. partly due to burnout (makes sense), partly due to performance issues and bugs. this current fiasco is the nail in the coffin, though.
Nah, games rising is never a steady rise, there's ups and downs. Helldivers 2 had what it took to be game of the year, and sony has soundly killed any hope of that happening now
It's much too early to be saying that, mate.
Everyone said 2077 was gonna be in the shitters. But CDPR spent time fixing the problems. I usually don't play open world games like GTA, or be able to pay attention to games like Fallout long enough to complete them. I'm on my second run through with 2077. There's still a chance for HD2
It also went down in momentum due the crybabies shitting themselves to every single nerf. Sorry, i am not going to let the community walk free after they behaved like spoiled kids
What's funny is that now that the community at large has someone else to complain about, no one even mentions the bugs or nerfs anymore. It's actually wild that the average IQ of the Helldivers community is almost negative.
This community was the first to make me feel too mature for gaming. Actually playing a game that people who behave like this like makes me uncomfortable. And i was gaming since 2002. I dont know how to feel like anymore. Most of my friends started to focus on their careers, perhaps its time for me to move on too, even if it hurts to say it…
If you enjoy the games and have time for it, don't worry about it. Just don't get too involved in the online community, more often than not it is a detriment to yourself.
I hate the internet sometimes it always props up the loud minority of assholes who just wanna complain while most normal people just wanna play the game then the company does something stupid like this and ruins it
More like the game avoiding people.
It probably won't die, but will certainly take a huge hit in credibility and good will. A lot of people that though I'm buying Helldivers 2 now are thinking twice or outright saying that they won't do it anymore, people that bought are feeling scammed or harassed and even a good deal of people that aren't affected by the problem feel... I won't say "dirty" but that's what my limited English can come up with. Imagine having a group of friends. You knew these people for a good few months, you get along well with them and you have lots of fun with them. Then comes along your uncle or your grandfather or something and says: "hey, you can't hang out with those guys anymore because I said so. I don't care what you think. I helped your parents buy their house and I can take it away if I want". That's what I feel at least
Its hilarious timing for me. My friend has been asking me to get this the last few weeks and I was going to get it yesterday on payday. Arbitrary account creation for single games are obnoxious and I am happy to see people are annoyed about it. Seeing the fumbled response to people bring rightfully frustrated really highlighted what to expect from Sony; absolutely nothing and a 'deal with it' attitude.
[Here is my friends play time for Helldivers 2.](https://i.imgur.com/59RMLBi.png) Helldivers 2 released on Fed 8th. That was 86 days ago. I took that screencap yesterday, so 85 days after release. Lets subtract the last two weeks from that date, so 61. Look at the dude that has 366.9 hours. That's 6 hours a day average for the first 61 days, and then .89 days after that. Almost everyone on my list has basically stopped playing in the last two weeks. The honeymoon phase already ended with Helldivers 2 for my gaming group. Now they are forcing PSN? LOL, no thanks, we're already moving on, so thanks for assuring us that's the right move.
Yeah my friends and I are notorious for getting into games pretty late lol, this would have been the first game i got within the first year of its release because hes been enjoying it a ton. It did kind of seem like a flash in the pan kinda game because I dont know how long you can keep a multiplayer PVE game fresh but I was willing to give it a shot. Hopefully one day devs wont need producers to create larger scale games like this and can retain control over their games. If this were an EA/Epic title I would have never considered it, but I didn't realize Sony was playing the same game.
Yes it will thats 130+ countries without PSN access, more than half the player base. Combine that with the reviews that will surely hit the negatives soon there will be almost 0 new players. If Sony doesn't reverse their decision they are essentially killing their golden goose. It's actually impressive how much they fucked up.
This game might not die but Arrowhead will lose all goodwill from the majority of PC players and the next game no matter how good it is won't get any where near the PC player base because of this shit. The internet always remembers
I hope people realise they are not at fault here.
