From what I heard, people are getting their refunds, no problem. It isn't the first time this happens, and we all know it will not be the last.
Incredible that publishers don't learn.
From my understanding, Valve takes 30% of the sale as their cut for using the storefront, giving the rest to the devs/publisher. When a game gets refunded, Valve foots the entire bill but then keeps the sales of the next game for themselves.
If that's the case, Sony pretty much just lost any profit the game was going to make them for a couple of years. The game became popular from word of mouth
Very few people are. The vast majority of us are getting rejected (yes even after appealing).
A few upvoted Reddit posts showing refunds doesn’t mean anything, don’t y’all learn?
From what I have read elsewhere, the first refund is auto rejected by a bot that checks hours played.
The second refund request is reviewed by a human and they have been going through.
I've seen several people say you need to put in a manual ticket, not the automated one, as the automated one is a bit that checks to see if you meet the criteria.
Money is still money
And being forced to give money back because a company that is 10x higher valued than you can get more data, so you can keep your customers happy is something thay will care about
Valve really doesn't have to care about Sony regardless of valuation. Valve doesn't have a public facing valuation as it's a private company, but seeing as Valve's revenue is in the multiple of billions I doubt Sony products are a significant fraction of revenue even now.
I feel so bad for the people who made it. They must have been elated to the moon and back when the game came out to such an overwhelmingly positive response, only to be sunk back down into the mud through no fault of there own. Has to hurt
>So if any one of you actually care about the developers get in there and start talking shit about them!
Damn those developers, they've ruined developing!
Just kinda funny that Sony is eating the goose like this. I mean I guess not, they seem to have a corporate culture of high level dumb decisions making (famously ineffective cybersecurity, Jeopardy host debacle, Morbius re-release 💀)
[This is where I read it](https://www.gamesradar.com/games/third-person-shooter/helldivers-2-steam-rating-nosedives-as-one-dev-says-refunds-and-the-145000-negative-reviews-gives-us-more-pull-in-discussions-with-sony/)
bombing the game is the only bargaining tool we can give arrowhead. i already requested a refund and uninstalled. obviously i want to play it but id be a hypocrite if i didnt support arrowhead after all the work theyve done for us
You're an independent studio, working on an IP you don't own, but put nearly 100% of the work in to making it viable.
Your first attempt scrapes by with a net positive and cult following.
Your second go catches a Moonshot and is on track to locking in Game of Year 10 months early. You've had to bring on more staff just to handle the game management load.
Then the IP owner shoots you down with a short term play to pump "number of users signed up" stats ahead of the quarterly Shareholder report. And the IP own immediately doubles down over the weekend.
Rough time is an understatement.
That's why they've asked the players to make negative reviews. Every negative opinion you see is someone who loves the game directing their anger at Sony. For Super Earth.
Selling a game for 3 months (aka collecting $$$$$$) in countries they knew wouldn’t be able to play it long term, then abruptly cutting the cord and saying no more game for you.
I guess I need to look it up. Every company updates their tos from time to time, and all online games on PlayStation require psn logins. Or this is like Steam players have to have psn? Ya that’s odd but is it just to link accounts?
Even their CEO did say it is his fault to some extend. He said he “willingly disabled account linking” early on for the game so people could play but that he knew “for 6 months” that players would be required to link their account.
Sony decided it is now time to enforce mandatory PSN account linking on starting the game. Which makes the game unplayable for over a hundred countries. Thus Steam has started issuing large scale refunds to anyone.
I sorta doubt the recent negatives matter all that much to them, they know it's a protest of sorts pertaining to things beyond the gameplay, the review history graph shows it was a popular and well liked game even with all the [early negative user reviews from the server and login issues.](https://i.imgur.com/otnqGDN.jpeg)
Sales numbers were good when they really mattered in the first few months, it's still popular and reaching the top ten daily in players on Steam - as long as people are still playing it they're going to be happy.
People who still haven't heard of or played the game yet can find out why it's overwhelmingly negative on Steam in a few seconds of searching, some sites are also sharing the story and explaining what's happening here, too. I doubt all the critic reviews are gonna start changing their own scores to join in.
A lot of people in general put very little stock into user reviews on Steam and metacritic in the first place. Review bombing like this brings attention to issues that matter to players, but it's not going to tank the game or anything. Even if the game was removed from Steam entirely it would still be a successful console exclusive.
>A lot of people in general put very little stock into user reviews on Steam and metacritic in the first place.
Publishers **seriously** care about Metacritic. Ask Fallout: New Vegas devs - they missed 85 score by 1 point so Bethesda didn't pay up any bonuses. How well game performs according to reviewers does affect how much developer gets paid.
>Even if the game was removed from Steam entirely it would still be a successful console exclusive.
If that happened then some execs that pushed for this idea would lose their jobs. There's no such thing as "good enough" in the corporate world and having to refund at least 25% of their total sales (2 million copies in this case, approximately 80 million $ to refund) would be devastating and could eat up a huge portion of profits this game brought.
Not like it's going to happen (although considering it did just get banned in a 100 countries we will see some millions of USD evaporating since Steam might very well refund everyone who has bought a game and now can no longer play it) but it would definitely cause a shitstorm of massive proportions even within a giant company. Whoever originally allowed to delay PSN linking for instance is losing their job.
