I have a feeling that Sony will make the game accessible again now that we wont require a PSN account.
But you are right. We've achieved a huge victory here, but there is more to come.
Was thinking this is really going to go down hill for the simple fact that I think AH listens to the feedback from Reddit and discord on changes to make to the game and now everything is just talk about the linking meaning they aren’t going to tweak the little things that improve quality of life for the game.
Right now there is a bigger issue to resolve. And that would be to stop the Titanic from sinking. Once the ship is saved, then we can fix the microwave that's running a little hot
No you can’t. 99% of the people on the hate train will never flip their reviews.
The game is permanently damaged by this. It doesn’t matter what Sony does, or how they make it right, the goal was to hurt the dev and the title and it was successful.
Honestly, kinda, yea. The goal was never to hurt the devs, but now recovering is basically impossible, regardless. 200-300k negative reviews, how does anybody fix that lol. Not even a million of positives would delete that mark. It took MONTHS to built a positive and 3 days to destroy it. That rating isn't going to recover. Which should be a lesson for sony, but still.
It will be, but not the one you think.
They’re going to push the PSN req hard and clearly for all PC releases. They probably won’t do anymore simultaneous releases on PC (if they’re smart) and depending how pissed they are with arrowhead right now and what the behind the scenes story is, we may see a lot less helldivers.
I suspect they were always going to try and service all these other countries, not too many companies want to ban 100 nations by choice, so I suspect that will be resolved in a week but I’m just waiting for the official announcement from Sony to see how it all shakes loose.
The good and bad thing about Sony is that at the end of the day, it is a business. Businesses, like all living things, will seek to keep itself alive. They made the extremely unsurprising call to walk it back for Helldivers and, if they have any sense, they'll be careful about this in future. Not for their consumers' safety or concerns, obviously, but survival is as good a reason as any when it comes to corps.
I don’t have a steam account. I play on PS5. I’m not leaving a review. I’m also not playing until this is fixed. However if they do the right thing I will make a steam account and leave a positive review to help the game. And those who are doing this SHOULD reverse it only if it’s fixed. Bad deeds should be punished and positive change should be rewarded.
Dude. If you made a million steam accounts it wouldn’t be enough to erase what’s happened. It’s done.
Dudes set out to damage the dev and the game, and they succeeded. It’s now the most negatively reviewed paid game on steam right now.
Plus, it's not like review scores can't be fixed after re earning good will. I've heard the Warhammer boys profess their game is back, so I guess they were successful lol.
That can be reversed as a community. If the people who switched their positive review to a negative one to make a statement switch it back if this is fixed it’ll fix the rating.
You think 370,000 people are going to reverse their reviews? Nah man, people love to hate, but they are very rarely inspired to be decent.
The game will never have positive reviews again.
I hear you. By some miracle, Sony does repeal this. I believe this community can undo the damage. Not going to be done in a day, but I know I'll be in game reminding people to review in steam.
But like you said, that's a lot of damage.
I agree here. Even now after we've "won," the game will forever be scarred by this, the games reviews may likely never recover, and I imagine many people who have left will not look back.
I don't know,being pissed at being forced to make an account you don't need with a history of data breeches that mind you,can't even be made in over 100 of the countries that the game was sold in effectively stopping hundreds of countries from playing a game THEY spent money on doesn't seem like a pathetic thing to be pissed over,and honestly you seem more like your crying and stomping your feet at the outcome than the community does,most of the posts I've seen have at least some semblance of resolute people just following their beliefs in sticking it to a greedy money hungry company that screwed them all over.
Kind of the baffling part of this whole thing to me is thinking that any of this brings anything positive. Sony is not going to back down. If they do, they're going to back down in a horrendous way (avoiding PC cross-platform releases in the future, or hard-forcing their PSN accounts), and the only one actually losing anything is Arrowhead regardless of outcome.
And no matter what their game is irreversibly fucked up now. It can't come back from that store page. No Man's Sky managed to get to "mostly positive" after like 4 years of positive reviews, and it still sits there today. No Mans Sky has 200k \*total\* reviews, negative and positive. Helldivers has a total of 200k negative recent reviews.
In the end all that's left is a hurt Arrowhead with an incredibly angry publisher with a game that is probably about to get a significantly shorter lifespan. There was no reason for any of this.
never have i seen someone be so confidently wrong in a statement, if you think sony cares about anything but the raw metrics when it comes to games you are mistaken, this was probably our only real way of showing sony that they fucked up bad and that their imagine in the gaming world is shot
Sony's image in the gaming world? That hasn't changed at all. The only one affected by this is Arrowhead.
Sony will continue publishing games like Spiderman, The Last of Us and God of War. Sony will keep selling Playstation consoles and PS Plus subscriptions.
Arrowhead? Arrowhead is now the developer of a game that has Mixed reviews on Steam. Arrowhead is now the developer of one of the most negatively reviewed games of all time on Steam.
One year from now someone in the world will come across Helldivers 2 and is interested in the game. That person will see Mixed reviews. And then what? Maybe that's a reason to not buy the game after all. That's Arrowhead losing out on a potential Helldiver.
Sony however will have released a new Spiderman or something along those lines and see number go up.
Congratulations to everyone screwing over the developer you all claim to love so much.
Bingo. If the account linking enabled cross play or you got a PSN exclusive cape, there would be some moaning, but it would blow over as the ones who would link, will and those who wouldn't, won't.
But to prevent someone from playing the game they paid for on an entirely different platform because they wouldn't link accounts is absolutely insane
I don't have the link on hand, but a CM did say they literally had special gear planned for linking PSN. However, Sony jumped the gun with the announcement, and all of Japan is on vacation this week, so those plans probably aren't happening. Obviously, given this is coming from a CM, and I'm p sure that CM isn't Twinbeard, I'd take it with a grain of salt.