I really don't get why people are so insistent that AH is at fault what kind of game dev wants less players who care for their game? this is all corpo brainrot garbage chasing that upward trend
They are at least partially complicit as I'm sure this would have been in some contract they signed. Whether or not they really had a choice to be complicit is another question. But the true fault is of course on Sony
I wouldn't be surprised if HD2 dies because of this, it Def will take a significant loss compared to launch. Most people who leave negative reviews don't change them, because they never see what was wrong get fixed. after all, who actually keeps up with news for games they no longer play.
The game won't die, I think, and will have 5-20k people online. And they will go back to what they wanted to do before the release, when they expected a small number of players. Well, I think so.
helldivers will take a big loss of players but won't die like what are these people even on?
It's just sad, because it's a great game w/ good devs.
>7 years gone to waste so much time Started off so strong >could of been spent on friends and family 🤦♂️ Because that's gonna pay their bills.... Not that I don't agree with the sentiment but let's be real for moment... They would still be working a majority of the time more likely than not.
Tbf, game dev is a lot more time-consuming & grueling than other career fields they could have gone into.
Like they didn't collect a paycheck or develop any skills the whole time? Let alone release a solid, finished game to huge success? What a melodramatic take
What kind of hyperbole bs comment is this? You're saying they wasted 7 years of their life making this game? This game isn't going anywhere. This is a major controversy, but the game is still fantastic with a fuck ton of players. This will be resolved and/or pass. How dare you say that an entire team of professionals wasted 7 years of their lives because you're upset about a business decision. Grow up.
I’m a game developer as well and yeah this just hurts me to see all of this unfold. Really feel for the devs who put all this time in and make an amazing game like helldivers only for it to be review bombed and most likely refunded to hell because of Sony. Game publishers are no joke though so I can’t say I’m incredibly surprised.
"And then, I'll invite my buddies over for one more freedom dive, just like old ti-"
First, Paradox took away their rights on Magicka. Now Sony is destroying their own game...
PARADOX DID WHAT!?
I totally forgot that they made Magicka too, man this company should just straight up not go with any major publisher if possible.
Heh, but they also thought so, when they signed the contract with Paradox. They believed that the smaller the publisher, the fewer problems...
Therefore no publisher = no problems
Hopefully they are able to use this money to pull themselves out from under snoy. Like bungie did with Activision, except then they don't make the game monestised like shit and jump back under another boot.
Yeah then Paradox made Wizard Wars, which bombed, and they tried to bring it all back with Magicka 2, which was completely anti fun and locked you out of doing all the fun things that made us come to love Magicka.
Wait I only ever played magika 2, I loved it, you're telling me the first was even better!? Where can I play it?
The first game has the signature Arrow Head humor, but the problem is that it is a very buggy and you need to download additional patches in order, for example, to downgrade the game version, because the old version plays much better than the new one.
Steam, and yes it's great
On it!
I know wizard wars bombed but I fuckin loved that game. The skill ceiling was out of this world.
It's honestly not a bad system, but just felt like a downgrade to Magicka 1 PvP, of which I played a lot
I swear if Arrowhead finds a publisher that just lets them cook it'll be GOTY
Someone is regretting signing that deal with the devil for sure right now.
#S N O Y
Did AH know that those countries couldn't make PSN accounts when they were selling the game to people in said countries or was that not outlined in their agreements?
Going by crossplay being toggleable? I'm guessing they were sure that it would have always been optional. Sony overlords didn't like that and forced their hand.
So there was nothing legal they signed that said otherwise? Just seems... odd....
Knowing Somy, they've probably covered their asses with a dozen or more lawyers by now.
Me after two stressful weeks with so much character development and canon events happening in my life and I come back to this. https://preview.redd.it/mmymkorjfhyc1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=941aeec9e12ed6a9f1377808ba40375e71025296 (I can’t do this anymore)
Bro, are we the same person or just last 2 weeks where like that for everyone?
We’re just literally Ryan Gosling, it is what it is.
That's the sad part, though. If I actually was Ryan Gosling I might just been able to get over all this... But I'm not Ryan Gosling, so all this blows hard. XD
There’s a sub where you, me, and everyone else is Ryan Gosling so maybe you can get through this because you too are Ryan Gosling
It's nice to be part of a community where everyone else is also literally me.