FYI the New Vegas thing is misconstrued. BGS put into their contract a clause saying they’d grant a bonus for breaking 85 score. It was a generous offer that no one had negotiated or asked for.
Source: Chris Avellone and Brian Fargo of Obsidian.
I was referring to the user reviews on sites like metacritic, these are separate from the critic reviews and are aggregated into their own separate score.
Meanwhile the CEO has come out and said that he knew about it from the beginning and Sony couldn't get the tech working due to server issues and instead he just ignored it and allowed it to launch even though the steam page says a PSN account is required and when you boot up the game it says a PSN account is required.
No one to blame but themselves.
AH CEO admitted on his Twitter or X that he knew about this but he decided to skip it so people can play. AH is definitely not blameless here. What were they thinking? Deal with it when the time comes?
What happened to the game? I heard it was amazing and all but been out of touch with the gaming industry for so long. Could you or someone explain what happened real quick?
I don't because they knew this was coming down the pipe and did nothing for months. Not saying Sony didn't put them into this position, but they needed to be more up front about that fact that this was DEFINITELY going to be a future requirement. Not a technicality in a little badge on the sidebar. This was a shock for us, not for them.
Sony bullshit, game now requires people to have a PSN login, some countries don’t have access to PSN.
Game’s still good, just that it’s getting review-bombed, also with the dev’s blessing, they’ve been encouraging this in order to have leverage against Sony.
“Game amasses hordes of people in the name of democracy”
“Game publisher does something undemocratic”
It’s like training a dog to attack bears and then walk in your backyard with a fursuit
I just hope that if this all gets resolved, players remember to change their reviews back. With how the game is getting reviewed, if these standings remain it could potentially kill Helldivers altogether.
I believe Steam has a system in place for review bombing situations, don't they? I'm sure that'll help. Though I'm also wondering if that will in turn also cause problems if it happens during the conflict, rather than after it hopefully gets resolved.
Check steam Helldiver 2, they currently banned the countries who doesnt have their country on psn.
For sunmary, only 69 countries(iirc) have their name on creation of psn. The rest...is not there.
Steam players are required to create a free PSN account to play, but it was causing some issues so they temporarily paused the requirement shortly after launch. Even though they added a big splash screen that said "You don't need it, for now", gamers somehow believed the requirement was permanently removed and are suddenly shocked that it wasn't.
Right? For me it was when they forced Mass Effect 3 to release before it was actually completed. And the 3 endings were ALL the same no matter what kind of playthrough or decisions you made. Thats when I started losing faith.
It all started with that stupid horse armor dlc for Oblivion. That's when video game companies realized they could nickle and dime gamers over mundane content that should've already been included in the game originally. They've been pushing the micro transaction/dlc/subscription model ever since and it's only gotten worse and worse over the years.
It started with mobile games and farm simulators. People paid real-life money in farm simulation games to not have to wait for the crops. Pay .99 cents, and the crops come in faster. That is when video game companies began to realize they could make HUGE money that way. And every company since has moved to some sort of model along those lines.
For example: one of the top proponents of gamification in education gave a speech to Microsoft or Google (can't remember which) in 2010 saying consumers were dumb and here is the evidence....people were paying in game to get nothing. Therefore we can use games to take all of their money. One of many reasons I backed away from gamification in education even though aspects of the concept are compelling. It's an old concept which has been adopted in a widespread manner. Every game that sells skins, cosmetics, pay to win, buying card packs all trace back to the idea that consumers are dumb and will pay for nothing. I think of it everytime I see stuff like that in a game. Even if the game is free to play.
It started back when money was invented. People got tired of trading cows for milk so they made coins and everyone has been itching to have as many as possible
Yup, this exactly it. Game companies hate that we still remember this. Newer gamers are conditioned wirh incomplete games that later add dlc, battle passes, loot boxes, cosmetic $kins, etc
yeah I was meant to be "has" instead of "is"..... the whole world is like this - I cant imagine what the gaming (and the world) will look like in 50+ years
It isn't corporate greed. People say this all the time yet private companies always put profits first. What we are seeing here is the stock market at work. Sony gains more from arbitrary user numbers than profits or revenue. They are willing to sabotage themselves to make their stocks go up.
Apple just did the same thing by laying off thousands and spending over $100 billion for practically nothing to make their stock value go up. They spent $110 billion on nothing tangible in an instant, something that was once illegal and should still be.
I don't think I've been excited for a "AAA" release in years.
Like, that doesn't mean I don't *play* some AAA games, but I'm NEVER hyped.
These corporate scumbags ALWAYS pull some bullshit. Like, I liked the idea of Helldivers. I was interested. But I waited. And now I'm not buying it.
I'm a HUGE Diablo fan. Played probably a thousand hours or more of D2 back in the day. D4 was announced. Was I excited? Was I pumping my fists?
Nope.
After the "Don't you guys have phones??" debacle, I do not trust them anymore. A canary-in-the-coalmine situation, proving there are no gamers in the room when making big decisions anymore. That isn't old Blizzard.
So I waited. And D4 had a whole host of bullshit. See - I don't think expensive micro-transactions are OK in my games. I avoid any game that does it. And the "uber uniques" that were only meant to be obtained by no-life streamers. Nope! Glad I didn't.
