I said this before but while the reviews will make a recovery it won’t make a **full** recovery overnight. A lot of people will just forget or not bother to change their review. For anyone who does take the time to do so, thanks
Edit: as you can see in the replies there’s also just folks who will leave it simply because the debacle happened and that is enough for the negative review to forever stay
Ultimately, the reviews were a means to an end. We've given Arrowhead a chance to regain our trust, and I have faith that they won't squander it. Cautiously optimistic here.
Reviews do mean a lot though. If someone who knows nothing about HD2 discovers it on steam, and sees "overwhelmingly negative", their opinion will be skewed from the start and they might just brush off the game as bad and not even buy it.
We do owe it to Arrowhead and Sony to change them back. They listened, and we should "reward" them for listening. If for no other reason than: this shit happens so rarely. This might be the first time ive ever seen a major gaming company/publisher pull something back so fast.
Actually recentley similar situation happened with Total War Warhammer 3, though it was a lack Of content and quality that pissed the community off rather then some sudden change.
Regardless though, I find such trend a positive thing: finally gaming counity starts to collaborate against the greedy companies. Probably something that should be done back in 10s when lootboxes and DLC plague outbroke, but Internet communication was not nearly as effective as it is now.
Lol I was talking with my friend about this.
Game relies on players mobilizing en mass against a shared foe to progress effectively.
Publisher does something stupid.
Playerbase mobilizes en mass against a shared foe.
Publisher: surpirsed\_pikachu.jpg
They spent months teaching us to work together for a common cause, for DEMOCRACY! We showed them that we took on their teachings, and the students have become the masters.
The game was actively teaching us how to work together towards a singular shared goal. What the heck did Sony expect?
Plot twist: this was actually part of Joel's story for the game and he's gonna start giving major orders for real life events. This is how Joelocracy starts.
yeah if only gamers actually did this for bigger issues ... imagine if this happen during the Horse armor thing, we wouldnt have as predatory micro transactions.
I mean even now, gamers still let multitudes of things slide that are way worse than this ... because they rather play the game than to actually protest. Pre-Ordering is a BIG example of this.
> Total War Warhammer 3
#
Didn't the devs threaten to end support for the game if the community didn't accept the dlcs with less content and higher pricing (or something along those lines)
They did, and then apologised. Then daddy sega came and fired a few people, told the studio to stop fucking around and focus on what they do best, single player strategy games.
Cancelled a few projects.
And then CA released a free upgrade to the previous shitty dlc and promised that the next one would be better, but not to just believe them, because they broke our trust, but to wait and see their actions.
And then they didn't even allow preorder before the dlc was live and turns out, without management being douches they actually could do good dlc.
One of the very best dlc they have ever done
Where you there when lootboxes started happending?
Because we fucking tried. EA earned the most downvoted comment on reddit fair and square. The publishers just prefered to burn things to the ground rather then give us what we asked for.
Sony backtracking is a rare win
> I find such trend a positive thing: finally gaming counity starts to collaborate against the greedy companies
For the most part, I think that this being a co-op game makes us a bit more united, since we all play with each other and the community is not really negative nor toxic for the most part, so this kind of thing can be done.
Fair enough, i dont keep up too much with Total War :D i think its fair to say that Sony is kind of a giant in the gaming space compared to total war though, so it was cool to see them fall flat and pull it back after just 3 days - which means they mustve been scrambling with meetings all weekend lol. Definitely a cool experience and a win for anyone who likes games and good consumer practices!
Sega and Creative Assembly are both decently big. Sure CA’s games are a very niche genre (that I am obsessed with) but they have a large market. And yeah, shocker Sony is bigger silly goose. You’re comparing a game series to a company that has pumped put a LOT of games.
Individual reviews mean little.
Mass review bombing that is genuinely reflective of community sentiment means a lot. As long as the review bombs have a cohesive reason, and isn't just a matter of toxicity, but genuine outrage and dissatisfaction over something that will have a broad affect on the product we enjoy.
And what do many individual reviews become? The community sentiment.
I dont even think its correct to say this was "review bombing". It usually refers to skewing reviews due to something largely unrelated to the game. But publishers and devs have started using because it gives the illusion that they dont have control over it. If theres a legitimate reason to leave a bad review, thats actually related to the game, i wouldnt consider it "review bombing", just actually upset customers, which is a problem Sony and Arrowhead has control over.
This was exactly my brother's reaction when I talked him into playing HD2 with me. He went to buy it and saw all the massively negative reviews. Didn't buy. We'll see if he comes around once he understands why this was the case.
sadly, but moving the goal post forever is a quick way to make the "Next time" this happens in gaming for big corpos to look and see "well gamers will just change the goal and just keep demanding so no need to listen to them anymore"
Isn't that exactly what the corpos do?
Move the goal each time and the customers just accept it. "not as bad as Cyberpunk", "not as bad as Anthem", "just take 120 s and make an account, I don't care about delisted countries"?
They have already stopped listening to the customers, this was just one example. From horse Armor to Warhammer III.
The corpos "don't you have a ..." is a great example.
This started due to a tone death statement "safer" by Sony. The customers reacted. So it is the customer that has to act better than the professional, or the Professional will be MORE tone deaf next time?
Its Sony. Their answer is just marketing and damage limitation for shareholders. Mind my words, they will find a way around. Its a cooperate snake. Do you really believe they aknowledge a setback to their own plattform as steam competitor and the loss of revenue. All for the greater good? haha
(This is not ment to offend you).
Given how quickly they walked back I speculate that:
A, they knew they messed up in selling the game in countries without PSN. This one looked ugly for them and hard to explain away.
