has built a lot of goodwill with its players through its 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:excellent emergent storytelling and refusal to conform to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:exploitative live service trends. Unfortunately, it seems to have lost a lot of that goodwill over the span of a single weekend thanks to an announcement from , the game’s publisher, that all PC players would need to link their Steam accounts to PSN in order to continue playing the ga๊me, even if the service isn’t available in their country at all. This policy change has now been rescinded because of a coordinated review bomb, but there’s still a lot of anger towards both Arrowhead and Sony.
Because of Helldivers 2’s simultaneous release on and , this year’s breakout live service squad shooter became o✃ne of PlayStation’s best 🌟selling games in the US of all time. PC playe🐠rs have been integral to the game’s success – it has ranked first on Steam for monthly active users every month since launch, and over half of its sales in the US were reportedly on PC.
Liberty Might Be For Everybody, But PSN Isn’t
Unfortunately, it’s also PC players that were thrown under the bus over the weekend. Sony announced🍨 that PC players would have to link their Steam accounts to their PlayStation Network accounts if they want to continue playing the game past June 4 in order to improve moderation and safety efforts, so players can be banned and suspended for bad behaviour.
This doesn’t sound like a big deal – you don’t have to pay for PSN, you just have to create and link an account – until you realise that PSN is only available in 70 countries around the world. That means there are over 100 countries where you can’t make a PSN account, even if you could buy t⛎he game on Steam. If you live in one of these countries, you could technically create an account in a support꧟ed region, but you’d need a VPN, have to pay in the currency of your chosen country, and worst of all, Sony’s terms of service state that the company has the right to ban accounts that use false credentials. There was no feasible workaround.
Hellbombs? No, Review Bombs
Understandably, PC players were enraged, and are expressing their anger through reviews – tens of thousands of recent reviews have forced the previously positi𓄧ve St꧅eam rating to drop to “Mostly Negative”. In response to widespread calls for refunds, Steam seemingly waived the two hour refund playtim𒉰e limit for the game for ce✅rtain players, who reported managing to secure refunds for the game despite having many hours in-game. It’s unclear who was eligible for🍃 the refund, as some players have had their requests denied.
Soon after, this escalated even further, with Helldivers 2 completely🌳 delisted from Steam in 177 countries whe𒐪re PSN is not available. Thisꦇ made it look very unlikely that Sony was going to go back on the controversial decision, until the official PlayStation Twitter account announced earlier today that thankfully, it would not be moving forwar🏅d with the policy change.
I’m Still So Proud 🐲Of Helldivers 2’s Battle ꦗPasses
Helldiverꦚs 2’s warbonds are a beacon of hope in the✅ anti-consumer live-service genre
Leave Arrowhead Alone
That said, Arrowhead is still getting caught in the crossfire, which is fairly unw𒀰arranted. To start with, account linking has already been required from the jump – the feature was disabled at launch, possibly because of early server issues, but the game&rsquo🍸;s Steam page has always detailed that it was a requirement. There was no bait-and-switch going on here, just Sony finally enforcing something it said it would months ago.
That said, I understand the bitterness – the fine print wasn’t actually enforced in-game, and people either didn’t read it or didn’t think it would ever be a problem. This should have been made much clearer from the start, but I’d say this is more because of Steam’s UI than it is because A𒅌rrowhead was intentionally greedy. Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt himself for the choice🍸 to disable account linking at launch and said that he didn’t ensure players were aware of the requirement.
This is made much clearer when we examine the devs’ reaction to the announcement. Pilestedt said that the studio was trying to find a solution with PlayStation, , suggested that the policy change was out of Ar♛r🧸owhead’s hands, and . He also revealed that despite knowing that account linking wou﷽ld be mandatory for online PlayStation titles six months before the game even launched, and therefore couldn’t stop it from being sold to non-PSN countries. That’s on Sony.
Within the Hellꦉdivers 2 Discord, devs are also voicing their displeasure. Community manager Twinbeard, in particular, that it was Sony’s decision, and that Sony owns the Helldivers IP and therefore has a huge say in how the gamꦬe is sold. Community manager Spitz also said that the response from the dev team has been extremely negative and that reviewing the game negatively on Steam is actually a good way to publicly push back against Sony.
As Azealia Banks Said, So? What Now?
Sony has gone back on its statement, but we still have to consider the repercussions of this controversy. For one, though review bombing as a practice does tend to leave a bad taste in my mouth, the success of collective action shows us that the tactic can still be highly effective in getting corporations to pull back on anti-player policies. Unfortunately, if players don’t change their reviews en masse, Helldivers 2 is going to suffer a bad rating on Steam for reasons that seem to be veꦑry much out of Arrowhead’s control.
What’s more, some players may leave and never return because of this corporate misstep, causing a further drop in the game’s already steadily declining player b🥂ase. Arrowhead𓆉 still seems to be seen kindly by the majority of players, and people are already calling on the Discord for others to show some grace and change their negative reviews, but it’s still yet to be seen if Arrowhead will bounce back from this. It would be unfortunate if this is what causes the game to lose steam, when it’s one of the few games in the live service space that actually does things right.
Helldivers 2 is the sequel to the third-person shooter from Arrowhead Game Studios. This time out, the Helldivers are deep in the Galactic War, and it's up to you to bring Managed Democracy to the masses.