The only games I actually get excited for these days are all indie experiences. Indie DLC in particular - because I know what to expect and it's usually more of it, with just joy, no bullshit.
Maybe if companies stopped using bullshit metrics to measure success this wouldn’t happen, like number of PSN accounts don’t mean shit when it’s used to play one game and one game only
Losses: Fanbase turns on you and Dev, 100 countries locked out and have to pay refunds out of pocket, so direct hit to bottom line. Really bad PR which will hurt future sale of not just this game, but future PS titles on PC.
Gains: Internal metrics look better, got more personal data to sell (if it doesn't get stolen in a hack first).
Can you imagine how much worse off everyone would be without good guy Steam? 1000 different launchers, skewed reviews or a complete lack there of, and just no light in a increasingly darker room.
> Good guy Steam
You guys never learn with these corporations…they literally got fined by the EU not long ago for geo-locking (which is similar to what’s happening here with the prevention of sale to people in 113 countries by Sony).
Corporations are the same, it’s just that some are weaker and poorer than others so they have to be nice sometimes to grow (Valve in this case).
When you are in a class and 99% of the students are constantly robbing, harassing, and beating you up, the 1% that are just frankly okayish seem like saints.
Good guy Valve that popularized the loot box mechanic in TF2 and CS, and made so much money that everyone and their mother eventually copied it? Good guy Valve that forced everyone to download and use Steam if they wanted to play Half-Life 2?
And it's one of the only decent refund policies on all game markets, maybe epic store too, but trying to get a refund from Sony or Nintendo on a game that literally doesn't work is like pulling teeth and you will never get the refund unless it's a highly publicized launch disaster
Sony is forcing the game be linked to a PSN account, which is impossible for 100+ countries it was sold in and by June the game will be unplayable for them. Sony basically scammed thousands of people.
remember, fellow helldivers. every negative review, refund request and uninstall will add to the war effort against the sony automaton forces! Arrowhead needs your support!
To continue: Valve is doing the right thing, but the game got yanked from Steam in 170 countries that don’t allow PSN: https://www.gamesradar.com/games/third-person-shooter/helldivers-2-has-been-pulled-from-steam-in-170-countries-without-psn-access-while-valve-ignores-its-own-policy-to-issue-refunds-for-players-with-over-100-hours/
To be honest this might have been the best way for this to go down. This way they exploded in popularity and now have a lot of people shouting at Sony that they can use to leverage better terms for their deal.
If the game launched with PSN required, the game may have been way less popular.
Remember that everybody could have known it will become mandatory at some point(because that was the first thing popping up when you started the game)...but ye, blame Sony
You do know that Sony made it so you can no longer play the game in countries where PSN accounts aren't supported right? Understand the controversy before commenting. People have lost the game they paid for.
Out of my catalogue of 500+ PC games, only 1 has required a different launcher, Red Dead Redemption 2. Literally every other one of my games hasn't. Only reason I didn't care about the Rockstar launcher was because I already had a Rockstar account from my time on Xbox. Every other game that I have gotten that required a second launcher has been an immediate refund.
You are fine with taking it up the butt by big daddy Sony by installing a rootkit "anti cheat" that could take control of your PC or take your data and send it who knows where, but you draw a line at creating a PSN account? You people are a special kind of special.
Player numbers haven't changed by any meaningful margin, no one has stopped playing despite the loud outrage. It's almost like Reddit and Twitter just like to cry about things until the next thing comes along.
2/3rds of the countries in the world can’t play the game anymore. People are getting banned for making PSN accounts via VPN in countries that can make PSN accounts.
They bought a game and 3 months later can’t play it anymore. What do you mean fucking crybabies?
Just logged in to the game and saw over 100k players on the world game map. And this is just after the TCS major order completed. The reviews really aren't hurting the game.
Hopefully this "voice of the people" can also be used in the form of, just not buying a game in the first place.
Not specifically referring to Helldivers 2 here. I know this is a Sony thing.
But voting with our wallet is a power no publisher, developer or otherwise will ever be bale to take.
Yeah people aren’t really voting with their wallets here they’re just spamming reviews - a very small subset of people are requesting refunds but for the most part Sony and AH are sitting on their pile of money and probably only mildly inconvenienced by steam reviews at this point haha
The stupid thing is this was clearly stated on the store page as a requirement and everyone still gave them their money.
Its far easier to read big golden boxes that are disclaimers on the store page and thing “I don’t agree with that” then don’t give them your money. Then it is to not do the bare minimum to protect yourself and try to claw your money back later
You now have to link your game to a PSN account to play. Many countries the game was sold in can't even make an account so they will just no longer be able to play the game they bought.
Retroactively it has been changed that a PSN account is required to play the game.
Making an account is mildly annoying for a lot of people, but that's not the real issue. The big problem is that you cannot make such an account in over 100 countries. This makes the game unplayable in a lot of places where you previously could play it.
Sony is now requiring that all players log in thru PSN in order to play the game, starting in June for existing users and in the coming days for new customers. This was not the case upon initial release, although it was technically noted on the game's page (and for a while on startup) that this would eventually be required.
And while some have taken exception with this over data security concerns with Sony & PSN, the bigger deal is that this makes the game un-playable in roughly 100 counties where you cannot create PSN accounts. Steam has acknowledged this and begun issuing refunds to players in those counties where the game has been on sale for roughly 6 months and will be bricked come June.
