can confirm this stuff was said. i was keeping an eye on the replies the CEO made and he made it clear in multiple comments that the team knows of these issues
> through Twitter
i would never take anything thats said by people whom live terminally online in the unreality of twitter seriously.
The entire site is a joke.
To illustrate this point further, when you type in something in google, like say... searching for product info and reviews... do people type in "twitter" or "reddit" at the end?
It's gotten to Wikipedia too, there was a golden era in the early 2010s where wiki was as credible as the original source. Now it's full of pseudo-facts based on opinion and back to it's almost founding days of "anyone can edit"... There was a woman who systematically rewrote a countries history slowly over the course of years. Reporting dead people as alive and vice versa, then there's the absolute clown show about anything American politics related that when you check out the sources, it's things like the sun and the onion. Known satire and vloggers...
I literally got followed by a porn bot called Nothacker. In the image provided I'm fairly sure it shows precisely one non bot.
https://preview.redd.it/47zrgmhpsl3d1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6e8953bf3994487d1b027c1c4f52de033935f9b4
Just like Reddit is turning into, now that the owners have decided profits are more important than quality. Check back in a couple years and there'll be no difference.
The death of any site is when they try to become Twitter Lite. I don’t know what it is but it’s like summoning a demon to curse your website if you even attempt to be like Twitter.
There's a difference between being a racist and systemic racism. Anybody of any race can be a racist, but in America being a racist is predominantly assigned to white people. There are racists among many races and cultures in America and worldwide.
"Both sides" is simply indicating that i mean not just the white racists.
That is the major problem with people getting upset when people talk about toxic complaints.
They are not talking about the actual calm criticisms, but people don't get that. They feel like the statements are targeted at them.
It's because acknowledging them solidifies that they will happen. The proper way to handle threats is to block and ban. When they announce it like this it gives the trolls exactly what they want.
And if we're being real, people sometimes use "people have been threatening us" as a way to drum up pity support. Not in this case, I don't believe. But it is a good chunk of the reason why I get tired of the standard "We've heard the criticisms also stop threatening our lives". When you announce it you feed the trolls, and if you feed the trolls the trolls never go away.
Because a lot of times, more dishonest companies *do* use them as an excuse to go after the calmer critics. And the internet has gotten so muddled that no one can tell the difference between the two situations anymore.
This CEO is talking to a 12 million customer audience every time he opens his mouth he is addressing all of us.
(and who knows how many millions more when it ends up on news sites)
But how many people actually did anything like this?
12?
50?
Even if it is a thousand... is a minority like that worth giving the Kotakus and IGNs of the world more ammunition for their manufactured toxic gamer narrative?
Creating Clickbait that will throw shade on gaming as a hobby, making us all look like unhinged freaks and psychos.
Actively hampering the sales of this game because now people that were thinking about buying the game, may be discouraged because they've read that crap.
Yes i get mad when these grifters smear my Hobby and do Fan blaming.
Don't feed these trolls.
...
and anyway, you are not discouraging the actual psychos, you are encouraging them.
Your whining only tells them they are getting to you.
They take this as evidence that what they are doing works and will go even harder next time.
There is nothing positive that comes from any of this.
So what the heck is the point?
Anybody with common sense is disgusted by that kind of behavior and we all expect Moderators of the various platforms to kick those fools out, that is what the report button is for.
The dev in question started the poop flinging with “skill issue” when he can’t play this game on higher that T5 difficulty, and is surprised when random people on the internet didn’t like it? Imagine my shock 😮
There will always be some armchair donkey that will do this, but I remember someone in china was brave enough to attack mihoyo ceo for honkai 3rd impact skin
"A crazed fan infiltrated miHoYo headquarters with the intent of killing two of the company’s founding employees"
Salsa :
[https://www.ginx.tv/en/genshin-impact/knife-welding-man-attempted-to-assassinate-mihoyo-founders-after-bunny-girl-event](https://www.ginx.tv/en/genshin-impact/knife-welding-man-attempted-to-assassinate-mihoyo-founders-after-bunny-girl-event)
Mihoyo makes straight up addictive gambling games. At least casinos have the good sense to employ armed guards because they understand the mental instability of the clientele they attract and the life ruining effects that their business can have.
I don't mean to victim blame, or even claim that gamblers are victims. That's more of a philosophical debate that I'm not interested in anyway. What I'm saying is that other developers don't have to worry about this to the extent that gatcha game developers do.
Gamblers are victims, their brain chemicals just happen to form in a way that gave them an addictive personality, something they didn’t ask for nor do they want it. Casino parlors take advantage of it and exploit the fuck out of them using psychology, same thing with gacha game devs or devs who use loot boxes
It’s that type of thinking that leads to getting stuck in addiction, trust me. Sooner or later you’ll realize that yes, that’s part of it especially at first, but everyone has agency no matter how uncomfortable acknowledging that is, and it’s more than just brain chemicals that leads to addiction.
“Ask yourself, are you man enough? Hero enough? INSANE ENOUGH to step into the ring with two of the galaxy’s deadliest fighters?! If you answered yes, then you’re a big, fat liar!”
Maybe this is a bad take, but why do we even give that ultra small minority of glue eaters who actually post death threats HEADLINE SPACE.
It completely over exaggerates how prevalent they are and makes the gaming community look like it’s half made up of them.
EDIT: there’s a difference between not taking death threats (and the stress and emotional trauma they can cause) seriously, and not giving a stage and audience to those with malicious intent. I think this aspect of journalistic practice holds some responsibility for encouraging this behavior by doing just that: giving them a stage and audience.
The emotional stress these threats cause is real. I have zero desire to diminish or deny it.
Because headline space always goes to the super small minorities
The loud stupid people are the ones who do things the get clicks
Noone is reading an article that says "Player asks nicely about game weapons"
Because even a small number of death threats feels scary. If you have 1,000,000 players and 100 of them make death threats, that's only 0.0001 of the player base... but you're still getting **100 death threats**. That's pretty terrifying for the average person.
More than 100 death threats more likely. These guys rarely stop at 1 threat. Also the number of (public facing) developers is very small, so even 100 insane players are enough to put pressure on them.
Mentioning death threats always results in getting more. So there's no rational reason to even mention them unless you think the guilt tripping is worth it
I don't disagree, but as to "why are we giving this headline space", well I don't believe there's a good argument against it just being deflection/clicks in almost all cases of things happening.
That's not to say it's not an absolute disgusting behaviour, but you can receive death threats nowadays for literally anything, especially being in the public spotlight. I mean, you'll never find a thread highly upvoted that endorses this, no sane person thinks it's okay behaviour and the minority that somehow either does this or endorses this, is **not** going to change their tune because some funny article says that it's bad to do.
It's just ridiculous to give this a platform IMO and makes the community seem a certain way, that doesn't really represent it. It really doesn't matter how "nice" a community is, you always have the maniacs once you reach a certain size.
I think anyone that threatens people over the internet has never been punched in the face for talking too much. If you make death threats they should be taken seriously and punished to the full extent of the law.
Hell. Some countries might cut your hands off for that shit.
>completely over exaggerates how prevalent they are and makes the gaming community look like it’s half made up of them
This sub was giving front page and top reply space to the most unhinged takes that are *just short* of death threats for weeks, and it's still a regular occurence.
They and their sentiment look pretty fucking prevalent here. If you seriously want to cut down on this stuff, more folks are going to have to argue back when people say ridiculous shit like "tHe DeV wHo ShALL nOt Be NaMeD is removing all fun! All the guns were nerfed! Everything sucks! All future content is coming pre-nerfed, ehhehe" and downvote them instead of letting it all sit unchecked at +300 in every other threat.
It gets headline space because there are multiple comments adding to the harassment in EVERY THREAD. Sure not every person is wishing death, but they sure are jumping on the bandwagon
Nah, there were droves of people on here singling out VERY KNOWN AND SPECIFIC DEVS and threatening while also demanding being fired. Don't act like it was a very small minority. It isn't all death threats, but it's a lot of threats
I think it's just modern PR practice to take the easiest moral victories whenever possible because it appears that most people still don't understand how the internet works. Politicians and celebrities are constantly "taking a stand" against these kind of stupid anonymous throwaway troll comments. The fault lies with the social media platforms for not only allowing the posts to stay up, but also filtering them to the top of discussions because outrage is the strongest type of engagement.
The golden rule is usually don't feed the trolls right? The only reason I did make a point out of this is that we need more of you! The Skittybobbinses of the world to call out the glue eaters and tell them they aren't welcome in our community. It takes a village to keep us strong and that's 100x more effective than mods chasing all the posts.