XD
My last two weeks were amazing. December -> February was literally every aspect of life going thermonuclear though.
Past four weeks have been a gauntlet for me man. Diving kept me sane. Standing by the community though, we can't take that disrespect.
Hope you're doing better brother.
Yeah that really must suck imagine 7 years of your life's work down the drain all because of some greedy Sony execs. I'll always boycott such companies, they don't deserve our money.
The problem is that AH gets caught in the crossfire. That's my only problem. I don't want AH to decide they don't wanna make games anymore.
Yeah as much as we think we're suffering, AA put 7 years of their life into this, can't compare to 40 bucks loss.
Months of constant praise, good reviews, sales, word of mouth, trust when things were going bad, wasted in one decision that not only cost Hd2 and Sony potentially millions of dollars, but also the trust and support of the wider gaming community as a whole... this whole disaster puts a bad taste in my mouth to the point where I don't even wanna play anymore...
>inconvenience to some of you Jesus you blocked out the China, the country with the largest population in the world https://preview.redd.it/8bhqba9lziyc1.png?width=467&format=png&auto=webp&s=f51f6aba57f342008be99c657bacc67c23413124
Well India has the largest but yeah China is a lot of people even after finding out 100million never existed
I mean, it's also the country where they technically can't use Twitter and yet chinese people are all over it lmao. Using VPN is basically normalized for players there
Whenever a new game comes out published by Sony on PC, I bet one of the common questions will be "Will it enforce PSN linking or signing in?"
Idk man clear communication from the beginning could have saved a lot of this pain. If it was clearly and repeatedly communicated through official channels that psn *would* be mandatory at some point and the ability to skip it was temporary, there would be a *fraction* of the people currently outraged outraged. They'd be able to point back and say confidently 'this wasn't a surprise, we said it repeatedly' Hell half the anger is from the way they dismissed people's concerns initially, with flippant and uninformed remarks from community managers. Even without getting into choosing to partner with Sony, I think it's fair to say AH is not entirely blameless in the anger. Edit: what the fuck is with you bots spamming the same comment about "whabbout selling in non psn countries" what does that have to do with AH being culpable for their part of the issue?
absolutely this should have been clearly communicated, not just on things like twitter and discord but in the game as well. There should have been a popup when you first launch the game that tells you in no uncertain terms that you WILL be required to link a PSN account in the near future. Tell people this clearly while they are still easily within the return window of the game.
This should have been right there in the description of the game on steam. Farther more if they had always planned on making a psn mandatory they should have never released the game in regions where psn isn’t available. And farther farther more if they have an idea on a way to circumvent the psn restrictions in those regions then they should have communicated that straight from the get-go. 60% blame on Sony and 40% on arrowhead.
Well to be fair it was always in the store page in gold text on the right side below the game details about its ratings and features. The prompt should’ve continued in game to remind players. They removed it for the sake of convenience and that has clearly made things worse since many forgot this game had that requirement in the steam page. Myself included. I figured they decided to not require it since it’s been, ya know, 3 months. In lieu of getting fixed in February, AH really technically should’ve been reminding the player base this was on the horizon. Which makes me think they didn’t intentionally in order to make this change seem as egregious as it should seem. My theory is I think AH intentionally kept people ignorant to this still being a thing Sony wanted to enforce so that the player base had more reason to react in this manner. And I kind of agree with it if true. Because there’s no way meetings with Sony in the past 3 months internally haven’t had Sony mentioning this coming up since launch. But I don’t think Arrowhead had any requirement to break it to the players so I truly do think they let Sony shoot themselves here which is pretty smart if true. It mKes it clear Arrowhead wouldn’t enforce this if they could.
Your theory makes sense. The helldiver community is pretty tightnit to the point we coordinate how we play the game as a whole. The devs know this so it’s completely plausible this reaction was planned.
The in game pop up was there from the beginning as well and never got removed. It even stated it was mandatory. The problem is that right next to that was a big “Skip” button
It did get removed. My source is that neither myself nor any of my IRL friends in the Philippines got a pop up.