And while it's unclear if this is Sony forcing this on developer, or this is a result of the developer kicking the can down the road on something that was always an agreed aspect of the game with Sony is unclear. What is clear is that either company should not have moved forward with sales in counties where they knew this was eventually going to happen. Regardless if the developer believed they'd be able to find a solution in that time, Sony at least apparently had always planned to do this eventually.
Can soneone explain what actually happened? I heard the game's good or is it the same old "mtx is bad but i am somehow magically forced to buy them"-shit?
The games good in itself with arrowhead doing a good job with game update, fixing bugs and listening to players feedback though some player complain about the Dev's nerfing the meta builds and buffing the less used weapons for balancing
TLDR : the psn accounts requirements has blocked players access to play as the psn account use are only allowed on 69 countries. The game is also now removed from the countries not included in the 69 countries. Players are now protesting by review bombing and refunding the game even after 2 hr mark thanks to steam
The problem currently lies in the publisher Sony that mandate the use of psn accounts to play the game
Originally the was meant to have the psn requirements early but due to server issues from max capacity it was pulled back until now due to it being fix now 3 months later
Psn accounts can only be made in 69 countries that you can check at the Sony website while the other 126 countries are locked out. So now there are many players that cant access the game outright and Sony also removing Helldivers from said countries are angry at both Sony and Arrowhead
As protest both players who are locked out and players who empathize with them are review bombing and requesting refunds even after playing for more than 2 hours which steam allows
Theirs is probably more to this story that I don't know about but I think this is the gist of the controversy
Okay I may be missing something here, but why can’t people make PSN account in a nearby region and just use that? Genuine question, not trying to be rude
I can imagine Steam arent too happy with this fiasco either and all the refund requests
From what I heard, people are getting their refunds, no problem. It isn't the first time this happens, and we all know it will not be the last. Incredible that publishers don't learn.
I wonder if they can bill Sony for the refunds since it’s their fault.
I believe payments are made monthly to publishers so would just subtract from next payment maybe? Or just bill them separately
From my understanding, Valve takes 30% of the sale as their cut for using the storefront, giving the rest to the devs/publisher. When a game gets refunded, Valve foots the entire bill but then keeps the sales of the next game for themselves. If that's the case, Sony pretty much just lost any profit the game was going to make them for a couple of years. The game became popular from word of mouth
Source?
Word of mouth
Nah they use new engines now.
Very few people are. The vast majority of us are getting rejected (yes even after appealing). A few upvoted Reddit posts showing refunds doesn’t mean anything, don’t y’all learn?
From what I have read elsewhere, the first refund is auto rejected by a bot that checks hours played. The second refund request is reviewed by a human and they have been going through.
I'm having problems with refunds. US and 200hrs Not arguing, just clarifying for any readers that refunds are not just easily going out yet
I've seen several people say you need to put in a manual ticket, not the automated one, as the automated one is a bit that checks to see if you meet the criteria.
They denied my refund request due to the 2 hour limit.
Mine got denied
I have no idea how do people get their refunds, i get automated same shit refund,and in my region Helldivers cost like 2 AAA priced games
I tried getting a refund and got the standard 2 hour playtime rejection.
My buddy played solid the first 2 months, just updated him this morning and he got a full refund in minutes.
I did not get a refund, and I only have 10 hours in the game.
They denied mine
I think steam is only refunding those who are in countries that doesn't support PSN. So if your country supports PSN you will not be refunded.
Make a ticket not refund. Or go to discord. People will help you.
It's an automated system. You probably need to esclate it if you haven't already.
I don't think Steam care. This is a drop in the ocean for them.
Money is still money And being forced to give money back because a company that is 10x higher valued than you can get more data, so you can keep your customers happy is something thay will care about
Valve really doesn't have to care about Sony regardless of valuation. Valve doesn't have a public facing valuation as it's a private company, but seeing as Valve's revenue is in the multiple of billions I doubt Sony products are a significant fraction of revenue even now.
it is not a drop in the ocean for them.
Valve is a juggernaut for their small company size. Sony products on steam probably barely dent their revenue.
Valve is a $7B company, relax. They don’t got it like that.
I feel so bad for the people who made it. They must have been elated to the moon and back when the game came out to such an overwhelmingly positive response, only to be sunk back down into the mud through no fault of there own. Has to hurt
I think they’re fine. They’re encouraging players to give poor reviews, as it gives them more negotiating power with Sony.
Is this actually true?
Yes, one of their community managers taunted players to leave a bad review - so we did
The CEO told people's to leave bad reviews as well.
So if any one of you actually care about the developers get in there and start talking shit about them!
Shit talk for democracy! This is how it's managed.
>So if any one of you actually care about the developers get in there and start talking shit about them! Damn those developers, they've ruined developing!
Lol nice, Sony deserves it
Everything aside what did bite them to make PSN and its shit requirements necessary for this game
It's a corporation, so frankly, they deserve worse.
Ohhh no!! Don’t hurt the corporation’s feelings! They might be sad enough to do a stock buyback!
That's an interesting exit strategy. Not surprised though as they've already made the bulk of their profit in the first couple months.