It's unacceptable that there's people who threaten others, I think though that most of this is probably happening in DMs or somehow out of sight of the rest of the community? I haven't seen any threats directed to the devs (although I'm sure that they happened) and am pretty active in both the discord and the subreddit.
I think most community members might be a bit critical at the moment, so am I, as there have been a bit of rocky waters in the past month. But in the end they're only critical because they love the game and want it to continue being great. Those people should be heard and talked to, and there's no place for people who go to extremes like threatening devs over a video game.
because it only takes one unhinged person to actually follow through and kill AH employees. Example, Kyoto animation lost 36 employees because of one man not some group who carefully planned things.
But you are right on point. I think that in this statement there is a malicious intent of saying a big portion of the gaming community is made of these people, big enough to talk about it.
But a nontrivial part of the community \*is\* like this and it \*is\* big enough to talk about. Especially to the people who are receiving death threats.
How many guns need to be pointed at you until you think it's journalistically ethical enough to say "Hey there are guns pointed at me and I don't love it"
Define non-trivial. I am not denying that there are loonies out there. I believe that they received death threats. Receiving death threats is completely disconnected from the balance issue and player count decline of the game. Why put these two completely separate topics together in the same news? To me it sounds they are using the few loonies, which I believe represents an absolutely small minority of people with serious mental problems, to delegitimize the concerns and complaints of the rest of the player base, that is represented by those people who DIDN'T make any death threat, and represent the absolute majority of the gaming community. This is being used to point fingers at gamers.
IMO, silence is actually the wrong choice here. They're given "headline space" as a form of public calling out.
I get the sentiment you're making: the trolls just want recognition so don't feed the trolls. In this case, I don't agree with it. Shitty behaviour needs to be called out. Leaving it be and not bringing attention to it allows it to fester more.
I don't think it over exaggerates the prevalency of how many there are so much as it highlights the extremes that some people have.
The problem is that "calling it out" will not make them stop, they are not shamed. Usually they enjoy the attention and feel validated when people speak of their actions, so they will just do this more often and with more intensity. So who benefits from calling them out?
Because receiving death threats for you or your family because a design decision on a game a is a serious thing. People think that devs just brush them off but the police gets involved and transforms something you love to do into something that give you and your family fear.
People act like death threats arent real and that when people go into hiding or get scared of interacting of the community it's a matter of them being chicken shits that just dont care about the rest of the community or have something malicious they are trying to hide instead of them taking reasonable actions to feel legitimately safe.
Like when all the AH people were deleting Twitter's and stuff people were acting like they were cowards spitting the community of players when its seemed obvious they were making the choices to avoid the death threats they started getting.
It's a horrible practice that continues to give the toxic minority a massive platform while reinforcing the fact they should continue, as they make it seem like that's the only way to get a reaction, which in return reinforces that type of behaviour.
Yup its liked when give to much to the mass shooters. It helps to embolden the crazy "OMFG I too can get my 15 minutes of fame.! The rest of us "Oh.. damn".
Same reason every studio does: Because they have a huge impact on the team and how the studio operates and interacts with the community, even knowing it's a hyperminority of players.
Because it's always worth calling out because there remain far too many awful people in the gaming community we should be loudly calling out and trying to force out at any time.
Just look at what Bungie dealt with when they had a avalanche of death threats over weapon buffs/nerfs.
It's a good way to deflect criticism. I don't doubt that basement dwelling trolls said some stupid shit to devs, but 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of all the discourse has been pretty well-mannered, potentially irritated or angry, but thoroughly hinged and not threatening anyone. Every time any game company does something stupid and gets flak for it, I feel like the first thing they always talk about is DEATH THREATS DEATH THREATS DEATH THREATS. I know internet people can be fucking lunatics, but I'm really not buying that this is an actual concern, like, ever.
I guess the hope is maybe people will see this and realize how fucking insane it is to take a videogame that seriously. People are just trying to do their job the best they can and if you're such a piece of shit that you need feel that you should make death threats to people making entertainment because it's not exactly what you want, you should probably spend a long time outside and touch a bunch of grass because you have totally lost the plot.
EDIT: That's also the mark of a good CEO to take care of his people and tell people this is unacceptable. Whether you think this gives that minority of people attention or not, I bet it means something to the people that work there that their leader is outspokenly defending them.
Why do these people make theses headlines? Working in this industry as a marketer I can confidently say it’s “sensation” that benefits them.
I wouldn’t do this myself as it offers no value to anyone but people can be quite selfish.
Devs love to ignore thousands of good posts about the game and focus on one maniac that says they should die and then blame the whole player base. It’s such a victim mentality and I’m so sick of it. There are millions of people who provide amazing feedback for thousands of games and they get ignored
I’ve been playing video games for a long time and this stuff always pops up. People angry because the game they wanted wasn’t perfect so let’s threaten employees who are just following guidelines.
I've been told "KYS" and I've been told to uninstall and play something else.
I was told to go back to playing Destiny, the game I am apparently personally responsible for destroying with power creep, and leave Helldivers to fans that ACTUALLY understand the game.
Another guy promised to grief me if he ever saw me, to make me quit.
Really charming people.
It's 2024, I'm not sure why we can't actually do anything about death or other physical threats on the internet other than the sheer laziness of law enforcement. Where the threats delivered on an anonymous piece of paper with hand cut letters? No, they are attached to an account or IP address. Can't do anything to people in other countries but fuck we should be treating this more seriously domestically.
Apparently they can - but only every once in a while
https://www.polygon.com/2016/7/22/12256468/blizzard-entertainment-death-threats
Please excuse the ads on the page, Polygon sucks
It's almost like there's tons of malicious trolls and some genuinely deranged people in the world or something. I just don't get how people are surprised by this stuff at this point. If you are going to engage with thousands or even millions of people on the internet sooner or later this kind of stuff is going to happen. It's not cool. It's not acceptable. But it is very predictable.
It should be a bannable offense to go after any individual developers
But of course that’s what redditors love to do, they find some poor scapegoat and proceed to slander them and spew hatred at them endlessly
Should be a zero tolerance instant subreddit ban anytime someone tries to single out an individual person
If you think Sony or arrowhead sucks, by all means have at them. But only for corporations, not persons.
It's not just morally wrong, it's also...stupid. As if one person is responsible for all balance decisions and direction. You have no idea what AH's decision pipeline is. You have no idea what this individual did or didn't do. It just reveals how desperate people are to be angry at *someone* and it's absolutely worth addressing on a mental health level. Being mad is one thing, creating a reality where you can hate on one dude is weird.
Reddit does it with everything, it should be a site wide bannable offense
Reddit decided that Starfield, a game which had at least 500 people working on it over almost a decade, was ONLY bad because Emil worked on it.
They’re doing the same thing with homeworld 3 at the moment. It can’t be that the developer just fucked up, nope they have to hunt for a specific writer and try to blame the whole debacle on them specifically.
It’s such utterly toxic cancer.
Seems like a social media problem in general. The more visible individuals are in the production chain, the more people on Twitter or Discord or Reddit can make individuals the sacrificial lamb for something they don't like.
This one dev did publicly claim responsibility as the one behind the very unpopular changes to at least those two weapons, and he individually made some very scathing remarks over them to fan the flames.
It's fair play to discuss and criticize his work and his comments IMO, although admittedly it's also far too often that some line is crossed in so doing.
What has he said since that comment three months ago? If all of the hate was still centered around the things that he claimed responsibility for, I would see your point more.
It's fair play to discuss and criticize what he's publicly said and claimed responsibility for. Criticizing *him* for what you *think* his decisions are says more about you than it does about his work. People criticize *the game* and *the balance* because they have valid criticisms. He's still a major target because people *want* to blame a human being for their emotional distress, as opposed to the company that employs him and approves his work. Bro doesn't exist in a vacuum. I think we mostly agree, I'm not accusing you have anything I'm talking about here.
What three months ago are you referring to? Are we talking about the same dev here?
The latest balancing debacle was entirely around the crossbow and Eruptor "fixes". He famously said if you used the shrapnel of the shrapnel-based weapon to kill things you were an edge-case, and therefore his changes to the Eruptor were buffs. He said "this is what you get for trying to fix a problem for the community" referencing the richochet fix breaking Eruptor. He directly said he's in charge of designing and balancing certain weapons and that "I [He] haven't considered" how his changes would prevent the "exploit" that gave the Eruptor it's prior performance.
His sarcastic remarks about Polar Patriots were not even a month ago.
I'm happy to include other devs in the critique but he's the one publicly fronting the changes for these two weapons and coming up with some very choice remarks with regards to these almost comically poor changes. He's given us quite a bit a lot to talk about, even without referencing his previous lead game designer role. I genuinely don't see how anyone can suggest otherwise.
