Arrowhead CEO on negative reviews: "I guess it's warranted. Sorry everyone for how this all transpired. I hope we will make it up and regain the trust by providing a continued great game experience."
If this is about the new PSN requirements, I don't even think Arrowhead should take the blame. That was obviously something that came down from the publisher.
Arrowhead, as the developers and artists who worked to create the game, deserve little to none of the blame. Arrowhead, as the business entity who voluntarily entered into an agreement with Sony to have this requirement in their game in the first place, definitely deserves the blame. Whatever project lead thought this was an acceptable concession to make in order to secure funding from Sony was definitely not on the same page as the rest of the team who actually made the game.
Seeing a lot of parallels to the Cyberpunk 2077 launch; beautiful game created by a passionate team who loved their craft, massively damaged by short-sighted, greedy decisions by studio execs.
This might be true but this one title's success will have a bigger impact on the developer's (≈100 staff) future prospects than Sony (≈113k staff).
Sony could simply ignore the issue and they wouldn't be losing any sleep.
On the other hand this game is the only title the studio has released since Helldivers in 2015, they have the most incentive to protect the reputation of the new title, the IP, and the studio.
I don't live in a place without PSN, however I uninstalled because of the malware style anticheat files that a small update tried to sneak into my system. Fuck off Arrowhead and Sony both, no thanks, I don't need to jnstall that kind of stuff to enjoy games with my friends on PC.
Not defending Sony, but I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to make a game that can have hundreds of thousands of players playing multiplayer matches simultaneously all over the world, but it needs a lot of infrastructure, and network support and other expensive hard to do stuff that you can’t just shit out like it’s Flappy Bird.
The problem is is they probably needed capital and support to get it off the runway, and Sony attached strings to the capital and support they gave them.
Now that it’s a hit, Sony is trying to flex its legal power via said strings - I’m guessing - and probably have all but threatened this relatively small dev with pulling the rug or taking them to court if they don’t follow orders.
TL;DR - Making games is expensive. Sony probably offered the small dev with limited resources a Faustian bargain and now the Devil is calling for his dues. They probably never had a choice.
Haha. Regain trust. You lost people gaming because of that PSN account linkage. Those people are not playing anymore. How will a continued great game experience regain their trust?
In a week. The changes aren't coming for a week. Nobody has quit because of the changes, they are quitting because they heard about an upcoming change they had the opportunity to read about on all primary storefronts the game is available on, excepting humble.
The thing I don't get about this is that is says on the steam page for Helldivers 2 that it requires a PSN account. Did it not say that before they made that announcement? Or did people see that they weren't enforcing it, buy the game, and now complain that they're starting to enforce it?
Ah ok. Then yeah, changing it weeks/months after release to require one is pretty shitty. Especially for those who live in countries that can't get PSN accounts. The game should never have been sold there as now it will become unplayable for them
I am probably completely wrong and this is just my opinion but an indie game dev that sells out to any of the shit companies, isn't really in it for the love of games, they want money.
Helldivers will never be what it was from now on, shame I missed that train. Specially considering it's now essentially a free Steam refund (if you insist past the automated responses).
Helldivers 2, and the recently announced requirement starting at the end of the month to have a PSN account for a game many people bought a month or so ago on Steam.
"Oh no, this seems to be bad for everyone. Too bad there's nothing we can do about it!" Says CEO with enough control and influence to reverse the policy.
Their publisher decided it. And it's probably in the contract. Apparently it was originally a requirement, but was made skippable when there were login issues.
The only thing they proved by making ot skippable is that it wasnt even necessary at all. The reason they're giving for making it mandatory ( for security and being able to ban for griefing ) is bullshit. Not to mention They're already using a super invasive anti cheat, which apparently isn't capable of catching any cheaters.
I already turned down a free copy of this game because it installs a rootkit, and now this happens. I hear the game itself is a lot of fun, and I feel bad for the actual developers who are watching people shit on their work because of management and publisher bullshit.
I don’t really understand the hype behind helldivers. To my eye, borderlands is essentially the same game but with greater variety, fewer hiccups, and a lower price.
I mean, more midnight club vs need for speed but I take your meaning. And yes, aside from the stories and one having significantly more content, they’re essentially the same game. I’d have said battlefront 2, but I don’t respect the remake and fishing out multiple ps2s to play online is preposterous.
Very different games to me tbh. Squad pve with gun focused combat, but thats where the similarities end. Borderland is crunchy with tons of guns stats and special movesin a RPG open world with a set narrative to go through.
Helldivers has a way smaller arsenal and a tighter mission based combat loop. They have more of a meta narrative that you affect vs being the main protags. The tighter gameplay loop is probably the biggest reason I liked it but haven't play borderlands in forever. Like its very much built for dropping in blowing up your friend and maybe some enemies too, try to do objectives against mounting odds, pass or fail the mission, continue. The fact that weapon progress almost always makes friendly fire a even bigger threat makes it almost a trade off and not a clear path to success.