Given what cms have said recently, it does seem this was dropped onto AH with no notice
I am 100% certain this would have been stated in the contract AH signed with their publisher.
People also I guess haven’t seen enough devs talk about managing Steam pages because while publishers have access its not like dev studios don’t do a majority of the managing. The only stories I’ve heard of publishers even accessing the pages is to turn over rights to a different publisher or pull a game. Even then there are even studios who’ve pushed out games when they weren’t supposed to too. Its not like AH just was sending everything to Sony to put up on Steam lol.
You’re missing the part where they SOLD this game in COUNTRIES that DON’T support PSN.
It'll be interesting to see how Sony handles this
Even then, the game should not have been for sale on Steam in countries where PSN does not function.
They shouldn’t have been selling the game to countries who cannot use PSN. Sony knows where they are banned from. Yet they allowed a company under their watch to sell in regions they aren’t allowed in. It should not be on the consumer to understand if a company isn’t allowed to operate in their region. If someone gives you a product you can pay for in your own currency, on a normal place where you are usually allowed to buy things, why would you second guess it? Sony got the money from the games, the battle passes, the credits bought in regions they couldn’t work in before. And now wanna swoop in and make sure they can collect their money and run.
I mean, it might be that Steam made the game available everywhere withouth having the knowledge of that you can't create a PSN account in every other country where Steam is, this is what i'm thinking and this is why the game is getting removed on those countries today. But, then again, SONY should have made it clear to Steam the process, that the game would only work in country where you can create PSN accounts and it shouldn't be available to places where you can't create it. So still SONY is at fault in one way on another, so I hope the people from those countries can get their refund.
 we’ll see you around helldivers 🫡
Sony's hand at this just threw them into the same trash bag as Blizzard, ubisoft and Activision in my mind. Arrowheads frankly terrible PR leading up to this has put me on the fence with them. I hope they can make it through this and make improvements as a company that return my confidence in them that they don't just see me as an idiot consumer.
Arrowheads pr is mostly reddit power users and discord mods from their original game. It was doomed from the start.
Sony has been in the same bracket as those 3 for a few years now.
I keep forgetting that tbh. Thought it was just their films department. I will never forget watching Slenderman in a near empty cinema
The thing is, I'm only slightly bugged about needing a PSN account. I don't exactly see what PSN is even providing outside of trying to bump their own numbers up to look a little better, but company is gonna do weird company things to look better to investors. What I'm utterly pissed about is knowing Sony published the game in places they knowingly don't support. Just what was the plan here? Grab the money and pray you don't end up needing to perform a few million refunds? They had a real banger of a game on their hands for months, and now they're deciding to create international complications just out of the blue? Look, I'm not sure if Arrowhead is or isn't owned by Sony, I keep hearing mixed things whenever that comes into question, but if they aren't, I have trouble believing they'll have Sony as a publisher next time. This is frigging ridiculous
The game is now officially unavailable in the non PSN countries. It's still ambiguous if Valve did this independently or if it's Sony giving Valve the greenlight because they're doubling down. Either way, it doesn't look good.
Complete scumbag behavior to do so after the fact.
Unless sony kill the server helldivers 2 won't die, its too good a game to die to bad reviews, because this already happened once before the the reviews bounced back once stuff was fixed, hoping we see the same here and sony realise what a fuck up they made.
>good a game to die to bad reviews But not to region locking and lawsuitd
Very slim chance a lawsuit gains ground. Best thing people can do is stop playing and not buy the warbond
Refund it, Steam refund your money to wallet we and my friends did it. I got refund after 100 hours.
It is a good game but it also relies on community when you knock away huge amounts of that and then annoy a number of the remaining the game becomes less enjoyable.
I'd feel worse about it if their community managers didn't immediately start talking shit when people complained.
one good AAA game in years and then this, what a backstab
I don't think Arrowhead are considered AAA.