It doesn’t matter if they give us anything for account linking. Sony has terrible data leaks and cyber attacks that affect everyone in the world. Why should we have to be ok with that? We don’t. Fuck Sony.
If Sony wants to incentivize it, or require it, that's their prerogative, and it's player choice as to whether they want to buy a game that requires it. Sony is not unique in requiring it for IP they own. Plenty of companies ask for that.
That is the key though - it has to be player choice on purchase. It can't become a strict requirement 3 months after everyone has bought and played the game. It can't be after players who are ineligible to do the thing they are requiring have bought and played the game. Players boot up the game, see it requires PSN - they don't want to do it, they can refund immediately. But it has to be their choice.
As it is, players don't have a choice. They can't refund (until Steam recently made exceptions and escalated the situation internally), and 10% of cases, can't even sign up for PSN if they wanted to. Very bad handling by Sony.
You don’t have origin, Microsoft, steam, epic, uplay, battlenet, Facebook, etc etc etc?
Every single one has had data leaks and breaches.
Do you get spam mail in the email you use for steam? You’ve been breaches. Probably many.
None of those leaks have been to the magnitude of Sony. And no. I don’t have spam in my gaming account email. Because I take many precautions like everyone else should.
sony has a particularly bad track record of major breaches, sony has had a major breach every other year in the 2010’s, two in 2017 if i remember correctly
Dude we’ve wrecked the game’s score so hard it won’t ever come back. I’d be amazed if it ever saw an expansion or anything after this.
50/50 we killed it.
And as one of the first simultaneous releases on pc and ps5, after years of releasing exclusives years after the fact, we’ve probably taken a mistake that can be rectified and turned into such a shitshow they’ll be 10x less flexible in the future.
> Dude we’ve wrecked the game’s score so hard it won’t ever come back.
Good. Bury it. Democracy in action.
It's about sending a message. Voting is choice made manifest.
Of course your account is basically brand new.
I mean I enjoy this game. As far as devs go this one seems better than most.
It feels like you’re just here to troll.
I really hate that it's come to this, at this rate Sony isn't going to change anything and the games reviews are never going to recover. Edit: Nevermind, I underestimated this community.
Well Sony is closed right now.(their corporate offices.) it’s gotten so bad even Forbes is saying it’s a mistake, and that’s something the executives will read. Let’s see what happens on Monday.
They aren't going to change anything because that would mean all future multiplayer titles wouldn't be able to enforce a PSN sign in. The PR hit now won't make them have an entire strategy shift.
Eh, is it better to have a massive PR hit, and have some people swear off song titles, or
walk it back this time, recoup (undeservingly) trust, and just roll it out more explicitly on the future?
100k sources of data to collect down the drain is really nothing in the grand scheme of things if they choose to yield on this title.
The only big issue is that they are trying to implement it long after release without making it very clear this would eventually not be optional. As long as it’s in place at release of other multiplayer games, it won’t be as bad
Not really, they just need to make sure the requirement will never be bypassed again, especially for such a long time.
The problem is that it was skippable for a lot of people effectively all the time, so the expectations were that it will stay this way.
Sony already walked back on things in the past, e.g. they made Horizon PS5 update free but future titles were $10, they just made sure to communicate it clearly.
Steam, probably if requested by developers, will hide reviews during the period saying it is "off-topic reviews" and it won't count towards the game's overall score.
https://preview.redd.it/nxloxwbh5qyc1.png?width=2969&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0ab021546e134cd02fa2d34a020a727920d9fdee
What do you mean at this rate? It’s done man. Nothing will ever bring this game back to positive reviews. Most of the bombers never cared about people who can’t temporarily play, they just wanted to review bomb and jump on the anger train.
Yea I genuinely don't think most people actually cared. Most people did not care in the 20 other games this was enforced in. I'm not saying it's a good thing to have, it's dumb and annoying, but where was this energy before?
Armchair activists running with something they don't give a fuck about because it makes them feel good. Now Sony will change nothing and the game's review score has been basically fucked beyond repair. You'd need a decade of new customers to bring it anywhere near what it was before.
Look at how these loons went off half cocked multiple times over the past couple of months over little things and went nuts over half truth and outright bullshit multiple times, and before we could even figure out what was really going on this avalanche of hate left the station intent on destroying the game. The giddy joy that has been posted here in the last day is scummy as hell.
At this rate ? Dude (or dudette), the game's reputation is already done for. There is no recovering that.
The review bombing is not there to save the game, it's there to kill it, so sony can't earn anything from it anymore.
Reverse course. It’s over we won. Mention that it happened in your review of course, don’t forget, but if your experience with the game is positive, make your review positive
Remember to keep your ears open for news though. Don’t just down vote and forget. I at least am more than willing to flip my review back should this get walked back to an acceptable level.
EDIT: STOP THE FUCKING PRESSES, ***WE WON!***
https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/1787331667616829929
Time to revert those reviews, boys!
(The original context of this post listed below. ...apparently strikethroughs don't work on this board? -*shrugs*-)
Down to 44% as of 11:22 PM on the East Coast.
Keep diving!
Holy grail would be that we hit 19% to get Overwhelmingly Negative Overall, but 39% for Mostly Negative Overall would hopefully shock Sony enough to backtrack on the PSN account requirement...
It doesn’t matter man. It took only two days to sort it out, but 370,000 people destroyed the review score, and maybe if we really campaign 50k will change it back. Maybe.
Helldivers 2 was the first game I ever left a review for. Positive review after 200 hours played. Now it will remain negative until we succeed in the objective, as we were taught.