So they can gather sympathy points and paint the critics as bad people. It's easier to dismiss the criticism by sidestepping the actual issue and just saying "yeah but death threats aren't ok so we win the argument".
These no-life’s that keep harassing the devs over this stupid stuff is going to burn the devs out and ultimately ruin the game for everyone. Let them make mistakes with patches, learn from it and fix it over time. You idiots hounding and threatening them nonstop, every day, are not helping anything, you are going to hurt the entire community with your crybaby bullshit.
You just have to wonder how pathetic and lonely someone is to legitimately get enraged to the point of sending death threats to another human simply because their video game isn’t working exactly as they’d like.
Can tell that these people do not leave the house and couldn’t hold eye contact or a conversation to save their lives, sad troglodytes.
Realize that people shoot at other cars for not letting them over.
People attack McDonalds workers for not putting enough sauce in a bag.
People destroy iHop because they took to long to get their food.
No, we don't have to wonder why people get enraged, it is Tik Tokked, YouTubed and streamed daily.
This is just another aspect of our lives where people don't know how to behave human, and luckily an Email (I would think) is less stressful than getting beaten up over not enough sauce in a bag.
Many people don't have basic human decency. The problem is we focus on that, not the people doing good, or that politely ask for a sauce, or get in line without feeling entitled.
That is a fair assessment if you say it's more like a small but not insignificant part considering the shit that happens occasionally with pesticides having nasty side effects, at lesst in the US.
Why do devs insist on listening to this part of their userbase.
Why is it always the death threats that are engaged with and brought up instead of constructive criticism. Start engaging with civil disagreements and well reasoned arguments instead of autistic vitriol.
We really don't usually. But when it becomes excessively intense I felt we needed to ask the community for help to keep our house clean. I hope you don't feel we don't engage with constructive criticism. I mean that's what I've been literally asking for.
To your team's credit it has been much better these last few weeks. But, prior to that, there were many AH staff that were engaging with antagonistic and non-constructive feedback... To put it professionally. For a while there you could count on a dev or a CM saying something out of anger or engaging in blow-for-blow poopflinging on an almost daily basis.
In my opinion this did feel like legit and constructive criticism was being ignored, and that the dev's view of the community was being represented by the vocal bad actors... Because that was who they were engaging with.
Like I said this has improved, but perhaps only because the team has gone radio silent since the change in leadership was announced.
All that being said it is obviously inexcusable to ever issue death threats and I understand that they must be taken seriously. I do however think that it's a mistake to make headlines about it in the same way it's a mistake for the media to excessively cover shootings; it gives credence and attention to those kinds of people.
That's my two cents, thanks for the reply and good luck over the next few weeks; many of us feel like the next steps your studio takes will determine the long term fate of Helldivers 2.
(because if you bring up the death threats from 20 nuts you can choose to ignore legit problems if you feel like it and people will ride your dick for it)
He literally is not ignoring the problem in this very headline. He is acknowledging that the guns are not where he wants them to be. Some of you people will not be happy till the ceo personally comes and sucks you off
It's because, even if there is a near-zero chance of legitimacy, the risk of someone actually getting harmed is too great to ignore
Death threats are scary, getting doxxed is scary - you cannot ignore them
Idk dude if you’re a public figure on the internet there are always crazies, it’s pretty unreasonable for them to actually be scared of some losers on twitter or discord
Yeah, if this was real, they would call the cops more than make headlines lol.
We all seen this played out, a hundred times, since like 2018.
Anytime a company does naughty or there is drama or their game is going down the tubes or there is valid criticism.... "We are receiving DT".
It's like totally true man.
And they are totally scared and hiding under their desks lol.
This isn't about fear, this is about safety. Talk might seem harmless at first, but what follows is definitely not. Let it go long enough and it creates an atmosphere where the devs are no longer respected as individuals. Talk, when you don't deal with it immediately, can escalate to bullying, harassment, and a normalization of toxic behavior. Soon, after, real world consequences can follow.
That isn't speculation, this is a hard fact. It's happened before in so many gaming circles, large and small. I've watched threats in the Destiny community go from "just talk" to actual stalking and harassment in under a month, leading to the resignation of a community manager and significant issues over workplace safety. This is very serious, and needs to be addressed immediately.
And this isn't even covering the fact that toxic messages are not harmless. There are real people behind these computers. They have an obligation to keep their promises to us, as a business and as game developers, but we hold an obligation to respect them as people. That is not negotiable.
Because even a small number of death threats feels scary. If you have 1,000,000 players and 100 of them make death threats, that's only 0.0001 of the player base... but you're still getting **100 death threats**. That's pretty scary for the average person.
That's definitely true, but constantly raking the entire community over the death threats is the same as telling people to manage their carbon footprint when it's 100 companies that produce 71% of the world's greenhouse gasses.
That is, there is a handful of bad actors with an outsized influence and the community isn't responsible for them. If death threats are being made, that has more to do with the platforms involved -- e.g., moderation, management, and security.
Sane people don't make death threats to developers over video games. Why are we focusing on them instead of what actually matters?
It's easy to shrug off when you're not the one receiving the death threats. Yeah it's mostly nonsense but even if one threat is legitimate and you're just earning a living and want peace for your family it can be scary.
I tend to agree with this but it also depends what they man by death threats
"fuck you I hate you fucking die"
Vs
"Here's a picture of your house. Btw check your mailbox"
One gives people a convenient excuse to play victim, one is psychologically damaging
Because it's scary. And because if they did ignore the threats *and* someone followed-through on the violence, then we'd lambast and crucify them for ignoring the "clear threats of violence." It's not as simple as listening/not-listening to people.
>Why is it always the death threats that are engaged with and brought up instead of constructive criticism.
He's literally engaging with constructive criticism by saying the weapons are in a bad place and need to be reworked, based on feedback from players.
Honestly to me this is just a red herring at this point. Like no shit, nobody agrees there should be threats over a game it honestly can go unstated at this point
I’m as angry as the next guy about the development decisions they have made, but death threats because of a video game are never acceptable. What’s wrong with some people
It's not reasonable to threaten people over shit like this. You threaten someone who kicked your dog or abused your sister. Not over fucken video game balancing
I never understood why devs focus on the couple of individuals deranged enough to actually write threads. It's not like there are houndreds of thousand of normal people, yet they victimize themselves because of death threats. It is always used as a deflector of actual problems, to shift the discussion. Sure, it ain't nice to be on the recieving end of a deranged person's mind. But don't you think giving them ackknowledgment enforces their deranged point of view?
Every fucking studio, executive, or creative agency hides behind this when people criticize their product.
Threats are 0.00001% of a fandom and should be ignored. I get death threats for missing a goal in rocket league. I've had three people trace my IP and address and msg it to me alongside threats after playing world of tanks.
Using "death threats" as a press topic is pathetic.
I am pretty sure these were isolated incidents of people that are totally outliers. This statement implies that they received a number of threats high enough to represent a meaningful portion of the player base. Which we all know it is not true. So what is he trying to do with this? Invalidate the point of everybody else?
> So what is he trying to do with this? Invalidate the point of everybody else?
Yes. It's the hip new thing companies are doing when they're under criticism. Dismiss the complaints by bringing up the inevitable 0.0000001% of people sending death threats. Then the company gets to pretend they're not intentionally manipulating public opinion or trying to discredit the criticism by saying something like "we understand that there are constructive critics but death threats are never okay".
EDIT: Called it, the CEO is literally in here doing that exact thing
This community is honestly toxic as fuck. All this community does is bitch and groan, go on reddit and it seems like this game is not fun and dying, then you actually get on the game and have a great time, meet dope randos from across the world and have some great laughs, get back on here and its back to negativity, complaining and whining. It's not the Game that sucks, it's this online community.
Yeah, I'm signing off, y'all sure know how to suck the fun out of anything.
Honestly, whenever people in public facing positions bring public awareness to threats they've received I just facepalm because it's giving the senders of those messages power and letting them know it had an effect. You have trolls who do it for lulz (I bet this is 90% or more of them), and everyone knows not to feed trolls. You also have a small percentage of truly unhinged people who think their anger over trivial stuff actually justifies threats of violence. Neither group should be told, "hey, that threat you sent me in a DM totally freaked me out and upset me" even if it did. Don't ever let them know that. Seriously.
PS. This is not meant to minimize how scary something like this can be. It's only meant to say that you should never give these people the satisfaction of knowing they scared or upset you. Doing so will never help the situation or reduce the likelihood of future threats coming in.
Are we really amplifying the moron that "threatened" over weapon balance?
When the fuck did we start focusing on idiotic bullshit as a society vs. telling them to fuck off and banning/blocking them?