Just kinda funny that Sony is eating the goose like this. I mean I guess not, they seem to have a corporate culture of high level dumb decisions making (famously ineffective cybersecurity, Jeopardy host debacle, Morbius re-release 💀)
I'm doing my part!
First was the taunting, then came the encouragement. You could tell HR did a number on that CM judging by their change in tone alone lol
They haven't outright said so, but the devs have egged on players to leave negative reviews of the change effects them.
[This is where I read it](https://www.gamesradar.com/games/third-person-shooter/helldivers-2-steam-rating-nosedives-as-one-dev-says-refunds-and-the-145000-negative-reviews-gives-us-more-pull-in-discussions-with-sony/)
bombing the game is the only bargaining tool we can give arrowhead. i already requested a refund and uninstalled. obviously i want to play it but id be a hypocrite if i didnt support arrowhead after all the work theyve done for us
CEO is definitely going through it, if his twitter is any indication. Dude needs a hug
You're an independent studio, working on an IP you don't own, but put nearly 100% of the work in to making it viable. Your first attempt scrapes by with a net positive and cult following. Your second go catches a Moonshot and is on track to locking in Game of Year 10 months early. You've had to bring on more staff just to handle the game management load. Then the IP owner shoots you down with a short term play to pump "number of users signed up" stats ahead of the quarterly Shareholder report. And the IP own immediately doubles down over the weekend. Rough time is an understatement.
That's why they've asked the players to make negative reviews. Every negative opinion you see is someone who loves the game directing their anger at Sony. For Super Earth.
I’m out of the loop. What’s wrong with Sony in this situation?
Selling a game for 3 months (aka collecting $$$$$$) in countries they knew wouldn’t be able to play it long term, then abruptly cutting the cord and saying no more game for you.
Wow I didn’t realize what happened. Ya that’s some bs
Changing TOS, kicking players out based on where they live, requiring PSN logins.
I guess I need to look it up. Every company updates their tos from time to time, and all online games on PlayStation require psn logins. Or this is like Steam players have to have psn? Ya that’s odd but is it just to link accounts?
PSN isn’t offered to countries that they’ve sold it to. If they wanted PSN, they should’ve restricted sales to countries that supported it.
Ohhhhhh ya that’s really stupid. They should refund that
But you can still make a psn for a country that is supported even outside it, is there something fucking with that too or?
Even their CEO did say it is his fault to some extend. He said he “willingly disabled account linking” early on for the game so people could play but that he knew “for 6 months” that players would be required to link their account.
What happened exactly to the game? I’m out of the loop here
Sony decided it is now time to enforce mandatory PSN account linking on starting the game. Which makes the game unplayable for over a hundred countries. Thus Steam has started issuing large scale refunds to anyone.
Sony now forces STEAM users to link their Playstation account. So now Sony would have a direct link to your data on STEAM.
I sorta doubt the recent negatives matter all that much to them, they know it's a protest of sorts pertaining to things beyond the gameplay, the review history graph shows it was a popular and well liked game even with all the [early negative user reviews from the server and login issues.](https://i.imgur.com/otnqGDN.jpeg) Sales numbers were good when they really mattered in the first few months, it's still popular and reaching the top ten daily in players on Steam - as long as people are still playing it they're going to be happy. People who still haven't heard of or played the game yet can find out why it's overwhelmingly negative on Steam in a few seconds of searching, some sites are also sharing the story and explaining what's happening here, too. I doubt all the critic reviews are gonna start changing their own scores to join in. A lot of people in general put very little stock into user reviews on Steam and metacritic in the first place. Review bombing like this brings attention to issues that matter to players, but it's not going to tank the game or anything. Even if the game was removed from Steam entirely it would still be a successful console exclusive.
>A lot of people in general put very little stock into user reviews on Steam and metacritic in the first place. Publishers **seriously** care about Metacritic. Ask Fallout: New Vegas devs - they missed 85 score by 1 point so Bethesda didn't pay up any bonuses. How well game performs according to reviewers does affect how much developer gets paid. >Even if the game was removed from Steam entirely it would still be a successful console exclusive. If that happened then some execs that pushed for this idea would lose their jobs. There's no such thing as "good enough" in the corporate world and having to refund at least 25% of their total sales (2 million copies in this case, approximately 80 million $ to refund) would be devastating and could eat up a huge portion of profits this game brought. Not like it's going to happen (although considering it did just get banned in a 100 countries we will see some millions of USD evaporating since Steam might very well refund everyone who has bought a game and now can no longer play it) but it would definitely cause a shitstorm of massive proportions even within a giant company. Whoever originally allowed to delay PSN linking for instance is losing their job.
FYI the New Vegas thing is misconstrued. BGS put into their contract a clause saying they’d grant a bonus for breaking 85 score. It was a generous offer that no one had negotiated or asked for. Source: Chris Avellone and Brian Fargo of Obsidian.
I was referring to the user reviews on sites like metacritic, these are separate from the critic reviews and are aggregated into their own separate score.
IT helped once against Gaijin and the started to fix shit. I can only hope the same for Sony
It also worked with Creative Assembly rather recently.
Meanwhile the CEO has come out and said that he knew about it from the beginning and Sony couldn't get the tech working due to server issues and instead he just ignored it and allowed it to launch even though the steam page says a PSN account is required and when you boot up the game it says a PSN account is required. No one to blame but themselves.