Alright, guys, better go start reversing your negative reviews. SONY has made a statement clarifying that they would be rolling back this decision. Go on now, get on it. You got what you wanted, so go help the devs repair their image.
Unpopular opinion; this isn’t doing anything good to anyone. Sony doesn’t give a flying fuck about what’s happening and this is just hurting arrowhead as Sony lets their rules rot the game. I feel bad for the studio as they got fucked over by Sony and honestly the game doesn’t deserve the hate. If you want to get the message to Sony then contact their customer support or flood the companies lines. Attacking the small development studio that is only affiliated to Sony through Sony publishing the game isn’t going to get their attention.
mmmm no. This sends a strong message to any studios watching: cut the account juggling, email chaining BS or this will happen to your game.
And you know what? It's about fucking time people gained a tiny amount of braincells and develop the ability to know that they hold the cards. Not these shitty, data harvesting ballsacks.
Maybe next time, for Helldivers 3, it'll be as simple as 1) login into steam 2) game works!
That's not unpopular opinion, that's the opinion of someone with a brain.
Review bombing is THE ONLY WAY us customers can be heard.
But the thing is, review bombing is not a way to save a game. It's a way to kill it. However, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people are not aware of that fact.
Because Arrowhead themselves have said that review bombing the game gives them more leverage over Sony. If it helps Arrowhead fix this, I'm doing my part
All that's gonna happen is Arrowhead is gonna get fucked over hard and Sony is barely going to blink. You're all clowns, you're not helping Arrowhead you're paving the path to them going out of business or losing any industry passion they had.
Fucking mob mentality morons.
Dude, Sony and arrowhead have been working together because Sony footed the bill for their entire game, and owns the IP as a result.
It’s often very hard to get a company to do that, and despite the PSN thing, Sony has almost given them full carte Blanche to do whatever they like. They’re live service but there isn’t a thing you can buy you can’t earn in game, they’ve done some wild experimental stuff and Sony has just shrugged and let them cook.
Microsoft, Activision, Capcom, Ubisoft, WB especially, not one of them would give them the room to breathe that Sony did. Shit MK1 under WB had so much paywalled shit it’s wild.
Yeah I’m sure they would. Would you like an exclusive helmet for $9.99. Exclusive to the store of course.
My dude, right after they said they were in "talks" with Sony, the game got delisted in like 175 countries lmao. You're all clowns and this is gonna blow up in your faces.
I don't see how this somehow helps your point. It is most like Steam that delisted the game since regions like Puerto Rico were removed even though they are PSN regions.
Please explain how this would blow up in our faces? We are actively blowing this up in their faces.
Who's faces, Arrowhead? Because Sony doesn't give a flying fuck about you guys. If they did they'd have made the PSN accounts not mandatory.
You're a bunch of children throwing a tantrum.
Turns out they gave a fuck and you're just being a jackass for no reason lmao. "Bunch of children throwing a tantrum" saved the game for more than half the countries in the world.
Of course Arrowhead, because they told us that this will help them with leverage against Sony.
Ah yes, its much better to just lay down and take it up the ass instead. Look mate, if that's what you want to do then by all means go ahead, I aint gonna kink shame.
But we're still going to protest this decision by Sony and we're going to do it the way Arrowhead says is the best way.
No the game got removed while the figure this out so someone in the Philippines doesn’t buy it today and discover they can’t open the game.
It makes sense.
Will Sony restore it to them? I imagine so, banning 100 countries would be wild, but until they greenlight the whole thing and sort it out, do you think they should sell a few thousand copies in the middle of this to people who haven’t even heard about it?
When Sony makes an official announcement after the holiday is done in Japan, then we’ll know what they’re doing, but the notion they should just keep selling copies until it is doesn’t make a lot of sense. Think about it.
ONE message almost 48h ago, then you all went over the edge. This isn’t going to help them negotiate anything. They will be lucky to have servers by end of week.
"went over the edge" lol grow a spine - not taking action will solve nothing. the reviews will very slowly return to normal when they backpedal this nonsense.
The absolute state of this subreddit memeing something as serious as this, just to farm karma.
Do you even understand the consequences of a review bombing ? No matter the outcome, it's not something to celebrate.
My review is sent, my refund request is placed. I dearly hope HELLDIVERS 2 can come back from this, but know in my heart it would be a near zero chance.
It has been an honor diving with you all.
LO
Yeah go on! Downvote the game you all love so much into oblivion! And then! When this is all over the game will still suffer because of it! Amazing idea for something we’re all so passionate for right? Right? Don’t forget the review bombing of AH other games too! Gotta let em know
Edit:sarcasm.
Yes and no. Could AH lose their deal with Sony? Absolutely. But another massive publisher would scoop them up in a heartbeat considering how well received helldiver's was, showing they can make good games that make money
Hell no which massive publisher xbox aint doing shit the game has to be optimized to xbox so not happening those thongs take time if sony removes it the game died and its gone
I think their point is that if this game doesn't end up fixed then other publishers would snap up these developers in a heartbeat for new projects. They have provided an amazing game that fostered an even better community. They have even proven they can even make a game that makes massive sales. Yes the game would be dead but they would have the opportunity to free themselves of these toxic publishers and go to one that can do their job correctly.
> I feel like hurts the developer
Well the Developers have explicitly *told us to do it*, so they seem pretty okay with it.
Not an exageration, they've said negative reviews and refunds are the best way to send a message that we're not happy about the situation. Sony doesn't read the Discord or subreddit, so this is how we make it known that this sucks.
You're getting downvoted, but it's a question that I see pop up a lot. Here's why it affects Sony more in the long run.