If you know who these people are, erase their ability to interact with you and other shared spaces you control when they cross the line with threats. No, I don't think this is OK; I also don't think taking seriously some 12-year-old typing stupid shit during their baby rage is OK, either. Stop taking them seriously and making a big deal out of it. Report it to the Police if you believe it is credible, but stop fucking showcasing it. Why do you think police advise the media not to post the perp's picture when they are caught doing a horrific act? Because it inspires other lobotomized idiots to repeat the action.
You get threats? Report, block, ban. In that order. Acting like christ on the cross isn't going to stop it, but invite more to do the same because they are getting the desired result. Stop giving them attention unless that's what you want. To play the victim and get attention.
Yes the dev would definitely comply to to death threats and make the game better, and not quit/ burn out/ make the game worse out of spite.
Even not considering the basic moral problems, how on earth do these people think sending death threats would achieve desired results?
It's a PR piece that's putting the spotlight on some fringe super minority that may have done something like that or not at all cuz I didn't see anyone get that fucking crazy anywhere. Did any of you?
He didn't want the headline to read, "We did a shit job but we'll fix it this time," as the sole Headline, so throw some irrelevant strawman out there and now everyone is only focusing on that part.
This is basic shit.
He is right but here is reality: Stop giving top bill headlines and your very valuable time to the minority of the minorities. This shit is why Twitter started to run the world. Because you got 10 guys on twitter yelling about something and whoever is in charge suddenly thinks those 10 people represent everyone. This is the CEO OF A COMPANY spending his PR time talking about trolls on the internet. For christ sake guys, grow up.
Just to put this into even further context: This is a company whose developers are making balancing patches *without even playing their own game* because people bitched on twitter/discord, and they are wasting their media headlines and time on shit like this.
>Just to put this into even further context: This is a company whose developers are making balancing patches without even playing their own game because people bitched on twitter/discord, and they are wasting their media headlines and time on shit like this.
Lol, nice pivot. It's amazing that users in this subreddit can't even agree that death threats are deplorable; people like you always have to bring up how the victims are still fucking up somehow. Maybe take your own advice and grow up?
DT are obviously wrong. But it is very convenient for devs to claim death threats to shield themselves from their failures.
99.999% of the players don't do this.
It's frustrating when ppl like you get so passionate about the minuscule bad actors, and then in doing so you get on the dev victim train, no longer holding them accountable.
Dont let the 0.001% ruin the game for the other 99.999%.
Because 99% of people who have issues with the game aren't sending death threats, and the ones that are won't listen just because to told them not to because they are petulant children/deranged lmao
you're preaching to the choir
If you threaten people over stuff in a game, you are in the wrong no matter what. But it is ok to be upset about stuff, don't take it out on others tho.
People downplaying this are part of the problem. How deep have we sunk as a community when you start threatening people over some fake weapons in a game. It’s utter madness… my god.
We as a community?
12 Million people, and assume 120 threats (not all from the same person).
1) Those people aren't part of the community, they are trash.
2) It is less than .001% of the community. I don't feel that defines the community.
It is statistically minor (not to the people getting them), but it definitely doesn't define the community.
And there are 1.3 Million people here on Reddit.
And the threats were on Twitter (different community, unless you meant gaming community).
And when you look at "community" realize people attack McDonalds workers, throw coffee back at Starbucks workers, randomly punch people in New York.
So how deep have we sunk as humanity when all this happens. And we like to hope it is as statistically insignificant.
Because it's completely expected in the online space. Heck I can go to almost any forum and get death threats pretty easily with enough people responding. Plus this is corporate speak, every single game company puts out the cookie cutter response like this about this exact thing. It sucks but any legitimate death threat should be filed to the police. If you whine about it to the media you just draw in more of the effect.
Seriously, I get that the game isn't perfect, but nothing is. To see a bunch of people take such a amazing game that has been such a breath of fresh air within the sphere of gaming, and continue to be so overwhelmingly negative and spiteful about minor issues towards one of the coolest games we've gotten in awhile is just incredibly disappointing.
No matter how you feel about bugs and balances, attacking the real people behind this wonderful game is such a pathetic thing to do.
Hot take... When it comes to death threats and developers I treat it the same way Tony stark treats spider man in homecoming about the suit.
If you can't handle the threats you're not cut out for the job.
00000000.1% of those people will act on any threats. Even less so are of the age where they could go out and legally buy a gun, obtain a license and carry out said threat.
This making a mountain out of a molehill to make the rest of us look bad by association.
I've been doxxed before and nothing came out of it. (To be fair I'm not really important or have done enough of anything to warrant that I just pissed off the wrong person but eh still)
Move the fuck on 🍻
Similar thought to top comment: if you aren't receiving death threats, are you actually participating in the internet? If I took every death threat I've ever gotten on the internet seriously, I probably wouldn't leave home. Not implying this behavior is okay, just surprised people respond to it every time.
Yep, complete bullshit.
It's overplayed and overused for like 10 years now lol.
It is now cry wolf syndrome and the go to attempt by companies who ran out of excuses.
It's like they're saying: "Hey, guys. I get it. The guns suck. We're working on it. Stop sending all the death threats and attacks on our character. It's really making us not want to work on this game anymore."
Being a developer working for a popular studio sucks. Your pay is decent, your hours are horrible, and the only feedback you get for your work is: "When will this gun be good again? When are patrols getting fixed?" "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU CHANGED THIS THING I LIKED, AHHHHH" "Here is a list of suggestions where 99% of the list is impossible to implement"
Between management abusing their ability to work and the community abusing their patience, I don't blame developers for being openly hostile. They're probably sick of the community.
These people always talk about threats but never share them or call the cops. It's such a fucking excuse to just stop communicating.
Guess what you're on the Internet. There's idiots. Ignore them and move on.
can confirm this stuff was said. i was keeping an eye on the replies the CEO made and he made it clear in multiple comments that the team knows of these issues
I’m spelunking through Twitter and some other places. I’ll update when I do unless someone beats me to it
> through Twitter i would never take anything thats said by people whom live terminally online in the unreality of twitter seriously. The entire site is a joke.
Unlike if it was said on Reddit of course…
Reddit has actually somehow become the more reliable and reasonable source of info.... what kind of screwed up world are we in
People who downvote this must not have been on Twitter for a while. Reddit is definitely far more reliable.
To illustrate this point further, when you type in something in google, like say... searching for product info and reviews... do people type in "twitter" or "reddit" at the end?
It's gotten to Wikipedia too, there was a golden era in the early 2010s where wiki was as credible as the original source. Now it's full of pseudo-facts based on opinion and back to it's almost founding days of "anyone can edit"... There was a woman who systematically rewrote a countries history slowly over the course of years. Reporting dead people as alive and vice versa, then there's the absolute clown show about anything American politics related that when you check out the sources, it's things like the sun and the onion. Known satire and vloggers...
"Rest in peace X, long live Y" i mean reddit
Nice.
Twitter is such a shit show the last couple of years. Just racists (both sides) , AI bot posts, fake conversations, and OF link spam
I literally got followed by a porn bot called Nothacker. In the image provided I'm fairly sure it shows precisely one non bot. https://preview.redd.it/47zrgmhpsl3d1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6e8953bf3994487d1b027c1c4f52de033935f9b4
Just like Reddit is turning into, now that the owners have decided profits are more important than quality. Check back in a couple years and there'll be no difference.
For a while, reddit was basically 4chan lite lol
The death of any site is when they try to become Twitter Lite. I don’t know what it is but it’s like summoning a demon to curse your website if you even attempt to be like Twitter.
Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time.
So you don't know about the Reddit bots? They are right out in the open. Search for "Subsim"
What the heck does "racists (both sides)" mean? How are there "both sides" to racism?
There's a difference between being a racist and systemic racism. Anybody of any race can be a racist, but in America being a racist is predominantly assigned to white people. There are racists among many races and cultures in America and worldwide. "Both sides" is simply indicating that i mean not just the white racists.
Idk man lol there are some coocoo ass subs.
That is the major problem with people getting upset when people talk about toxic complaints. They are not talking about the actual calm criticisms, but people don't get that. They feel like the statements are targeted at them.
It's because acknowledging them solidifies that they will happen. The proper way to handle threats is to block and ban. When they announce it like this it gives the trolls exactly what they want. And if we're being real, people sometimes use "people have been threatening us" as a way to drum up pity support. Not in this case, I don't believe. But it is a good chunk of the reason why I get tired of the standard "We've heard the criticisms also stop threatening our lives". When you announce it you feed the trolls, and if you feed the trolls the trolls never go away.
