I heard somewhere that the game studio director asked the community to post negative reviews, so that they could use them as an argument against Sony's bright idea
The backlash from Microsoft's attempt at making the Xbox One require an Internet connection at all times - even for single-player games with ZERO online features - is arguably one of the reasons the PS4 and PS5 have been outselling the XBone and Series X fairly consistently. The fact that Microsoft was A) willing to pull such a shitty move and B) essentially told the people raising issues about it "eat shit lol" drove a LOT of potential customers away, and they haven't been back since.
Nope, Sony has never required you to be always online to play any game that does not specifically have an always-online requirement, or which isn't a PS Plus download. The issue with Microsoft was that A) again, it would be a requirement to play ANY game, even ones that do not have a single online feature of any kind, and B) was very blatantly motivated by capitalistic greed, and not any actual issue that needed to be addressed (one of the reasons you had to be online was that they were also going to basically require proof of purchase on your account for any game you wished to play, even if you had the physical disc in the console, which was intended to shut down both game sharing and the used game marketplace).
We're not kidding or exaggerating when we say that this move is why Xbox has been trailing behind Sony in console sales since last generation.
Makes sense and I can absolutely see why Sony had a lead in console sales. That said, I’m still happy with my Xbox purchases over the years. Both consoles currently are in fantastic shape (in my opinion) and I really think anyone who still argues about “which console is better” is wasting their time.
I know that’s not the point of the comment here, but I still feel both console generations are in better spots now than we were during the Xbox One/PS4 argument days.
God I feel all my hobbies have gone this route.. So I'm sorry I just bought Hell Divers 2 then this shit like immediately happens..
I've seen wizards of the coast milk their golden cow to death, printing everything under the sun as a universe beyond, the way they treated DND, Battlefield a while ago, now this game..
As someone new, this game and community felt perfect. Large but felt like home. first day I ever played I added friends and I hardly ever add friends online. Loved the work together mentality instead of toxic shooting games, fucking Sony and corporate greed is so ridiculous.
As I got more and more involved into the corporate world I realized just how many educated fools are out there. It's kind of impressive honestly to hear some dumbass rattle on ro my face how a plan that is obviously terrible is going to be a great benefit because nothing outside of immediate short term boost matters. Too many rats looking for their own golden parachutes.
Not NDA but i'd rather not give away something that might trace back to my real socials and identity. I cast a massive net with this shitposting account and outside so there's no telling who might be looking to connect the dots. I'm sorry man i can never be too specific.
They probably figure everyone will roll over eventually like they did for Netflix.
Jury is still out though unless people start refunding. Negative reviews might hurt a little but if a game is popular enough it doesn't really hurt the bottom line (Call of Duty).
I think there is a key difference in mindsets too. Microsoft has always been a software developer, sure they made some hardware, but their big bucks are Windows, Excel, word,etc.
Sony has always been a hardware company, high end stereos, TV's, etc.
They know that PSN accounts are a key metric. It seems like they treat it the same as the metrics for sales of units.
That said, the health of your ecosystem comes from showing the number of active users. We all know that Microsoft are gearing up to fucking hammer Sony in the next gen release by having big AAA games on Xbox or pc through Xbox, and Sony are probably shitting bricks because they simply won't win without attracting major third party developers in the AA space. Having the most active user base is how they hope to get that slice of pie, but I think it's going to have the opposite effect given the backlash.
I suspect that Sony will not back down, because that won't make the problem go away, and they lose any benefit they may gain. I think they will double down by requiring all games under the Sony licence to require a PSN account, and start looking at pushing their own PC store front.
Sony doesn't give a shit about reviews, as they will affect opinions on the developer not the publisher 5 years from now.
No, Sony will only even begin to care if the ratio of purchases to refunds gets out of hand, which it's not going to.
Honestly Arrowhead are the ones who are going to be most affected by all this, because by outright telling people to review bomb the game they've likely harmed their ability to get a publisher for future games.
You are so delusional, no publisher is going to think that the game dev of the game Helldivers 2 is bad exclusively because of reviews. Its not some unknown indie game, it's been one of the most popular multiplayer games for all of 2024.
no publisher is going to think that the game dev of the game Helldivers 2 is bad exclusively because of reviews.
Of course not.
But they're probably not going to be happy with Arrowhead publicly telling players to refund the game and leave negative reviews to get leverage over the publisher.
Well, its possible that some sane company will help arrowhead in the future and do what sony couldn't do, nothing.
It doesn't take a genius to see that Arrowhead covering their own ass isn't due to selfishness or stupidity but to cover their ass from their dumb ass publisher's brain dead tone deaf decisions.
It doesn't take a genius to see that Arrowhead covering their own ass isn't due to selfishness or stupidity but to cover their ass from their dumb ass publisher's brain dead tone deaf decisions.
The people at a publisher responsible for deciding which games to publish are moron MBAs, not people who actually give a shit.
I'm not saying Arrowhead will never get another publishing agreement, far from it, but telling players to refund the game and leave negative reviews is the equivalent to bad mouthing your previous employer while interviewing for a new job - the people evaluating you are going to take note of it.
The dev told the users to use their only recourse. This is what the poster is not understanding, there's no other way to respond to these people about business decisions that are above you. "My bosses said this is how it is, maybe tell them you don't like it because I already told them and got nowhere." As someone who just works somewhere; I've made the same statement multiple times.
All Sony, and any future publisher, will care about is that Arrowhead didn't "toe the company line".