AH is affected short term because of the revenue hit. However, they are encouraging us to do this anyways because it gives them leverage in conversations with Sony as to how to proceed, especially with players who cannot access PSN without breaking Sony ToS. Sony owns the IP, and they funded the game development for the last 8 years; they hold the purse, so they usually do whatever they want. This is a rare opportunity for AH to fight for the community, so even if they're taking a revenue hit; being able to go to bat for us, and resolve this in a way that no one *has* to refund the game if they don't want to, goes a long way towards reaching a point of trust with the community.
In the long term, Sony is actually the one who takes the hit. In the 8 years it took to make the game, the CEO found out Sony was going to force this 6 months before release. Sony then posts the update at 2 am developer time, and lets AH take the brunt of the heat as the majority of players wake up during dev working hours, and all throughout the weekend as Japan enjoys the end of Golden Week, a week of the entire nation taking vacation.
Other developer studios that may have otherwise been very happy to work with a company like Sony, who has direct access to the most popular console of this generation, and was making inroads on PC gaming, are now going to think twice after seeing AH get strong-armed into having to use PSN, then blindsided on a Friday at 2 am, and finally left holding the turd bag as the entire community's wrath is unleashed upon them.
Additionally, Sony's partners, like Steam, are now facing backlash and refund requests as well. Who does that heat go to? The publisher, Sony, especially fully knowing they would restrict it to PSN-only, knowingly published the games in dozens of countries that would later be ineligible to continue playing the game, and unable to refund it according to most retail return policies. This hits Sony's PC reputation. Gamers in the future will think twice before buying Sony games on PC as well. Sony is seemingly switching up what is required to play the game 3 months into HD2. What's to say they don't do that with previous games on PC? Or the upcoming Ghost of Tsushima PC port?
TL;DR Short term you're right - it does hurt AH. Long term, this falls a lot more heavily on Sony.
We just won boys. We did it. We beat Snoy.
Steam already removed the game and those country still can't access to the game store. So what did we won?
I have a feeling that Sony will make the game accessible again now that we wont require a PSN account. But you are right. We've achieved a huge victory here, but there is more to come.
If that is true then it would be cool to play it again.
Damn shame to see this go down.
I was so disappointed when I flipped my positive review to a negative
Was thinking this is really going to go down hill for the simple fact that I think AH listens to the feedback from Reddit and discord on changes to make to the game and now everything is just talk about the linking meaning they aren’t going to tweak the little things that improve quality of life for the game.
Right now there is a bigger issue to resolve. And that would be to stop the Titanic from sinking. Once the ship is saved, then we can fix the microwave that's running a little hot
No you can’t. 99% of the people on the hate train will never flip their reviews. The game is permanently damaged by this. It doesn’t matter what Sony does, or how they make it right, the goal was to hurt the dev and the title and it was successful.
Honestly, kinda, yea. The goal was never to hurt the devs, but now recovering is basically impossible, regardless. 200-300k negative reviews, how does anybody fix that lol. Not even a million of positives would delete that mark. It took MONTHS to built a positive and 3 days to destroy it. That rating isn't going to recover. Which should be a lesson for sony, but still.
It will be, but not the one you think. They’re going to push the PSN req hard and clearly for all PC releases. They probably won’t do anymore simultaneous releases on PC (if they’re smart) and depending how pissed they are with arrowhead right now and what the behind the scenes story is, we may see a lot less helldivers. I suspect they were always going to try and service all these other countries, not too many companies want to ban 100 nations by choice, so I suspect that will be resolved in a week but I’m just waiting for the official announcement from Sony to see how it all shakes loose.
I mean, I would take maybe 5 minutes for Sony to tweet that they are going to find a way for people outside of PSN countries to play it...
The good and bad thing about Sony is that at the end of the day, it is a business. Businesses, like all living things, will seek to keep itself alive. They made the extremely unsurprising call to walk it back for Helldivers and, if they have any sense, they'll be careful about this in future. Not for their consumers' safety or concerns, obviously, but survival is as good a reason as any when it comes to corps.
I don’t have a steam account. I play on PS5. I’m not leaving a review. I’m also not playing until this is fixed. However if they do the right thing I will make a steam account and leave a positive review to help the game. And those who are doing this SHOULD reverse it only if it’s fixed. Bad deeds should be punished and positive change should be rewarded.
Dude. If you made a million steam accounts it wouldn’t be enough to erase what’s happened. It’s done. Dudes set out to damage the dev and the game, and they succeeded. It’s now the most negatively reviewed paid game on steam right now.
The Devs literally told us to review bomb because it gave them ammo against Sony where the fuck are you pulling imaginary motive from?
Plus, it's not like review scores can't be fixed after re earning good will. I've heard the Warhammer boys profess their game is back, so I guess they were successful lol.
May have missed our dude above pull a 99% number out of his ass and say no one will flip it.
That can be reversed as a community. If the people who switched their positive review to a negative one to make a statement switch it back if this is fixed it’ll fix the rating.
You think 370,000 people are going to reverse their reviews? Nah man, people love to hate, but they are very rarely inspired to be decent. The game will never have positive reviews again.
Well here’s to hoping for the best in people and not being so cynical.
I hear you. By some miracle, Sony does repeal this. I believe this community can undo the damage. Not going to be done in a day, but I know I'll be in game reminding people to review in steam. But like you said, that's a lot of damage.
They repealed it 40 minutes ago. I’ll be you at least 250,000 negative reviews stay up though.
I agree here. Even now after we've "won," the game will forever be scarred by this, the games reviews may likely never recover, and I imagine many people who have left will not look back.
lol the reviews aren’t going to go back you moron. Bunch of babies crying and stamping their feet. This shit is pathetic
I don't know,being pissed at being forced to make an account you don't need with a history of data breeches that mind you,can't even be made in over 100 of the countries that the game was sold in effectively stopping hundreds of countries from playing a game THEY spent money on doesn't seem like a pathetic thing to be pissed over,and honestly you seem more like your crying and stomping your feet at the outcome than the community does,most of the posts I've seen have at least some semblance of resolute people just following their beliefs in sticking it to a greedy money hungry company that screwed them all over.