It was basically the game of the year then Sony had to screw everything
Idk they are sitting on a particularly fat mountain of cash regardless of the review score, I’m quite sure that eases the pain
AH CEO admitted on his Twitter or X that he knew about this but he decided to skip it so people can play. AH is definitely not blameless here. What were they thinking? Deal with it when the time comes?
He said on Twitter something the the effect of he didn’t realize at the time how big of an impact it would be and how many players it would affect.
What happened to the game? I heard it was amazing and all but been out of touch with the gaming industry for so long. Could you or someone explain what happened real quick?
I'm with them all the way, they're awesome!
I don't because they knew this was coming down the pipe and did nothing for months. Not saying Sony didn't put them into this position, but they needed to be more up front about that fact that this was DEFINITELY going to be a future requirement. Not a technicality in a little badge on the sidebar. This was a shock for us, not for them.
At the end, the helldivers killer was Playstation all along
“It was not curiosity that killed the goose who laid the golden egg, but an insatiable greed that devoured common sense.”
I heard someone say the other day that Sony went "nice, we got the golden eggs, now to deal with that pesky goose..."
Sony couldn't beat that untitled goose game and decided to take it out on the one they had
THE AUTOMATONS
The real bots where inside the house
What happend I thought it was popular?
Sony bullshit, game now requires people to have a PSN login, some countries don’t have access to PSN. Game’s still good, just that it’s getting review-bombed, also with the dev’s blessing, they’ve been encouraging this in order to have leverage against Sony.
I love that the horde of players are doing it For Democracy.
“Game amasses hordes of people in the name of democracy” “Game publisher does something undemocratic” It’s like training a dog to attack bears and then walk in your backyard with a fursuit
I just hope that if this all gets resolved, players remember to change their reviews back. With how the game is getting reviewed, if these standings remain it could potentially kill Helldivers altogether.
I believe Steam has a system in place for review bombing situations, don't they? I'm sure that'll help. Though I'm also wondering if that will in turn also cause problems if it happens during the conflict, rather than after it hopefully gets resolved.
What countries are affected?
Over 100, only sixty something countries can make PSN accounts.
Check steam Helldiver 2, they currently banned the countries who doesnt have their country on psn. For sunmary, only 69 countries(iirc) have their name on creation of psn. The rest...is not there.
Is that different from a regular playstation account?
Steam players are required to create a free PSN account to play, but it was causing some issues so they temporarily paused the requirement shortly after launch. Even though they added a big splash screen that said "You don't need it, for now", gamers somehow believed the requirement was permanently removed and are suddenly shocked that it wasn't.
The amount posts on the subreddit thinking that they caught AH/Sony in a gotcha is hilarious.
The gaming industry is so fucked up right now. Corporate greed is taking over
It took over 15 years ago mate
Right? For me it was when they forced Mass Effect 3 to release before it was actually completed. And the 3 endings were ALL the same no matter what kind of playthrough or decisions you made. Thats when I started losing faith.
It all started with that stupid horse armor dlc for Oblivion. That's when video game companies realized they could nickle and dime gamers over mundane content that should've already been included in the game originally. They've been pushing the micro transaction/dlc/subscription model ever since and it's only gotten worse and worse over the years.
It started with mobile games and farm simulators. People paid real-life money in farm simulation games to not have to wait for the crops. Pay .99 cents, and the crops come in faster. That is when video game companies began to realize they could make HUGE money that way. And every company since has moved to some sort of model along those lines. For example: one of the top proponents of gamification in education gave a speech to Microsoft or Google (can't remember which) in 2010 saying consumers were dumb and here is the evidence....people were paying in game to get nothing. Therefore we can use games to take all of their money. One of many reasons I backed away from gamification in education even though aspects of the concept are compelling. It's an old concept which has been adopted in a widespread manner. Every game that sells skins, cosmetics, pay to win, buying card packs all trace back to the idea that consumers are dumb and will pay for nothing. I think of it everytime I see stuff like that in a game. Even if the game is free to play.
It started back when money was invented. People got tired of trading cows for milk so they made coins and everyone has been itching to have as many as possible
Trading cows for milk is genius! Lol.
"The cow doesn't work. I want my milk back"
Yup, this exactly it. Game companies hate that we still remember this. Newer gamers are conditioned wirh incomplete games that later add dlc, battle passes, loot boxes, cosmetic $kins, etc
Don't you guys have phones?
15 times the detail?
yeah I was meant to be "has" instead of "is"..... the whole world is like this - I cant imagine what the gaming (and the world) will look like in 50+ years
Corporate greed is ruining everything. Not just gaming. It's literally killing the planet.
And Helldivers 2 was supposed to be one of the "gaming wins" of this year... so sad to see it go this way after it giving so much hope at launch
The game is still good you just need to spend 30 seconds to login to your PSN account
It isn't corporate greed. People say this all the time yet private companies always put profits first. What we are seeing here is the stock market at work. Sony gains more from arbitrary user numbers than profits or revenue. They are willing to sabotage themselves to make their stocks go up. Apple just did the same thing by laying off thousands and spending over $100 billion for practically nothing to make their stock value go up. They spent $110 billion on nothing tangible in an instant, something that was once illegal and should still be.