The CEO was morally correct to tell customers to refund the game and leave negative reviews, but ultimately that's only going to harm the devs, not Sony. And it's not going to make Sony change their minds if they don't want to do so.
But other publishers are in competition with Sony. Nobody wants to pick up a beloved dev after a fight with Sony? I think it would have been worse if they were silent, stuck in a new deal with Sony probably cause game got unhype. The dev themselves must have a huge following, people in the chain think all the negative reviews are due to dev comments in the discord.
No, Sony will only even begin to care if the ratio of purchases to refunds gets out of hand, which it's not going to.
If everyone who won't be able to play the game due to not having PSN in their county refunds it, that would be a significant hit. People at Sony would probably raise some eyebrows at that point.
They didn't tell people to review bomb the game. They said that the review section is the appropriate place to air your grievances. Which it is. All they did was say complaining on discord doesn't matter. That doesn't mean review bomb.
No, Sony will only even begin to care if the ratio of purchases to refunds gets out of hand, which it's not going to.
Steam is issuing refunds for folks with more than 2 hours because of this. Not just folks in the restricted countries either, according to a few of the folks who've posted about it in the helldiver subs.
Big thing here is the negative rating isn’t correlating with player counts. Sony isn’t going to give a shit about negative reviews as long as people are still playing.
One of the community managers in discord essentially dared the community to do it. The studio CEO has indicated that this is unfortunate but is being used as leverage with Sony to get the publisher to reverse course
The issue is that, if they reverse course now, it is going to damage the image of Sony and PSN. And if there is one thing a Japanese company (or rather, their executives) can not do is lose face.
I legit just don't get how they can't just save face with this easily.
Implement for all new accounts going forward, but allow those in countries without playstation to still connect regardless. Then let all those that purchased and played the game in the last 3 months, to continue to do so and opt out.
Fuck if they wanna receive a bit of a W, gift the player base with like $10 on PSN or something for signing up through Helldivers. There's not a fuck ton of stuff through PSN for $10, so either it'll go unnused, or likely those people will use it on Helldivers which they'll be incentivized to then actually make the account.
Most people are pissed about this being made mandatory after 3 months of not having too, which they rightfully feel like is bullshit after they've put in the work for their accounts, had fun, etc. If the requirement had been there from the onset, they could have made the educated decision about whether it was worth it or not individually. Now it feels forced.
I play on PS5, so this really has no effect on me, and I fuckin' love the game. But I'm with the community on this. I've turned games down before and not done them because of a 3rd party requirement to sign up for, like Activision.
The alternative there would be to go back in time and not sell the game anywhere where people can't create the required account, but that's not really feasible for obvious reasons.
It's really not an honest business practice to sell something to people then decide they're not allowed to use the thing they paid for because they don't have an account you told them wasn't required at the time of purchase. Especially if the reason they don't have the account is because you won't let them make one.
Maybe it’s a cultural difference, but I’d consider the overwhelmingly negative reviews to be more damaging to their image than actually listening to their users.
I know a fair number of people that are flat out refusing to buy anything published by sony going forward as well over this situation and how its been handled so far.
I'm sure there'll be some folks who won't now that sony has reversed it, and honestly, probably a good thing, they shouldn't come out of this entirely unscathed.
I tend to sort steam lists by review score, because I buy maybe 3 games a month and I just don't have time to go through tons. I'm certain I've missed games I'd love like this but I simply have too much work to keep up with everything. Most of the time I don't even see games with lower than "very positive" unless I'm looking for something with a very small niche.
I agree. The likeliness of this decision being reversed is very low. Not only do you have the saving face aspect, but Sony is setting precedent for future games. If they give us a pass on HD2, then they would have to give other games a pass (which would be a net positive IMO, but Sony wants the opposite)
See here's the thing, it's not going to damage them to reverse course. It would actually help them to do so.
"Hey, alright, we screwed up. We shouldn't have made this mandatory, it's an actively bad move. We are not going to require a PSN account. If you do make one, the dev will make available a few cosmetics to make it worth your while. Anyone who wants to play, can play no PSN account required. Buy the game on your preferred platform and enjoy."
That's not appearing weak, that's learning from the feedback.
If they did it every time there was a tiny bit of criticism, yes then it's spineless and appears weak.
If Sony actually takes the criticism that's this loud. That's this overwhelming, that people will actively stop playing a game they've been enjoying to the point of building a massive community on their own without any input from you. That's called accepting the loss and learning from it.
I figured the same, but I think with Golden Week just ending they didn''t want to deal with that shit on a Monday. Hopefully people go and reverse their reviews now otherwise they'll just ignore the next one
It was a community manager who seemingly was let go, their account has been depersonalized, profile pictute gone. I think its been slated to be deleted.
And people on their discord are claiming they been removed from the linkdin.
He more asked them to show their negativity in a public way, so it could be heard, instead of complaining in the private discord.
So more of a... directing them in the right direction
Well of course, they knew that would happen, but it is kind of obvious that this decision is not of their liking and was forced upon them by sony as distributor. Sony gains a little in PSN subscribers in exchange for a wrecked previously successful IP. Feels bad for everyone, even if arrowhead team knew about it
All AH had to do was have the popup appear every time the game starts, this never would have happened. Then it would have just been on Sony for selling in countries that don't have PSN.
Yeah, they absolutely should have had the popup appear every time you start the game, that would have ended this before it began. It's all they needed to do.
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u/xhappymanx 27d ago
Overwhelmingly Negative holyyy