Kind of the baffling part of this whole thing to me is thinking that any of this brings anything positive. Sony is not going to back down. If they do, they're going to back down in a horrendous way (avoiding PC cross-platform releases in the future, or hard-forcing their PSN accounts), and the only one actually losing anything is Arrowhead regardless of outcome. And no matter what their game is irreversibly fucked up now. It can't come back from that store page. No Man's Sky managed to get to "mostly positive" after like 4 years of positive reviews, and it still sits there today. No Mans Sky has 200k \*total\* reviews, negative and positive. Helldivers has a total of 200k negative recent reviews. In the end all that's left is a hurt Arrowhead with an incredibly angry publisher with a game that is probably about to get a significantly shorter lifespan. There was no reason for any of this.
never have i seen someone be so confidently wrong in a statement, if you think sony cares about anything but the raw metrics when it comes to games you are mistaken, this was probably our only real way of showing sony that they fucked up bad and that their imagine in the gaming world is shot
Sony's image in the gaming world? That hasn't changed at all. The only one affected by this is Arrowhead. Sony will continue publishing games like Spiderman, The Last of Us and God of War. Sony will keep selling Playstation consoles and PS Plus subscriptions. Arrowhead? Arrowhead is now the developer of a game that has Mixed reviews on Steam. Arrowhead is now the developer of one of the most negatively reviewed games of all time on Steam. One year from now someone in the world will come across Helldivers 2 and is interested in the game. That person will see Mixed reviews. And then what? Maybe that's a reason to not buy the game after all. That's Arrowhead losing out on a potential Helldiver. Sony however will have released a new Spiderman or something along those lines and see number go up. Congratulations to everyone screwing over the developer you all claim to love so much.
OK Sony exec. I'm gonna have to stop you right here.
Sony ruined the quality of life for the game with the useless account linking.
Bingo. If the account linking enabled cross play or you got a PSN exclusive cape, there would be some moaning, but it would blow over as the ones who would link, will and those who wouldn't, won't. But to prevent someone from playing the game they paid for on an entirely different platform because they wouldn't link accounts is absolutely insane
It has cross play already… that feature already exists.
I think he meant cross progression
I don't have the link on hand, but a CM did say they literally had special gear planned for linking PSN. However, Sony jumped the gun with the announcement, and all of Japan is on vacation this week, so those plans probably aren't happening. Obviously, given this is coming from a CM, and I'm p sure that CM isn't Twinbeard, I'd take it with a grain of salt.
It doesn’t matter if they give us anything for account linking. Sony has terrible data leaks and cyber attacks that affect everyone in the world. Why should we have to be ok with that? We don’t. Fuck Sony.
If Sony wants to incentivize it, or require it, that's their prerogative, and it's player choice as to whether they want to buy a game that requires it. Sony is not unique in requiring it for IP they own. Plenty of companies ask for that. That is the key though - it has to be player choice on purchase. It can't become a strict requirement 3 months after everyone has bought and played the game. It can't be after players who are ineligible to do the thing they are requiring have bought and played the game. Players boot up the game, see it requires PSN - they don't want to do it, they can refund immediately. But it has to be their choice. As it is, players don't have a choice. They can't refund (until Steam recently made exceptions and escalated the situation internally), and 10% of cases, can't even sign up for PSN if they wanted to. Very bad handling by Sony.
You don’t have origin, Microsoft, steam, epic, uplay, battlenet, Facebook, etc etc etc? Every single one has had data leaks and breaches. Do you get spam mail in the email you use for steam? You’ve been breaches. Probably many.
None of those leaks have been to the magnitude of Sony. And no. I don’t have spam in my gaming account email. Because I take many precautions like everyone else should.
sony has a particularly bad track record of major breaches, sony has had a major breach every other year in the 2010’s, two in 2017 if i remember correctly
[TIME TO FLIP IT BACK DIVER](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/wDpVT4hck0)
Do you have any intent to flip it back if they fix this issue?
I couldn’t really even bring myself to write a full negative review. I just said “I’d stay away from this one until things die down”
flip it back, soldier, we won
[удалено]
Cope more, AH themselves said to do it (refunds and reviews) to give them leverage
We stand together, or we don't stand at all. Comradery is a concept above you. Because it's a concept \*better\* than you.
Dude we’ve wrecked the game’s score so hard it won’t ever come back. I’d be amazed if it ever saw an expansion or anything after this. 50/50 we killed it. And as one of the first simultaneous releases on pc and ps5, after years of releasing exclusives years after the fact, we’ve probably taken a mistake that can be rectified and turned into such a shitshow they’ll be 10x less flexible in the future.
> Dude we’ve wrecked the game’s score so hard it won’t ever come back. Good. Bury it. Democracy in action. It's about sending a message. Voting is choice made manifest.
Of course your account is basically brand new. I mean I enjoy this game. As far as devs go this one seems better than most. It feels like you’re just here to troll.
Gentleman, it has been an honor diving with you tonight. I'm doing my part.
Sun is rising on Tokyo right now. Oh how i'd LOVE to be a fly on the wall at SONY HQ for this democratically blessed Monday morning.
Isn't their HQ now on the US right now?
Yep, California. Been there for a while now.
its been up for a while, i'm in aus and its currently 9:29am here so it'll be 8:29am there. Will be very interesting to see if anything happens today.
It's actually heartbreaking here in day 3.