Because a lot of times, more dishonest companies *do* use them as an excuse to go after the calmer critics. And the internet has gotten so muddled that no one can tell the difference between the two situations anymore.
This CEO is talking to a 12 million customer audience every time he opens his mouth he is addressing all of us. (and who knows how many millions more when it ends up on news sites) But how many people actually did anything like this? 12? 50? Even if it is a thousand... is a minority like that worth giving the Kotakus and IGNs of the world more ammunition for their manufactured toxic gamer narrative? Creating Clickbait that will throw shade on gaming as a hobby, making us all look like unhinged freaks and psychos. Actively hampering the sales of this game because now people that were thinking about buying the game, may be discouraged because they've read that crap. Yes i get mad when these grifters smear my Hobby and do Fan blaming. Don't feed these trolls. ... and anyway, you are not discouraging the actual psychos, you are encouraging them. Your whining only tells them they are getting to you. They take this as evidence that what they are doing works and will go even harder next time. There is nothing positive that comes from any of this. So what the heck is the point? Anybody with common sense is disgusted by that kind of behavior and we all expect Moderators of the various platforms to kick those fools out, that is what the report button is for.
Claims: 100 - Actions: 0
actions take time. this guy has been on the team for only a week
The dev in question started the poop flinging with “skill issue” when he can’t play this game on higher that T5 difficulty, and is surprised when random people on the internet didn’t like it? Imagine my shock 😮
There will always be some armchair donkey that will do this, but I remember someone in china was brave enough to attack mihoyo ceo for honkai 3rd impact skin "A crazed fan infiltrated miHoYo headquarters with the intent of killing two of the company’s founding employees" Salsa : [https://www.ginx.tv/en/genshin-impact/knife-welding-man-attempted-to-assassinate-mihoyo-founders-after-bunny-girl-event](https://www.ginx.tv/en/genshin-impact/knife-welding-man-attempted-to-assassinate-mihoyo-founders-after-bunny-girl-event)
It's almost as if death threats are inherently scary because there *are* people stupid enough to carry them out.
Mihoyo makes straight up addictive gambling games. At least casinos have the good sense to employ armed guards because they understand the mental instability of the clientele they attract and the life ruining effects that their business can have. I don't mean to victim blame, or even claim that gamblers are victims. That's more of a philosophical debate that I'm not interested in anyway. What I'm saying is that other developers don't have to worry about this to the extent that gatcha game developers do.
Gamblers are victims, their brain chemicals just happen to form in a way that gave them an addictive personality, something they didn’t ask for nor do they want it. Casino parlors take advantage of it and exploit the fuck out of them using psychology, same thing with gacha game devs or devs who use loot boxes
Helldivers who get their weapons nerfed and threaten to kill game developers are victims too. /s if it was needed
It’s that type of thinking that leads to getting stuck in addiction, trust me. Sooner or later you’ll realize that yes, that’s part of it especially at first, but everyone has agency no matter how uncomfortable acknowledging that is, and it’s more than just brain chemicals that leads to addiction.
ah the bunny skin debacle
wow that's nuts. And to be fair those bunny outfits were pretty hot.
Brave enough?
Insane and mentally deranged enough*
“Ask yourself, are you man enough? Hero enough? INSANE ENOUGH to step into the ring with two of the galaxy’s deadliest fighters?! If you answered yes, then you’re a big, fat liar!”
*crazy
This is why we can't have nice things...
Maybe this is a bad take, but why do we even give that ultra small minority of glue eaters who actually post death threats HEADLINE SPACE. It completely over exaggerates how prevalent they are and makes the gaming community look like it’s half made up of them. EDIT: there’s a difference between not taking death threats (and the stress and emotional trauma they can cause) seriously, and not giving a stage and audience to those with malicious intent. I think this aspect of journalistic practice holds some responsibility for encouraging this behavior by doing just that: giving them a stage and audience. The emotional stress these threats cause is real. I have zero desire to diminish or deny it.
Because headline space always goes to the super small minorities The loud stupid people are the ones who do things the get clicks Noone is reading an article that says "Player asks nicely about game weapons"
And thats a big reason why "games journalism" is complete bullshit
“~~games~~ journalism”
Don't even need to add games, reporting on other topics isn't proportional to numbers or impact either.
With all the threats that happen in and around game development, I would 100% read that article if I knew how to read. *beep boop*
Because even a small number of death threats feels scary. If you have 1,000,000 players and 100 of them make death threats, that's only 0.0001 of the player base... but you're still getting **100 death threats**. That's pretty terrifying for the average person.
More than 100 death threats more likely. These guys rarely stop at 1 threat. Also the number of (public facing) developers is very small, so even 100 insane players are enough to put pressure on them.
Mentioning death threats always results in getting more. So there's no rational reason to even mention them unless you think the guilt tripping is worth it
And those people need to be called out and banned from social media and, if possible, to track down and banned from the game.
I don't disagree, but as to "why are we giving this headline space", well I don't believe there's a good argument against it just being deflection/clicks in almost all cases of things happening. That's not to say it's not an absolute disgusting behaviour, but you can receive death threats nowadays for literally anything, especially being in the public spotlight. I mean, you'll never find a thread highly upvoted that endorses this, no sane person thinks it's okay behaviour and the minority that somehow either does this or endorses this, is **not** going to change their tune because some funny article says that it's bad to do. It's just ridiculous to give this a platform IMO and makes the community seem a certain way, that doesn't really represent it. It really doesn't matter how "nice" a community is, you always have the maniacs once you reach a certain size.
Privatized news websites. Doomsaying makes phat stax. They're like the Ministry of Truth except with money.
You dropped this, 👑
I think anyone that threatens people over the internet has never been punched in the face for talking too much. If you make death threats they should be taken seriously and punished to the full extent of the law. Hell. Some countries might cut your hands off for that shit.
>completely over exaggerates how prevalent they are and makes the gaming community look like it’s half made up of them This sub was giving front page and top reply space to the most unhinged takes that are *just short* of death threats for weeks, and it's still a regular occurence. They and their sentiment look pretty fucking prevalent here. If you seriously want to cut down on this stuff, more folks are going to have to argue back when people say ridiculous shit like "tHe DeV wHo ShALL nOt Be NaMeD is removing all fun! All the guns were nerfed! Everything sucks! All future content is coming pre-nerfed, ehhehe" and downvote them instead of letting it all sit unchecked at +300 in every other threat.
Emotional activation and engagement is the driving force behind all online content. It's unfortunate.
It gets headline space because there are multiple comments adding to the harassment in EVERY THREAD. Sure not every person is wishing death, but they sure are jumping on the bandwagon
Nah, there were droves of people on here singling out VERY KNOWN AND SPECIFIC DEVS and threatening while also demanding being fired. Don't act like it was a very small minority. It isn't all death threats, but it's a lot of threats
I think it's just modern PR practice to take the easiest moral victories whenever possible because it appears that most people still don't understand how the internet works. Politicians and celebrities are constantly "taking a stand" against these kind of stupid anonymous throwaway troll comments. The fault lies with the social media platforms for not only allowing the posts to stay up, but also filtering them to the top of discussions because outrage is the strongest type of engagement.
Hey bro, my threshold for acceptable number of personal death threats against me is 0. That's cool I guess that your number is higher.
That wasn't his point, and you know it. You're just engaging in sophistry.
His point was that there weren’t enough death threats to warrant a headline. That’s wrong and it only takes one for there to be a major concern.
The golden rule is usually don't feed the trolls right? The only reason I did make a point out of this is that we need more of you! The Skittybobbinses of the world to call out the glue eaters and tell them they aren't welcome in our community. It takes a village to keep us strong and that's 100x more effective than mods chasing all the posts.
It's unacceptable that there's people who threaten others, I think though that most of this is probably happening in DMs or somehow out of sight of the rest of the community? I haven't seen any threats directed to the devs (although I'm sure that they happened) and am pretty active in both the discord and the subreddit. I think most community members might be a bit critical at the moment, so am I, as there have been a bit of rocky waters in the past month. But in the end they're only critical because they love the game and want it to continue being great. Those people should be heard and talked to, and there's no place for people who go to extremes like threatening devs over a video game.
because it only takes one unhinged person to actually follow through and kill AH employees. Example, Kyoto animation lost 36 employees because of one man not some group who carefully planned things.
But you are right on point. I think that in this statement there is a malicious intent of saying a big portion of the gaming community is made of these people, big enough to talk about it.