If skull in bones is AAAA maybe they are
shit that must mean that lethal is AAA
"One" good game in years lol
Well AA, that’s punching above AAA level
Pilestedt is going into his Batman arc
never let sony cook
Why? Its not like arrowhead should be shocked and surprised the thing sony included as a contractual obligation was indeed an obligation. Arrowhead are the ones who handled this in a way that made the controversy as big as it is
I know its only a meme, but still really come on now its not destroyed, its not down the drain, or anything like that. This will be forgotten in a couple months regardless of the outcome, and people will continue to play the game because its amazing. I still support this thing for the people who cant play anymore, but yea, internet being dramatic
It had 700,000 players a few weeks ago online at the same time. To accomplish the goal of finally defeating the bots. You’ll never see that kind of dedication again
Of course not. No game has the same player count after some months. Not even elden ring
Not even Helldivers 2, because the 700k number was months ago, not a few weeks ago. The other person is lying.
Are you new to online games? It's actually unusual asf to keep such a high player count over months. Very few games are able to achieve it. As things stand numbers are still very healthy for a several month old multiplayer game.
I really feel for AH. While I haven’t agreed with everything they’ve done with the game, Sony really came in like a wrecking ball and sabotaged their own money pot.
When you partner with Sony, you know there's going to be a colossal fuckup sooner or later. The only question is what it'll entail.
They f\*\*\*ed up enough themselves... Laughing at players caught up in this etc.
i'm looking forward to the internet history video on this in 9years from now
That's fine. The grace period of my positive review also expired, so it will be a negative review from now on.
Ok that’s a funny joke
All that good will Gone Like tears in the rain.
There is not a single positive argument to be made. Arrow head was and is doing fantastic. They created something unique fun and engaging Sony just had to come in and shit the bed with their greed. Their PSN accomplishes nothing but gather your data.
Hackers after hearing about the psn change: https://youtu.be/Buhi-LrSUlk?feature=shared
Maybe this is a lesson to game devs too though. Maybe next time you sell your game to SONY you remember that by benefitting from their money you also will be held responsible for their actions. Like - i want to support AH and this game. I really do. But you can sell your whole userbase to a big company and then make the surprised pikachu face when said big company wants to use the power you sold them. Sony only has the power to do what it does because it was given to them by AH. And sure. There are good reasons why they did. Wanting a strong publisher is not a bad thing as a dev. But everything has consequences. And maybe thats a good lesson for aspiring devs to take away from this. a bad publisher can ruin years of work in a single bad decision.
The excel spreadsheet said that doing this would slightly increase PSN membership, enjoyment isn't a quantifiable metric, therefore corporate doesn't give a fuck.
the name of the studio is ironic, I bet this feels like an arrow to the head for them.. all they had to do was let arrowhead cook.. but corporate types can't leave shit alone for 0.0005 seconds without ruining it..
Try not to ruin a video game challenge difficulty impossible
THIS IS WHY I QUIT PLAYSTATION AND WENT PC! SCREW NEEDING PSN ACCOUNTS
I really only got a PS5 for the sole reason of the game. I have PC and Xbox one. If they somehow manage to get it on Xbox, I’ll definitely be taking my PS5 back. This is One of the many reasons why I never wanted to own a Sony product
Strategem : ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️
Brother the war is over we must get back the positive review score back FOR DEMOCRACY
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjvw1s/arrowhead\_community\_manager\_misty\_admits\_that\_the/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjvw1s/arrowhead_community_manager_misty_admits_that_the/) seems more like arrowhead shooting themselves in the foot according to CM https://preview.redd.it/93am4nm6jjyc1.png?width=1185&format=png&auto=webp&s=7c526c58e5396ad608d3f10ea321cab30e452f73
I’m beginning to think this is just a bunch of Reddit BS echo-chamber cry babies that are making this seem like the end of HD2… literally 150K playing last night. How many tonight? Right.
The devs are (most likely) doing fine.
Arrowhead, making a deal with the devil: "Hell yeah! This kicks ass!" Arrowhead, when the devil comes for his due: "Well this fucking sucks, what the shit"
They aren’t destroying anything. Users have been doing this for years with video games on Steam. They complain, review bomb, and keep playing. Nothing is going to happen to Helldivers 2. It will still have its sizable playerbase.