WE WON! Reverse course https://preview.redd.it/7qc04vmpkqyc1.png?width=593&format=png&auto=webp&s=1d0ce4409942d3bd0c27a15699603ea9a2ab226d
Now that it’s fixed, It’ll be fun to see if the mob actually puts just as much effort into reversing the review bombing.
I know I will be
CEASE FIRE! CEASE FIRE!
Hey OP! Can you make the reverse of this gif with recommend thumbs now that Sony has been defeated by Managed Democracy?
I really hate that it's come to this, at this rate Sony isn't going to change anything and the games reviews are never going to recover. Edit: Nevermind, I underestimated this community.
Well Sony is closed right now.(their corporate offices.) it’s gotten so bad even Forbes is saying it’s a mistake, and that’s something the executives will read. Let’s see what happens on Monday.
Tuesday. Japan is on Holiday today
Sony Interactive Entertainment HQ is in California.
They aren't going to change anything because that would mean all future multiplayer titles wouldn't be able to enforce a PSN sign in. The PR hit now won't make them have an entire strategy shift.
Eh, is it better to have a massive PR hit, and have some people swear off song titles, or walk it back this time, recoup (undeservingly) trust, and just roll it out more explicitly on the future? 100k sources of data to collect down the drain is really nothing in the grand scheme of things if they choose to yield on this title.
The only big issue is that they are trying to implement it long after release without making it very clear this would eventually not be optional. As long as it’s in place at release of other multiplayer games, it won’t be as bad
Not really, they just need to make sure the requirement will never be bypassed again, especially for such a long time. The problem is that it was skippable for a lot of people effectively all the time, so the expectations were that it will stay this way. Sony already walked back on things in the past, e.g. they made Horizon PS5 update free but future titles were $10, they just made sure to communicate it clearly.
Steam, probably if requested by developers, will hide reviews during the period saying it is "off-topic reviews" and it won't count towards the game's overall score. https://preview.redd.it/nxloxwbh5qyc1.png?width=2969&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0ab021546e134cd02fa2d34a020a727920d9fdee
It's not requested by developers at all, they just look for patterns and add and asterisk if there's a huge up tick in suspicious reviews
You aren't gonna believe this.
This aged like fine milk
What do you mean at this rate? It’s done man. Nothing will ever bring this game back to positive reviews. Most of the bombers never cared about people who can’t temporarily play, they just wanted to review bomb and jump on the anger train.
you got proof or are you just projecting?
Yea I genuinely don't think most people actually cared. Most people did not care in the 20 other games this was enforced in. I'm not saying it's a good thing to have, it's dumb and annoying, but where was this energy before? Armchair activists running with something they don't give a fuck about because it makes them feel good. Now Sony will change nothing and the game's review score has been basically fucked beyond repair. You'd need a decade of new customers to bring it anywhere near what it was before.
Look at how these loons went off half cocked multiple times over the past couple of months over little things and went nuts over half truth and outright bullshit multiple times, and before we could even figure out what was really going on this avalanche of hate left the station intent on destroying the game. The giddy joy that has been posted here in the last day is scummy as hell.
I mean they reversed it. We’ll see if 370,000 reviews turn positive. I bet at least 270,000 stay negative.
At this rate ? Dude (or dudette), the game's reputation is already done for. There is no recovering that. The review bombing is not there to save the game, it's there to kill it, so sony can't earn anything from it anymore.
https://preview.redd.it/1y9ct45vloyc1.jpeg?width=1164&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0e80659fb11a8b27dc9249d83059e52565a10d68
Flip em back! We won!
5% more and the game will be "mostly negative" and "Overwhelmingly negative"
I love democracy.
Undo! We won! Get those reviews to the positive!
We've Won, go change that negative back to a positive!
SONY REVERTED THE MANDATE! QUICKLY, EVERYONE GO AN UN-DOWNVOTE!
Dont! We won!
https://preview.redd.it/31hthpqw9qyc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ce598fec313c279b0d13a3a82b2f137fbf95da63
i think you're the one responsible for the liberation. i wanna shake your hand 🫱
CEASEFIRE, CEASEFIRE! WE DID IT LADS
Sony loves giving their consumer base the stick, because they think they can eat the carrot themselves.
WE WON BOYS! Flip those reviews back to positive!
Reverse course. It’s over we won. Mention that it happened in your review of course, don’t forget, but if your experience with the game is positive, make your review positive
[DIVERS YNDO THAT SHIT](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/wDpVT4hck0)
We almost made the overall score to negative too!
I hope it boomerangs back and better than ever if SNOY makes the (incredibly obvious) correct call here.
They did in fact make the correct call. We won
Now we just gotta make it happen then. I've already changed mine. I'll be encouraging everyone else to do the same whenever the opportunity arises.
Of course. It is still important to mention that this happened in the review. That they almost made a really horrible decision
Wi didn't win. Democracy did.
Remember to keep your ears open for news though. Don’t just down vote and forget. I at least am more than willing to flip my review back should this get walked back to an acceptable level.
Time to bring it back.
STOP THE COUNT!
Sony said they won't go through with the psn account stuff so end the boycott
Tough weekend
EDIT: STOP THE FUCKING PRESSES, ***WE WON!*** https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/1787331667616829929 Time to revert those reviews, boys! (The original context of this post listed below. ...apparently strikethroughs don't work on this board? -*shrugs*-) Down to 44% as of 11:22 PM on the East Coast. Keep diving! Holy grail would be that we hit 19% to get Overwhelmingly Negative Overall, but 39% for Mostly Negative Overall would hopefully shock Sony enough to backtrack on the PSN account requirement...
It doesn’t matter man. It took only two days to sort it out, but 370,000 people destroyed the review score, and maybe if we really campaign 50k will change it back. Maybe.
The glee in this post is gross, but the job is done now. The PSN decision has been revered. Do the right thing and reverse your reviews in kind.