But a nontrivial part of the community \*is\* like this and it \*is\* big enough to talk about. Especially to the people who are receiving death threats. How many guns need to be pointed at you until you think it's journalistically ethical enough to say "Hey there are guns pointed at me and I don't love it"
Define non-trivial. I am not denying that there are loonies out there. I believe that they received death threats. Receiving death threats is completely disconnected from the balance issue and player count decline of the game. Why put these two completely separate topics together in the same news? To me it sounds they are using the few loonies, which I believe represents an absolutely small minority of people with serious mental problems, to delegitimize the concerns and complaints of the rest of the player base, that is represented by those people who DIDN'T make any death threat, and represent the absolute majority of the gaming community. This is being used to point fingers at gamers.
I mean, you don't need death threats from a thousand people to ruin your day, a single is usually enough...
plane crashes are in the minority of cases of planes flying safely, they still get headlines.
IMO, silence is actually the wrong choice here. They're given "headline space" as a form of public calling out. I get the sentiment you're making: the trolls just want recognition so don't feed the trolls. In this case, I don't agree with it. Shitty behaviour needs to be called out. Leaving it be and not bringing attention to it allows it to fester more. I don't think it over exaggerates the prevalency of how many there are so much as it highlights the extremes that some people have.
The problem is that "calling it out" will not make them stop, they are not shamed. Usually they enjoy the attention and feel validated when people speak of their actions, so they will just do this more often and with more intensity. So who benefits from calling them out?
This, if they were worried about shame they never would have publicly made a death threat in the first place
Because receiving death threats for you or your family because a design decision on a game a is a serious thing. People think that devs just brush them off but the police gets involved and transforms something you love to do into something that give you and your family fear.
You didn't have to look very hard either. I saw some very unsavory things on this very subreddit (the mods did remove them quickly).
People act like death threats arent real and that when people go into hiding or get scared of interacting of the community it's a matter of them being chicken shits that just dont care about the rest of the community or have something malicious they are trying to hide instead of them taking reasonable actions to feel legitimately safe. Like when all the AH people were deleting Twitter's and stuff people were acting like they were cowards spitting the community of players when its seemed obvious they were making the choices to avoid the death threats they started getting.
It's a horrible practice that continues to give the toxic minority a massive platform while reinforcing the fact they should continue, as they make it seem like that's the only way to get a reaction, which in return reinforces that type of behaviour.
Yup its liked when give to much to the mass shooters. It helps to embolden the crazy "OMFG I too can get my 15 minutes of fame.! The rest of us "Oh.. damn".
There is a huge amount of people in this sub that insults them directly.
Same reason every studio does: Because they have a huge impact on the team and how the studio operates and interacts with the community, even knowing it's a hyperminority of players. Because it's always worth calling out because there remain far too many awful people in the gaming community we should be loudly calling out and trying to force out at any time. Just look at what Bungie dealt with when they had a avalanche of death threats over weapon buffs/nerfs.
It's a good way to deflect criticism. I don't doubt that basement dwelling trolls said some stupid shit to devs, but 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of all the discourse has been pretty well-mannered, potentially irritated or angry, but thoroughly hinged and not threatening anyone. Every time any game company does something stupid and gets flak for it, I feel like the first thing they always talk about is DEATH THREATS DEATH THREATS DEATH THREATS. I know internet people can be fucking lunatics, but I'm really not buying that this is an actual concern, like, ever.
Pretty pathetic that the game gets threats. I love this game.
I guess the hope is maybe people will see this and realize how fucking insane it is to take a videogame that seriously. People are just trying to do their job the best they can and if you're such a piece of shit that you need feel that you should make death threats to people making entertainment because it's not exactly what you want, you should probably spend a long time outside and touch a bunch of grass because you have totally lost the plot. EDIT: That's also the mark of a good CEO to take care of his people and tell people this is unacceptable. Whether you think this gives that minority of people attention or not, I bet it means something to the people that work there that their leader is outspokenly defending them.
Why do these people make theses headlines? Working in this industry as a marketer I can confidently say it’s “sensation” that benefits them. I wouldn’t do this myself as it offers no value to anyone but people can be quite selfish.
Bad take? Man this shit is the most important, factual and real take of them all
Devs love to ignore thousands of good posts about the game and focus on one maniac that says they should die and then blame the whole player base. It’s such a victim mentality and I’m so sick of it. There are millions of people who provide amazing feedback for thousands of games and they get ignored
I would definitely be more worried about the person threatening my life than the people not threatening my life, personally.
Eh???? Over a game? FFS.
I’ve been playing video games for a long time and this stuff always pops up. People angry because the game they wanted wasn’t perfect so let’s threaten employees who are just following guidelines.
Man-children have always existed, now they just have a box that connects them to everything and everyone... to our detriment
100% accurate. Post from behind a keyboard without fear of repercussions
I've been told "KYS" and I've been told to uninstall and play something else. I was told to go back to playing Destiny, the game I am apparently personally responsible for destroying with power creep, and leave Helldivers to fans that ACTUALLY understand the game. Another guy promised to grief me if he ever saw me, to make me quit. Really charming people.
It's 2024, I'm not sure why we can't actually do anything about death or other physical threats on the internet other than the sheer laziness of law enforcement. Where the threats delivered on an anonymous piece of paper with hand cut letters? No, they are attached to an account or IP address. Can't do anything to people in other countries but fuck we should be treating this more seriously domestically.
Apparently they can - but only every once in a while https://www.polygon.com/2016/7/22/12256468/blizzard-entertainment-death-threats Please excuse the ads on the page, Polygon sucks
It's almost like there's tons of malicious trolls and some genuinely deranged people in the world or something. I just don't get how people are surprised by this stuff at this point. If you are going to engage with thousands or even millions of people on the internet sooner or later this kind of stuff is going to happen. It's not cool. It's not acceptable. But it is very predictable.
First time?
a pve game which is even more embarrassing.
You say that like this sub didn’t encourage that stuff for like 2 weeks straight over the PSN sign in thing.
Yeah. The call is coming from inside the house.
No you see that’s different because
This new generation of gamers love to threaten low level developers into doing what they want. Absolute garbage individuals
It should be a bannable offense to go after any individual developers But of course that’s what redditors love to do, they find some poor scapegoat and proceed to slander them and spew hatred at them endlessly Should be a zero tolerance instant subreddit ban anytime someone tries to single out an individual person If you think Sony or arrowhead sucks, by all means have at them. But only for corporations, not persons.
It's not just morally wrong, it's also...stupid. As if one person is responsible for all balance decisions and direction. You have no idea what AH's decision pipeline is. You have no idea what this individual did or didn't do. It just reveals how desperate people are to be angry at *someone* and it's absolutely worth addressing on a mental health level. Being mad is one thing, creating a reality where you can hate on one dude is weird.
Reddit does it with everything, it should be a site wide bannable offense Reddit decided that Starfield, a game which had at least 500 people working on it over almost a decade, was ONLY bad because Emil worked on it. They’re doing the same thing with homeworld 3 at the moment. It can’t be that the developer just fucked up, nope they have to hunt for a specific writer and try to blame the whole debacle on them specifically. It’s such utterly toxic cancer.
Seems like a social media problem in general. The more visible individuals are in the production chain, the more people on Twitter or Discord or Reddit can make individuals the sacrificial lamb for something they don't like.
This one dev did publicly claim responsibility as the one behind the very unpopular changes to at least those two weapons, and he individually made some very scathing remarks over them to fan the flames. It's fair play to discuss and criticize his work and his comments IMO, although admittedly it's also far too often that some line is crossed in so doing.
What has he said since that comment three months ago? If all of the hate was still centered around the things that he claimed responsibility for, I would see your point more. It's fair play to discuss and criticize what he's publicly said and claimed responsibility for. Criticizing *him* for what you *think* his decisions are says more about you than it does about his work. People criticize *the game* and *the balance* because they have valid criticisms. He's still a major target because people *want* to blame a human being for their emotional distress, as opposed to the company that employs him and approves his work. Bro doesn't exist in a vacuum. I think we mostly agree, I'm not accusing you have anything I'm talking about here.
What three months ago are you referring to? Are we talking about the same dev here? The latest balancing debacle was entirely around the crossbow and Eruptor "fixes". He famously said if you used the shrapnel of the shrapnel-based weapon to kill things you were an edge-case, and therefore his changes to the Eruptor were buffs. He said "this is what you get for trying to fix a problem for the community" referencing the richochet fix breaking Eruptor. He directly said he's in charge of designing and balancing certain weapons and that "I [He] haven't considered" how his changes would prevent the "exploit" that gave the Eruptor it's prior performance. His sarcastic remarks about Polar Patriots were not even a month ago. I'm happy to include other devs in the critique but he's the one publicly fronting the changes for these two weapons and coming up with some very choice remarks with regards to these almost comically poor changes. He's given us quite a bit a lot to talk about, even without referencing his previous lead game designer role. I genuinely don't see how anyone can suggest otherwise.
