Summary
- Gamers succeeded in pressuring Sony to reverse mandatory PSN account linking, affecting Helldivers 2 players.
- Targeted harassment of community managers continues in the gaming world, as seen in the backlash against Spitz.
- Spitz faced consequences for encouraging negative reviews, yet also played a key role in changing Sony's decision.
Congratulations g✅amers, you won this one. After a weekend of severe online backlash, widespread review bombing, and targeted developer harassment, 🔯Sony has finally backed down on its decision to enforce mandatory PSN account linking for Helldivers 2 players on PC.
This is a win-win for almost everybody. The gamers win because they successfully revolted against Sony until they got their🐷 way, Sony wins because it gets to act like it listens and cares about its players, and Arrowhead Game Studios wins because it , fighting back against big bad Sony for gamer rights. The only one that ☂loses in this situation is the game’s Discord community manager, Spitz, who was seemingly let go for encouraging players to do exactly what they were going to do anyway.
The Spitz saga has a few wrinkles, and as most of what happened transpired on Discord, there’s nuances that are getting lost in all the screenshots floating around. When it was first announced that PC players were going to be required to link their Steam account to a PSN, the backlash was immediate, intense, and to be fair, mostly warranted. Linking a PSN account doesn’t seem to have any advantages, and it's clear the game works fine without it, so the community reacted with hostility. This was perceived as nothing more than Sony seizing an opportunity to collect user data from a larger player base by forcing people to sign up for accounts they don’t want or need. Helldivers 2 players had every right to be upset about this.
Th꧋e War On Community Managers Has Reached Helldivers 2
There’s been a rising trend 💧in targeted harassment of video game community managers, and Arrowhead is the most recent target.
But we are talking about gamers, who unfortunately have proven time and time again they’re unable to be reasonable about any perceived slight against them, real or iᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚmagined. The mob raised their digital pitchforks and went out looking for blood. Not only did Helldivers 2 get review bombed, but all of Arrowhead’s games saw a sp♎ike in negative reviews. Individual developers were targeted on social media by the usual suspects. There was no sense of proportion to their response, just unfiltered gamer rage firing off in every direction.
The front line of defense for Arrowhead taking the majority of the heat for this, at least initially, was Spitz. Unfortunately, while fielding the hell-storm of negative comments and threats, Spitz wasn’t able to entirely keep their cool. A couple less-than-professional replies he made broke out of Discord containment and (PirateSoftware) as well as YouTube and Twitter provocateurs thaꦑt don’t deserve to be named. The most shared screencap circulating around shows Spitz replying to someone saying this decision will kill Helldivers 2 with “I thought you were refunding and leaving”.
Many have argued that it's a community manager’s job to maintain their composure and absorb any and all abuse. Spitz eventually admitted a lack of professionalism on their part, but also asked for some grace as a human on the frontline of a major PR crisis trying to defend their team. Every great CM I know is willing to demonstrate their humanity to the community. When someone is so passionate and engaged with a community, they’re going to show their emotions, good and bad.
What Spitz didn’t know when they were sending out spicy replies, is that this policy would block players in o🔴ver 150 countries from playing the game. As soon as the Arrowhead team realized this, the entire approach to the backlash changed. Spitz started encouraging players to leave negative reviews, while Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt, who about the review bombs, eventually for working together and changing Sony’s decision. He made it clear that , which encouraged people🀅 to turn their ire away from the studio and towards the publisher.
The revelation that mandatory account linking would cause players in so many countries to lose access was convenient for the cause. It gave the gamers something legitimate important to be mad about. No one actually cares about what happens to people in other c🤪ountries, of course. I don’t think the Helldivers 2 players raising a stink about people in Botswana n🔜ot being able to play are out there protesting for a cease-fire in Gaza, but I could be wrong.
That brings us up to now, when Spitz was let go from Arrowhead. “Generally it’s not a good idea to tell people to refund and leave negative reviews when you’re a community manager. TIL,” Spitz wrote on Discord. “I appreciate all the support and I appreciate even more that everyone can play the game again without restrictions. I knew I was taking a risk with what I said about refunding and changing reviews. I stand by it. It was my job to represent the community, that's what I did.”
The irony is this whole situation is that Spitz was seemingly removed from the team for encouraging people to do the exact thing that Pilestedt is praising people for doing. They took the side of the players, against his own best interest, because they believed it was the right thing to do. And yet, they’ll continue to be vilified for a prickly reply, despite directly contributing to the outcome that the people vilifying him wanted. This story has a 𝔉happy ending for everyone involved, except for the person who took the most grief from it of all.