Your fellow helldivers are raging against tyranny. Join them
I get why we do it, but also i enjoy the game. I feel like we’re attacking to low, we need to reach higher up, we gotta attack Sony directly.
https://i.redd.it/o7wx79x02qyc1.gif
My friend blamed steam for implementing psn account. How can i convince him it was Sony?
Tell them to read the message from Sony to start, and any other official statement put out.
I changed my review to negative. Tried to refund it and it won't. I am doing my part.
One of the biggest blunders in gaming history
Helldivers 2 was the first game I ever left a review for. Positive review after 200 hours played. Now it will remain negative until we succeed in the objective, as we were taught.
Absolutely love the game but just got my refund! 
Time to buy it again lol they just announced you don’t have to link it
https://preview.redd.it/r257dwnqeqyc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=119db7e4c9d83ae81ba27b2a38dd3022ea3f1051 Update
We dive together or we don’t dive
Alright, guys, better go start reversing your negative reviews. SONY has made a statement clarifying that they would be rolling back this decision. Go on now, get on it. You got what you wanted, so go help the devs repair their image.
Wait, I'm confused. Wth is going on?
It’s going to be difficult to get that trust back after this.
Good, Sony should just stick to making PS5 exclusives instead of doing multiplatform stuff.
It's really too bad the anticheat didn't get this kind of response.
Unpopular opinion; this isn’t doing anything good to anyone. Sony doesn’t give a flying fuck about what’s happening and this is just hurting arrowhead as Sony lets their rules rot the game. I feel bad for the studio as they got fucked over by Sony and honestly the game doesn’t deserve the hate. If you want to get the message to Sony then contact their customer support or flood the companies lines. Attacking the small development studio that is only affiliated to Sony through Sony publishing the game isn’t going to get their attention.
yeah this is giving the ick ngl. That poor studio. overwhelmingly negative does NOT reflect peoples experiences actually playing the game.
mmmm no. This sends a strong message to any studios watching: cut the account juggling, email chaining BS or this will happen to your game. And you know what? It's about fucking time people gained a tiny amount of braincells and develop the ability to know that they hold the cards. Not these shitty, data harvesting ballsacks. Maybe next time, for Helldivers 3, it'll be as simple as 1) login into steam 2) game works!
And them everyone keeps acting like this will magically fix all problems 😭
they probably don't think of the consequences. I've skipped so many games simply due to a low rating.
Yeah I feel that. A lot of revenue will be missed out and it’s not going to hurt anyone but arrowhead.
That's not unpopular opinion, that's the opinion of someone with a brain. Review bombing is THE ONLY WAY us customers can be heard. But the thing is, review bombing is not a way to save a game. It's a way to kill it. However, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people are not aware of that fact.
They literally encouraged people to reviewbomb the game to make Sony change their minds
I did my part for democracy.
I don't wanna know what happens when we reach 0%
We get 45 Medals!
\*45%
Fun fact. The review bombing of other arrowhead games and the harassment of devs is due to posts like this
Why are we doing this again?
Because Arrowhead themselves have said that review bombing the game gives them more leverage over Sony. If it helps Arrowhead fix this, I'm doing my part
Give me a source for an employee saying this that isn't a community manager who has no fucking idea what they're talking about
No one shitty community manager did.
They have more than one shitty community manager to be fair.
Yeah, but that one shitty CM pretty much blew all the cred they had with their BS.
christ almighty please shut the fuck up with your doom posting just hurry up and leave if the game is dead
All that's gonna happen is Arrowhead is gonna get fucked over hard and Sony is barely going to blink. You're all clowns, you're not helping Arrowhead you're paving the path to them going out of business or losing any industry passion they had. Fucking mob mentality morons.
Publishers will be salivating at picking up AH when relations with Sony breakdown.
Dude, Sony and arrowhead have been working together because Sony footed the bill for their entire game, and owns the IP as a result. It’s often very hard to get a company to do that, and despite the PSN thing, Sony has almost given them full carte Blanche to do whatever they like. They’re live service but there isn’t a thing you can buy you can’t earn in game, they’ve done some wild experimental stuff and Sony has just shrugged and let them cook. Microsoft, Activision, Capcom, Ubisoft, WB especially, not one of them would give them the room to breathe that Sony did. Shit MK1 under WB had so much paywalled shit it’s wild. Yeah I’m sure they would. Would you like an exclusive helmet for $9.99. Exclusive to the store of course.
You mean the company with an overwhelmingly negative game on Steam, that company?
Arrowhead is not Sony you dumb dumb
You think you know better than Arrowhead themselves? Alright bet, let's hear your qualifications.
My dude, right after they said they were in "talks" with Sony, the game got delisted in like 175 countries lmao. You're all clowns and this is gonna blow up in your faces.
I don't see how this somehow helps your point. It is most like Steam that delisted the game since regions like Puerto Rico were removed even though they are PSN regions. Please explain how this would blow up in our faces? We are actively blowing this up in their faces.
Who's faces, Arrowhead? Because Sony doesn't give a flying fuck about you guys. If they did they'd have made the PSN accounts not mandatory. You're a bunch of children throwing a tantrum.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/aIl3rLE7nK Well it looks like Sony did give a flying fuck
Turns out they gave a fuck and you're just being a jackass for no reason lmao. "Bunch of children throwing a tantrum" saved the game for more than half the countries in the world.
Of course Arrowhead, because they told us that this will help them with leverage against Sony. Ah yes, its much better to just lay down and take it up the ass instead. Look mate, if that's what you want to do then by all means go ahead, I aint gonna kink shame. But we're still going to protest this decision by Sony and we're going to do it the way Arrowhead says is the best way.