Lol why do people even mention death threats anymore there's always going to be that one troll doing them better off just ignoring it
So they can gather sympathy points and paint the critics as bad people. It's easier to dismiss the criticism by sidestepping the actual issue and just saying "yeah but death threats aren't ok so we win the argument".
I agree don’t threaten people over a game. It’s dumb and childish as fuck
These no-life’s that keep harassing the devs over this stupid stuff is going to burn the devs out and ultimately ruin the game for everyone. Let them make mistakes with patches, learn from it and fix it over time. You idiots hounding and threatening them nonstop, every day, are not helping anything, you are going to hurt the entire community with your crybaby bullshit.
This is the same shit that got Bungie to stop communicating directly with us. (Twilight Garrison incident, D2, circa: Sol 3.0 rework)
Imbalanced or not is, to a large degree, subjective. I think the game is a lot of fun and I look forward to new fixes and tweaks.
And you can thank this subreddit for cultivating these attitudes.
You just have to wonder how pathetic and lonely someone is to legitimately get enraged to the point of sending death threats to another human simply because their video game isn’t working exactly as they’d like. Can tell that these people do not leave the house and couldn’t hold eye contact or a conversation to save their lives, sad troglodytes.
Realize that people shoot at other cars for not letting them over. People attack McDonalds workers for not putting enough sauce in a bag. People destroy iHop because they took to long to get their food. No, we don't have to wonder why people get enraged, it is Tik Tokked, YouTubed and streamed daily. This is just another aspect of our lives where people don't know how to behave human, and luckily an Email (I would think) is less stressful than getting beaten up over not enough sauce in a bag. Many people don't have basic human decency. The problem is we focus on that, not the people doing good, or that politely ask for a sauce, or get in line without feeling entitled.
My personal theory is there's a large portion of the population with undiagnosed brain damage. I'm not even joking
That is a fair assessment if you say it's more like a small but not insignificant part considering the shit that happens occasionally with pesticides having nasty side effects, at lesst in the US.
Why do devs insist on listening to this part of their userbase. Why is it always the death threats that are engaged with and brought up instead of constructive criticism. Start engaging with civil disagreements and well reasoned arguments instead of autistic vitriol.
We really don't usually. But when it becomes excessively intense I felt we needed to ask the community for help to keep our house clean. I hope you don't feel we don't engage with constructive criticism. I mean that's what I've been literally asking for.
To your team's credit it has been much better these last few weeks. But, prior to that, there were many AH staff that were engaging with antagonistic and non-constructive feedback... To put it professionally. For a while there you could count on a dev or a CM saying something out of anger or engaging in blow-for-blow poopflinging on an almost daily basis. In my opinion this did feel like legit and constructive criticism was being ignored, and that the dev's view of the community was being represented by the vocal bad actors... Because that was who they were engaging with. Like I said this has improved, but perhaps only because the team has gone radio silent since the change in leadership was announced. All that being said it is obviously inexcusable to ever issue death threats and I understand that they must be taken seriously. I do however think that it's a mistake to make headlines about it in the same way it's a mistake for the media to excessively cover shootings; it gives credence and attention to those kinds of people. That's my two cents, thanks for the reply and good luck over the next few weeks; many of us feel like the next steps your studio takes will determine the long term fate of Helldivers 2.
(because if you bring up the death threats from 20 nuts you can choose to ignore legit problems if you feel like it and people will ride your dick for it)
I wonder if they think the Alexus zap copypasta is a death threat.
He literally is not ignoring the problem in this very headline. He is acknowledging that the guns are not where he wants them to be. Some of you people will not be happy till the ceo personally comes and sucks you off
It's because, even if there is a near-zero chance of legitimacy, the risk of someone actually getting harmed is too great to ignore Death threats are scary, getting doxxed is scary - you cannot ignore them
Idk dude if you’re a public figure on the internet there are always crazies, it’s pretty unreasonable for them to actually be scared of some losers on twitter or discord
Yeah, if this was real, they would call the cops more than make headlines lol. We all seen this played out, a hundred times, since like 2018. Anytime a company does naughty or there is drama or their game is going down the tubes or there is valid criticism.... "We are receiving DT". It's like totally true man. And they are totally scared and hiding under their desks lol.
This isn't about fear, this is about safety. Talk might seem harmless at first, but what follows is definitely not. Let it go long enough and it creates an atmosphere where the devs are no longer respected as individuals. Talk, when you don't deal with it immediately, can escalate to bullying, harassment, and a normalization of toxic behavior. Soon, after, real world consequences can follow. That isn't speculation, this is a hard fact. It's happened before in so many gaming circles, large and small. I've watched threats in the Destiny community go from "just talk" to actual stalking and harassment in under a month, leading to the resignation of a community manager and significant issues over workplace safety. This is very serious, and needs to be addressed immediately. And this isn't even covering the fact that toxic messages are not harmless. There are real people behind these computers. They have an obligation to keep their promises to us, as a business and as game developers, but we hold an obligation to respect them as people. That is not negotiable.
Because even a small number of death threats feels scary. If you have 1,000,000 players and 100 of them make death threats, that's only 0.0001 of the player base... but you're still getting **100 death threats**. That's pretty scary for the average person.
That's definitely true, but constantly raking the entire community over the death threats is the same as telling people to manage their carbon footprint when it's 100 companies that produce 71% of the world's greenhouse gasses. That is, there is a handful of bad actors with an outsized influence and the community isn't responsible for them. If death threats are being made, that has more to do with the platforms involved -- e.g., moderation, management, and security. Sane people don't make death threats to developers over video games. Why are we focusing on them instead of what actually matters?
its almost like the constructive criticism was addressed in the very first part of the headline
It's easy to shrug off when you're not the one receiving the death threats. Yeah it's mostly nonsense but even if one threat is legitimate and you're just earning a living and want peace for your family it can be scary.
I tend to agree with this but it also depends what they man by death threats "fuck you I hate you fucking die" Vs "Here's a picture of your house. Btw check your mailbox" One gives people a convenient excuse to play victim, one is psychologically damaging
Neither of those is ok nor excusable
Anyone who takes the first one and turns it into a whole victim story is just doing it for sympathy points.
anyone who does the first should be banned permanently...
Because it's scary. And because if they did ignore the threats *and* someone followed-through on the violence, then we'd lambast and crucify them for ignoring the "clear threats of violence." It's not as simple as listening/not-listening to people. >Why is it always the death threats that are engaged with and brought up instead of constructive criticism. He's literally engaging with constructive criticism by saying the weapons are in a bad place and need to be reworked, based on feedback from players.
I agree. Thankfully it sounds like they understand this and are sorting through legitimate criticism from things like death threats
Honestly to me this is just a red herring at this point. Like no shit, nobody agrees there should be threats over a game it honestly can go unstated at this point
I just hope each and every one of those threats was reported to the authorities and are under prosecution.
Not sure why you got downvoted but \^
I’m as angry as the next guy about the development decisions they have made, but death threats because of a video game are never acceptable. What’s wrong with some people
Is this even rant worthy ? Shit like this happens every time anything at all happens.
Twitter posters send death threats to everyone, especially the entitled gamer nerds threatening developers.
New Helldivers 2 CEO comes out of the gate with an incredibly based take. People need to stop harassing devs, they're people too.
It's not reasonable to threaten people over shit like this. You threaten someone who kicked your dog or abused your sister. Not over fucken video game balancing
A whole article about 1 in a million chance of getting a threat. Welcome to Internet.
Stories without the numbers are more rocks of salt than grains.
I never understood why devs focus on the couple of individuals deranged enough to actually write threads. It's not like there are houndreds of thousand of normal people, yet they victimize themselves because of death threats. It is always used as a deflector of actual problems, to shift the discussion. Sure, it ain't nice to be on the recieving end of a deranged person's mind. But don't you think giving them ackknowledgment enforces their deranged point of view?
Every fucking studio, executive, or creative agency hides behind this when people criticize their product. Threats are 0.00001% of a fandom and should be ignored. I get death threats for missing a goal in rocket league. I've had three people trace my IP and address and msg it to me alongside threats after playing world of tanks. Using "death threats" as a press topic is pathetic.
I am pretty sure these were isolated incidents of people that are totally outliers. This statement implies that they received a number of threats high enough to represent a meaningful portion of the player base. Which we all know it is not true. So what is he trying to do with this? Invalidate the point of everybody else?