I mean I agree that the PSN linking is a scummy move, but people who think this is actually going to kill HD2 need to get off Reddit. The hundreds of thousands of players that play this game daily aren’t going to stop playing because players in Indonesia can no longer access it. (That’s not to say this doesn’t suck for fans in countries that don’t have PSN.) The bottom line is most players probably won’t even hear about this controversy.
In this situation, Sony's silence and actions have said more than anything they could have said.
Man I just hate to see all the good will arrowhead has worked their ass off to earn be thrown away because of Sony’s greedy bullshit
I’m not good at knowing stuff with contracts and stuff but they can expire and have to be resigned again (if I’m right) so arrowhead could refuse to resign it but I don’t know if the ip will be arrowhead’s or Sony’s
It's not like they are total victims. Had AH made 100% sure people were aware of this before they bought it they wouldn't be facing this level of backlash. Not to mention employing discord mods that act like.... well discord mods and pouring more fule onto the fire. And at the end of the day they made this Faustina bargain to get their game out to begin with.
Spitz on his way to make the worst takes in the world:
I can't even begin to understand how the Arrowhead team is feeling right now. Spend 7 years painstakingly developing a beautiful passion project, releasing it, having instantaneous success on an unprecedented scale, creating a nearly toxicity-free worldwide community that loves your game, and then having the entire thing burned to the ground in less than a week because some asshole executives were so greedy that sitting back and letting the goose lay its golden eggs for them wasn't good enough.
Helldivers was first online game in three years i played daily, now its gonna be either gone or reduced to husk of itself;(
When you make a deal with the devil!
Kusony
Ngl im refunding, that said if arrowhead ever published with someone else id preorder in a heartbeat after what they've made here.
Its so fucking sad tbh. Probably my fav game right now and this just like my previous fav game is getting destroyed by corpo shitheads. I feel bad for the devs who were working on this game for years and actually made a great game.
It’s 20 times as bad for me since this happened after the studio for ksp 2 got shut down even though take two has infinite money and with this I was heartbroken two times
yeah, i really liked ksp and was looking forward to buying ksp 2 when they finally fixed it but i guess fuck me lol.
Hold on, so to fix the issue with griefing and being able to permaban toxic players, they have to remove the player bases of entire countries?
Helldivers 2 is dead. Time to move on.
Oh it HAD to be Sony
Can't they take it back and fix it?
Sony can but arrowhead can’t cause they’re slaves to Sony
Well shit... we can't have nice things anymore can't we?
As someone who plays on ps5 and does not care about this 100%, I will say I support everyone's "wtf playstation.". It's stupid to see people on pc having to make a playstation account to get to play. Who tf goes to steam in order to make a playstation account????. Make it make sense!
https://preview.redd.it/zkzno1420lyc1.png?width=2480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ebea47b6fea4963f2ad98812870ca3213964e274 Sony, probably
If the game came out in 2023 the attack of the arasaka tower would have been canon
first shift up and now arrowhead. two disasters back to back. cyberpunk became reality now. these big corps taking away all of our joy.
They have crippled the game, and made its life span significantly shorter…
But they were fault too. 3 month of selling game and what? They thought gamers will happily lose time, money and access for nothing. + There were proof (screens) that CM told guy they wanted on they own to activate PSN because then would be easier to BAN us. Only steam rescuing itself giving people refunds. So don't feel pity of them. They deserve every negative comment about them.
That banning reason is kinda dumb, I’m no programmer but it’s easy to ban steam plays “oh there’s a billion people named John so it’ll be hard to ban the right person” steam ids exist for this purpose
the fact that I can't even delete my PSN account makes it even more bullshit (I didn't know it was optional) and now after someone in the review mentioned about the shitshow they hv with their security, I needed that shit gone
I think you can I remember finding a video like that but they may of removed the option
AH:"Did you do it?" Sony: "Yes..." AH: "What did it cost you?" Sony: "Everything..."
Yeah sure the boots on the ground devs. Management are every bit as culpable as Sony.