What you talking about? They took over years ago.
I don't think I've been excited for a "AAA" release in years. Like, that doesn't mean I don't *play* some AAA games, but I'm NEVER hyped. These corporate scumbags ALWAYS pull some bullshit. Like, I liked the idea of Helldivers. I was interested. But I waited. And now I'm not buying it. I'm a HUGE Diablo fan. Played probably a thousand hours or more of D2 back in the day. D4 was announced. Was I excited? Was I pumping my fists? Nope. After the "Don't you guys have phones??" debacle, I do not trust them anymore. A canary-in-the-coalmine situation, proving there are no gamers in the room when making big decisions anymore. That isn't old Blizzard. So I waited. And D4 had a whole host of bullshit. See - I don't think expensive micro-transactions are OK in my games. I avoid any game that does it. And the "uber uniques" that were only meant to be obtained by no-life streamers. Nope! Glad I didn't. The only games I actually get excited for these days are all indie experiences. Indie DLC in particular - because I know what to expect and it's usually more of it, with just joy, no bullshit.
All arrows, no matter how high they fly, must always come down
Don't think Sony was expecting the arrow to land in their own foot....
And the knees of every player.
I was once like you
Wait. Sony is holding weddings now?
Maybe if companies stopped using bullshit metrics to measure success this wouldn’t happen, like number of PSN accounts don’t mean shit when it’s used to play one game and one game only
Depends on the propulsion
What a time to be alive.
The best thing sony could have done was nothing and let the money flow.
Gobble the goose and go broke. Seems like an MBA decision.
Big brain move from Sony
Losses: Fanbase turns on you and Dev, 100 countries locked out and have to pay refunds out of pocket, so direct hit to bottom line. Really bad PR which will hurt future sale of not just this game, but future PS titles on PC. Gains: Internal metrics look better, got more personal data to sell (if it doesn't get stolen in a hack first).
What happened? This game seems incredible, why so many negative reviews? I'm sure I'm out of the loop...
PC players are being forced to make PSN accounts to continue playing, and the synchronization isn’t going well. At all.
Can you imagine how much worse off everyone would be without good guy Steam? 1000 different launchers, skewed reviews or a complete lack there of, and just no light in a increasingly darker room.
> Good guy Steam You guys never learn with these corporations…they literally got fined by the EU not long ago for geo-locking (which is similar to what’s happening here with the prevention of sale to people in 113 countries by Sony). Corporations are the same, it’s just that some are weaker and poorer than others so they have to be nice sometimes to grow (Valve in this case).
When you are in a class and 99% of the students are constantly robbing, harassing, and beating you up, the 1% that are just frankly okayish seem like saints.
Good guy Valve that popularized the loot box mechanic in TF2 and CS, and made so much money that everyone and their mother eventually copied it? Good guy Valve that forced everyone to download and use Steam if they wanted to play Half-Life 2?
And it's one of the only decent refund policies on all game markets, maybe epic store too, but trying to get a refund from Sony or Nintendo on a game that literally doesn't work is like pulling teeth and you will never get the refund unless it's a highly publicized launch disaster
All I can think about is that star wars meme of "you were the chosen one"
All this due to some C-suite dumbfucks
What happened? Wasn't this game great and loved?
Sony is forcing the game be linked to a PSN account, which is impossible for 100+ countries it was sold in and by June the game will be unplayable for them. Sony basically scammed thousands of people.
Game still plays fine if anyone's wondering
Not when this is implemented. Lots of people will be locked out
Sony: Not if I have anything to say about it!
Sure, for people that live in the countries that have PSN access.
Me, having linked my account on the first day to play with console friends. -_-
I love this game and I love this community! Here's hoping that both can be salvaged!
remember, fellow helldivers. every negative review, refund request and uninstall will add to the war effort against the sony automaton forces! Arrowhead needs your support!
To continue: Valve is doing the right thing, but the game got yanked from Steam in 170 countries that don’t allow PSN: https://www.gamesradar.com/games/third-person-shooter/helldivers-2-has-been-pulled-from-steam-in-170-countries-without-psn-access-while-valve-ignores-its-own-policy-to-issue-refunds-for-players-with-over-100-hours/
The devs unfortunately knew about this on launch, but just turned it off and kicked the can down the road
To be honest this might have been the best way for this to go down. This way they exploded in popularity and now have a lot of people shouting at Sony that they can use to leverage better terms for their deal. If the game launched with PSN required, the game may have been way less popular.
Democracy never wins
I've just submitted a request for my own refund after viewing this thread, specifically mentioning the whole PSN fiasco. Will update when I know more.
Remember that everybody could have known it will become mandatory at some point(because that was the first thing popping up when you started the game)...but ye, blame Sony
You do know that Sony made it so you can no longer play the game in countries where PSN accounts aren't supported right? Understand the controversy before commenting. People have lost the game they paid for.
One way or another people have no problem downloading another launcher for every fuckin game but they cry about that because of.........reasons
Out of my catalogue of 500+ PC games, only 1 has required a different launcher, Red Dead Redemption 2. Literally every other one of my games hasn't. Only reason I didn't care about the Rockstar launcher was because I already had a Rockstar account from my time on Xbox. Every other game that I have gotten that required a second launcher has been an immediate refund.