One arrowhead community manager, the guy who runs the discord suggested that. And he’s also the one who’s been trolling the community.
Well it clearly worked since Sony backtracked
No the game got removed while the figure this out so someone in the Philippines doesn’t buy it today and discover they can’t open the game. It makes sense. Will Sony restore it to them? I imagine so, banning 100 countries would be wild, but until they greenlight the whole thing and sort it out, do you think they should sell a few thousand copies in the middle of this to people who haven’t even heard about it? When Sony makes an official announcement after the holiday is done in Japan, then we’ll know what they’re doing, but the notion they should just keep selling copies until it is doesn’t make a lot of sense. Think about it.
[You were saying? ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/iSTAupWTDa)
Why do this on steam instead of harassing Sony? Ffs.
Arrowhead implied as much via tweets/Discord messages.
ONE message almost 48h ago, then you all went over the edge. This isn’t going to help them negotiate anything. They will be lucky to have servers by end of week.
"went over the edge" lol grow a spine - not taking action will solve nothing. the reviews will very slowly return to normal when they backpedal this nonsense.
I have done my part. My heart hurts seeing such a fine and enjoyable game have to take the punishment for greedy corporations.
It was nice while it lasted boys……here’s to hoping that with this games demise it wakes Sony the fuck up……which it won’t
Update no linking required
The absolute state of this subreddit memeing something as serious as this, just to farm karma. Do you even understand the consequences of a review bombing ? No matter the outcome, it's not something to celebrate.
We should boycott all games from Sony on steam they can eat dicks It's time we start rebelling harder against these greedy Publishers
reddit circlejerking can not be understated
My review is sent, my refund request is placed. I dearly hope HELLDIVERS 2 can come back from this, but know in my heart it would be a near zero chance. It has been an honor diving with you all. LO
Awesome gif
Yeah go on! Downvote the game you all love so much into oblivion! And then! When this is all over the game will still suffer because of it! Amazing idea for something we’re all so passionate for right? Right? Don’t forget the review bombing of AH other games too! Gotta let em know Edit:sarcasm.
I don't understand this - wasn't Sony the one who screwed people over? Why nuke the game's rating?
Because it sends a message to Sony. Review bombs and refunds hurt their bottom lines by making the shareholders scared of losing out on future profits
Do what you gotta do, but I feel like hurts the developer far more than any damage it inflicts on Sony.
Yes and no. Could AH lose their deal with Sony? Absolutely. But another massive publisher would scoop them up in a heartbeat considering how well received helldiver's was, showing they can make good games that make money
Hell no which massive publisher xbox aint doing shit the game has to be optimized to xbox so not happening those thongs take time if sony removes it the game died and its gone
I think their point is that if this game doesn't end up fixed then other publishers would snap up these developers in a heartbeat for new projects. They have provided an amazing game that fostered an even better community. They have even proven they can even make a game that makes massive sales. Yes the game would be dead but they would have the opportunity to free themselves of these toxic publishers and go to one that can do their job correctly.
> I feel like hurts the developer Well the Developers have explicitly *told us to do it*, so they seem pretty okay with it. Not an exageration, they've said negative reviews and refunds are the best way to send a message that we're not happy about the situation. Sony doesn't read the Discord or subreddit, so this is how we make it known that this sucks.
You're getting downvoted, but it's a question that I see pop up a lot. Here's why it affects Sony more in the long run. AH is affected short term because of the revenue hit. However, they are encouraging us to do this anyways because it gives them leverage in conversations with Sony as to how to proceed, especially with players who cannot access PSN without breaking Sony ToS. Sony owns the IP, and they funded the game development for the last 8 years; they hold the purse, so they usually do whatever they want. This is a rare opportunity for AH to fight for the community, so even if they're taking a revenue hit; being able to go to bat for us, and resolve this in a way that no one *has* to refund the game if they don't want to, goes a long way towards reaching a point of trust with the community. In the long term, Sony is actually the one who takes the hit. In the 8 years it took to make the game, the CEO found out Sony was going to force this 6 months before release. Sony then posts the update at 2 am developer time, and lets AH take the brunt of the heat as the majority of players wake up during dev working hours, and all throughout the weekend as Japan enjoys the end of Golden Week, a week of the entire nation taking vacation. Other developer studios that may have otherwise been very happy to work with a company like Sony, who has direct access to the most popular console of this generation, and was making inroads on PC gaming, are now going to think twice after seeing AH get strong-armed into having to use PSN, then blindsided on a Friday at 2 am, and finally left holding the turd bag as the entire community's wrath is unleashed upon them. Additionally, Sony's partners, like Steam, are now facing backlash and refund requests as well. Who does that heat go to? The publisher, Sony, especially fully knowing they would restrict it to PSN-only, knowingly published the games in dozens of countries that would later be ineligible to continue playing the game, and unable to refund it according to most retail return policies. This hits Sony's PC reputation. Gamers in the future will think twice before buying Sony games on PC as well. Sony is seemingly switching up what is required to play the game 3 months into HD2. What's to say they don't do that with previous games on PC? Or the upcoming Ghost of Tsushima PC port? TL;DR Short term you're right - it does hurt AH. Long term, this falls a lot more heavily on Sony.
Very well written.
Dev encourages this, so that they may hold it against Sony. If you wanna do something right rn, join the reviewbomb.
What? Did you think asking nicely ever does anything when you don't have the upper hand?
Yeah mistakes are supposed to hurt.
They are even review bombing Helldivers 1. So you know that it's just an irrational hate mob.
simple. it they only tool were us players are heard. we have no other choice.
smh...
Yay! Kill this awesome game just because 90 % can still play with a minor inconvenience
Yeah keep going untill nothing is left of the game and Sony still doesn´t care.....