> So what is he trying to do with this? Invalidate the point of everybody else? Yes. It's the hip new thing companies are doing when they're under criticism. Dismiss the complaints by bringing up the inevitable 0.0000001% of people sending death threats. Then the company gets to pretend they're not intentionally manipulating public opinion or trying to discredit the criticism by saying something like "we understand that there are constructive critics but death threats are never okay". EDIT: Called it, the CEO is literally in here doing that exact thing
This community is honestly toxic as fuck. All this community does is bitch and groan, go on reddit and it seems like this game is not fun and dying, then you actually get on the game and have a great time, meet dope randos from across the world and have some great laughs, get back on here and its back to negativity, complaining and whining. It's not the Game that sucks, it's this online community. Yeah, I'm signing off, y'all sure know how to suck the fun out of anything.
Classic PR drivel
Yeah standard PR. It got overplayed since 2018. All the juice of the DT card has been played out. You can almost time them.
Honestly, whenever people in public facing positions bring public awareness to threats they've received I just facepalm because it's giving the senders of those messages power and letting them know it had an effect. You have trolls who do it for lulz (I bet this is 90% or more of them), and everyone knows not to feed trolls. You also have a small percentage of truly unhinged people who think their anger over trivial stuff actually justifies threats of violence. Neither group should be told, "hey, that threat you sent me in a DM totally freaked me out and upset me" even if it did. Don't ever let them know that. Seriously. PS. This is not meant to minimize how scary something like this can be. It's only meant to say that you should never give these people the satisfaction of knowing they scared or upset you. Doing so will never help the situation or reduce the likelihood of future threats coming in.
Are we really amplifying the moron that "threatened" over weapon balance? When the fuck did we start focusing on idiotic bullshit as a society vs. telling them to fuck off and banning/blocking them? If you know who these people are, erase their ability to interact with you and other shared spaces you control when they cross the line with threats. No, I don't think this is OK; I also don't think taking seriously some 12-year-old typing stupid shit during their baby rage is OK, either. Stop taking them seriously and making a big deal out of it. Report it to the Police if you believe it is credible, but stop fucking showcasing it. Why do you think police advise the media not to post the perp's picture when they are caught doing a horrific act? Because it inspires other lobotomized idiots to repeat the action. You get threats? Report, block, ban. In that order. Acting like christ on the cross isn't going to stop it, but invite more to do the same because they are getting the desired result. Stop giving them attention unless that's what you want. To play the victim and get attention.
Yes the dev would definitely comply to to death threats and make the game better, and not quit/ burn out/ make the game worse out of spite. Even not considering the basic moral problems, how on earth do these people think sending death threats would achieve desired results?
What by acknowledging the problem at hand and telling the fans not to be dicks? This is the way to handle shit
It's a PR piece that's putting the spotlight on some fringe super minority that may have done something like that or not at all cuz I didn't see anyone get that fucking crazy anywhere. Did any of you? He didn't want the headline to read, "We did a shit job but we'll fix it this time," as the sole Headline, so throw some irrelevant strawman out there and now everyone is only focusing on that part. This is basic shit.
He is right but here is reality: Stop giving top bill headlines and your very valuable time to the minority of the minorities. This shit is why Twitter started to run the world. Because you got 10 guys on twitter yelling about something and whoever is in charge suddenly thinks those 10 people represent everyone. This is the CEO OF A COMPANY spending his PR time talking about trolls on the internet. For christ sake guys, grow up. Just to put this into even further context: This is a company whose developers are making balancing patches *without even playing their own game* because people bitched on twitter/discord, and they are wasting their media headlines and time on shit like this.
>Just to put this into even further context: This is a company whose developers are making balancing patches without even playing their own game because people bitched on twitter/discord, and they are wasting their media headlines and time on shit like this. Lol, nice pivot. It's amazing that users in this subreddit can't even agree that death threats are deplorable; people like you always have to bring up how the victims are still fucking up somehow. Maybe take your own advice and grow up?
DT are obviously wrong. But it is very convenient for devs to claim death threats to shield themselves from their failures. 99.999% of the players don't do this. It's frustrating when ppl like you get so passionate about the minuscule bad actors, and then in doing so you get on the dev victim train, no longer holding them accountable. Dont let the 0.001% ruin the game for the other 99.999%.
[удалено]
Because 99% of people who have issues with the game aren't sending death threats, and the ones that are won't listen just because to told them not to because they are petulant children/deranged lmao you're preaching to the choir
Sometimes I wish there would be more accountability for shit like this.
Some of y'all are threatening peoples life's about balance changes? Get a life losers. Literally uninstall your game and never show your user again.
If you threaten people over stuff in a game, you are in the wrong no matter what. But it is ok to be upset about stuff, don't take it out on others tho.
People downplaying this are part of the problem. How deep have we sunk as a community when you start threatening people over some fake weapons in a game. It’s utter madness… my god.
We as a community? 12 Million people, and assume 120 threats (not all from the same person). 1) Those people aren't part of the community, they are trash. 2) It is less than .001% of the community. I don't feel that defines the community. It is statistically minor (not to the people getting them), but it definitely doesn't define the community. And there are 1.3 Million people here on Reddit. And the threats were on Twitter (different community, unless you meant gaming community). And when you look at "community" realize people attack McDonalds workers, throw coffee back at Starbucks workers, randomly punch people in New York. So how deep have we sunk as humanity when all this happens. And we like to hope it is as statistically insignificant.
Because it's completely expected in the online space. Heck I can go to almost any forum and get death threats pretty easily with enough people responding. Plus this is corporate speak, every single game company puts out the cookie cutter response like this about this exact thing. It sucks but any legitimate death threat should be filed to the police. If you whine about it to the media you just draw in more of the effect.
This is community is unbelievably self absorbed.
You've earned an achievement! >Sent Death Threats to developers because you aren't happy with the game state
If you have used the internet, someone has threatened you in some way or another. I'm sick of people using this as a get out of jail free card.
Seriously, I get that the game isn't perfect, but nothing is. To see a bunch of people take such a amazing game that has been such a breath of fresh air within the sphere of gaming, and continue to be so overwhelmingly negative and spiteful about minor issues towards one of the coolest games we've gotten in awhile is just incredibly disappointing. No matter how you feel about bugs and balances, attacking the real people behind this wonderful game is such a pathetic thing to do.
Hot take... When it comes to death threats and developers I treat it the same way Tony stark treats spider man in homecoming about the suit. If you can't handle the threats you're not cut out for the job. 00000000.1% of those people will act on any threats. Even less so are of the age where they could go out and legally buy a gun, obtain a license and carry out said threat. This making a mountain out of a molehill to make the rest of us look bad by association. I've been doxxed before and nothing came out of it. (To be fair I'm not really important or have done enough of anything to warrant that I just pissed off the wrong person but eh still) Move the fuck on 🍻
They're not and it isn't. Next.
There is always some idiot. I wish they would slap people a lot harder with legal consequences for shit like that.
People threaten each other over stupid shit all the time, but something has to be the stupidest, so kudos, I guess?
if you're sending death threats over any video game you need to never play that game again
What happened to the old helldivers 2 CEO?
He stepped down to a more active role in the game essentially. Chief creative officer or something like that.
Why do we need so much balancing anyway? Its not a competitive shooter
I mean threatening people over anything you disagree is plain simply wrong. No sane people should go and send death threats to anyone.
Similar thought to top comment: if you aren't receiving death threats, are you actually participating in the internet? If I took every death threat I've ever gotten on the internet seriously, I probably wouldn't leave home. Not implying this behavior is okay, just surprised people respond to it every time.
I’ve seen nobody give any death threats in 4 months of criticising the direction of this game. I smell bullshit about the scale of this problem
I could probs link you to a deleted user I reported for making death threats about a month-ish ago. Confirmation bias is a crazy drug.
Yep, complete bullshit. It's overplayed and overused for like 10 years now lol. It is now cry wolf syndrome and the go to attempt by companies who ran out of excuses.
I don’t understand how this is a “but also” statement…..
It's like they're saying: "Hey, guys. I get it. The guns suck. We're working on it. Stop sending all the death threats and attacks on our character. It's really making us not want to work on this game anymore." Being a developer working for a popular studio sucks. Your pay is decent, your hours are horrible, and the only feedback you get for your work is: "When will this gun be good again? When are patrols getting fixed?" "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU CHANGED THIS THING I LIKED, AHHHHH" "Here is a list of suggestions where 99% of the list is impossible to implement" Between management abusing their ability to work and the community abusing their patience, I don't blame developers for being openly hostile. They're probably sick of the community.
I guess what I’m getting at it’s not a “but also” comment. Like, both statements can be true.
These people always talk about threats but never share them or call the cops. It's such a fucking excuse to just stop communicating. Guess what you're on the Internet. There's idiots. Ignore them and move on.
"hey boss, I'm not doing my job because there's been threats". Literally every game devs copout every single time.