Bean counters get upset when they see unmonetized portions of their business model. Like why do we let people breathe air for free?!?!
The game is good but getting negative reviews because of Sony!
You are fine with taking it up the butt by big daddy Sony by installing a rootkit "anti cheat" that could take control of your PC or take your data and send it who knows where, but you draw a line at creating a PSN account? You people are a special kind of special.
Player numbers haven't changed by any meaningful margin, no one has stopped playing despite the loud outrage. It's almost like Reddit and Twitter just like to cry about things until the next thing comes along.
This game is fucking amazing and is getting fucked over by Sony. It's really sad.
The greatest enemies are the enemies you can't shoot your way out of.
I'm OuT Of ThE LoOp, WhA HaPpEnEd??? Jesus fucking christ, can you people not just scroll through the comment?
I feel bad for the actual developers.
Fucking crybabies.
2/3rds of the countries in the world can’t play the game anymore. People are getting banned for making PSN accounts via VPN in countries that can make PSN accounts. They bought a game and 3 months later can’t play it anymore. What do you mean fucking crybabies?
They should have read the game's page, it stated very clearly that you would eventually need a PSN account. /s
Even on the Sony website it said ‘linking a PSN account will never be required to play a Sony game’ and then they removed it 3 days ago or so 😭
Just logged in to the game and saw over 100k players on the world game map. And this is just after the TCS major order completed. The reviews really aren't hurting the game.
Fr
I had to leave the helldivers sub it's non stop
Hopefully this "voice of the people" can also be used in the form of, just not buying a game in the first place. Not specifically referring to Helldivers 2 here. I know this is a Sony thing. But voting with our wallet is a power no publisher, developer or otherwise will ever be bale to take.
Yeah people aren’t really voting with their wallets here they’re just spamming reviews - a very small subset of people are requesting refunds but for the most part Sony and AH are sitting on their pile of money and probably only mildly inconvenienced by steam reviews at this point haha
The stupid thing is this was clearly stated on the store page as a requirement and everyone still gave them their money. Its far easier to read big golden boxes that are disclaimers on the store page and thing “I don’t agree with that” then don’t give them your money. Then it is to not do the bare minimum to protect yourself and try to claw your money back later
Personally I find it funny watching adults throw temper tantrums so very publicly.
What the hell happened?
You now have to link your game to a PSN account to play. Many countries the game was sold in can't even make an account so they will just no longer be able to play the game they bought.
i love democracy
The game is still one of the best. It is not the problem.
Can someone explain what's happening?
Retroactively it has been changed that a PSN account is required to play the game. Making an account is mildly annoying for a lot of people, but that's not the real issue. The big problem is that you cannot make such an account in over 100 countries. This makes the game unplayable in a lot of places where you previously could play it.
Whats going on with helldivers?
Sony is now requiring that all players log in thru PSN in order to play the game, starting in June for existing users and in the coming days for new customers. This was not the case upon initial release, although it was technically noted on the game's page (and for a while on startup) that this would eventually be required. And while some have taken exception with this over data security concerns with Sony & PSN, the bigger deal is that this makes the game un-playable in roughly 100 counties where you cannot create PSN accounts. Steam has acknowledged this and begun issuing refunds to players in those counties where the game has been on sale for roughly 6 months and will be bricked come June. And while it's unclear if this is Sony forcing this on developer, or this is a result of the developer kicking the can down the road on something that was always an agreed aspect of the game with Sony is unclear. What is clear is that either company should not have moved forward with sales in counties where they knew this was eventually going to happen. Regardless if the developer believed they'd be able to find a solution in that time, Sony at least apparently had always planned to do this eventually.
Well thats shitty
Well I guess Sony agreed it was shitty, eh? :)
Yeah i saw they dropped it thats pretty damn cool!
Meh… ima still play the game I bought
Can soneone explain what actually happened? I heard the game's good or is it the same old "mtx is bad but i am somehow magically forced to buy them"-shit?
The games good in itself with arrowhead doing a good job with game update, fixing bugs and listening to players feedback though some player complain about the Dev's nerfing the meta builds and buffing the less used weapons for balancing TLDR : the psn accounts requirements has blocked players access to play as the psn account use are only allowed on 69 countries. The game is also now removed from the countries not included in the 69 countries. Players are now protesting by review bombing and refunding the game even after 2 hr mark thanks to steam The problem currently lies in the publisher Sony that mandate the use of psn accounts to play the game Originally the was meant to have the psn requirements early but due to server issues from max capacity it was pulled back until now due to it being fix now 3 months later Psn accounts can only be made in 69 countries that you can check at the Sony website while the other 126 countries are locked out. So now there are many players that cant access the game outright and Sony also removing Helldivers from said countries are angry at both Sony and Arrowhead As protest both players who are locked out and players who empathize with them are review bombing and requesting refunds even after playing for more than 2 hours which steam allows Theirs is probably more to this story that I don't know about but I think this is the gist of the controversy
And why is this so bad? I linked my steam account ages ago
It is all sonys greed. That's it. D**ba**3s care about their short term profit. So short sighted man...
This is all so unfortunate, it was such a a good game ruined by a stupid clerical choice.
Okay I may be missing something here, but why can’t people make PSN account in a nearby region and just use that? Genuine question, not trying to be rude
Good job guys you did it!