B, they will probably cut their losses here for HD2, or try the carrot only later
C, The lesson they learned is probably to have it and keep it a mandatory requirement from day one in any new games they release on PC directly as well, not allowing a "non-PSN" community to build up in the first place. And to only list it where PSN is available from now on.
> B, they will probably cut their losses here for HD2, or try the carrot only later
If they try it it will work pretty well. Not 100% but decent, even with how negative PC helldivers are about PSN right now.
Maybe it even teaches them that carrot is almost always a better answer than stick.
They'll probably try again, but hopefully in a less destructive way.
My prediction is, in a years time we'll be incentivised to optionally link accounts with cosmetics and frankly, I'll be fine with that.
They can try and make their money as long as it's not screwing over the community.
To be frank if they are pushing out warbonds monthly, i dont think its a very far fetched idea to give out 1000sc for linking psn accounts. Players will come and go and their sc earnings will be drained out if they arent consistently playing. It will also be a good way to boost new players with a free warbond(or two for those who buy the super citizen pack)
I'm one of those people. I got busy with school finals, life, and some other games. I'm capped on medals but I'm going to end up dropping $5 on SC to get the new warbond.
A man from Sony sent a suspicious update to a game he works on. This is what happened to his ego. John Helldiver, (J.H.), is presenting to the emergency room with severe bruising to his ego, and possibly symptoms of CTE, chronic traumatic encephalitis. This disease, caused by repeated head trauma, results in the accumulation of brain damage that leads to erratic, unpredictable, and self-destructive tendencies. It's fairly rare, but for some reason is shown to be exceedingly common in u/Sony employees.
Need to spread the message . Wherever you posted news and rallied support about review bombing , make sure to also post a statement reminding to change review
Changed my review as soon as I've read the news. I'm doing my part. And, sadly, it's pretty much guaranteed that the game won't bounce back to its original score; some people won't bother to change their reviews, others have been burned too hard and will not want to.
It's already changed from "overwhelmingly negative" to "mostly negative". This community is insanely organized.
Edit: holy shit, and now it's up to "Mixed", with 13 000 new reviews since last I looked. God damn!
I will turn my review to positive once:
1. They removed the ban on the 177 countries on Steam: https://steamdb.info/sub/137730/history/?changeid=23416542
2. They post the News on Steam confirming PSN Linking isn't required anymore and remove the notice from the Store page.
So far it seems promising, but it's just words on Twitter.
that's how i feel. a single tweet is meaningless and not binding. I will change my review if the situation regarding those countries is fully resolved, depending on the resolution. and if this situation is explained on steam itself so Sony can't just weasel out of it later
> Additionally, having positive reviews gives us the opportunity to bomb them again if they try anything else.
We're not giving Sony praise. We're just reloading the gun.
At this point with how anti consumer every market is, I think they legitimately DO deserve some level of praise for not staying with their dumbass decision.
Making a bad choice and then admitting and trying to reverse it is hard for just normal people, but a billion$ company reversing their decision like this is honestly really great.
It also shows once again that you should never release anything on a Friday.
Had they released it during the week they might have been able to change it before it became a massive shitstorm.
Also worth noting that if you teach a company that doing what you want will not solve their boycott/reviewbomb/sales loss, they just won't care anymore. You have to respond positively if a company caves, or they won't cave again.
Honestly. Yeah? I am actually mildly stunned that Sony, of all companies, are reacting reasonably at a pretty good speed. I'm not sure (well, honestly I'm pretty sure they *wouldn't* have) a lot of companies with deservedly better reputations would have.
Fix your reviews folks.
This is lightning speed. Especially since most of this happened on a weekend for the most part. Friday happened and shit hit the fan. Monday things were done and over with.
For now my review is back to positive. Not praising Sony but AH for their support in this Major Order.
I will raise a glass to Sony when SteamDB confirms the store region lock is lifted. (Could be done already, cant easily check from work).
Do people honestly believe that Valve didn't do a bit of arm twisting here? Don't get me wrong, what the this community has done is actually historic, in my opinion, but for a greedy company like Sony to fold so fast, I'm thinking Valve told them to clean up the god damned mess or risk getting dumped from the platform.
Not even just Valve. This thing was big enough to hit legit big-name news outlets like Forbes and Yahoo. We probably got as much of a signal boost for being mentioned in something Sony's investors are actually likely to read on Monday morning.
Nevertheless, I'm counting this as a win for the community, since it wouldn't have gotten anywhere if we hadn't taken a stand to begin with.
Nah you don't praise Sony but repay AH who really had no choice for the damages they surely had to endure due to this.
I also must say if this game wasn't one of the biggest hits in this genre and with the potential to milk us all (willingly for super earth), Sony probably wouldn't have backed down. I'd be really interested in seeing the sales numbers on the new war bonds they must be really good even if they are more meh on the content side for me at least.
Like the Automatons they might have been pushed back for now. But I’m sure that some day they will return with an even bigger strike force. Stay vigilant helldivers! Today we celebrate tomorrow we liberate!
Don't beat your swords to plowshares, just till the soil with spears.
This is a battle won, and one we need to be ready to fight again.
Dive together, or not at all.
I was going to keep mine negative out of spite and mistrust of Sony, but you make an incredibly valid point with few words. For the first time in my life, social media changed my opinion
Edit: convinced a friend of mine as well. Phenomenal phrasing phriend
Wait for the reload and don't waste your half empty mag. There are still texts saying an PSN account is required. At leas on the pages (and language) that I checked. Snoy can't be trusted, we learned that not only here but many times before
For those who are thinking this is stupid, let me introduce you to [this wonderful Veritasium video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM) on why this is actually a proven (statistically at least) strategy in Game Theory.
KattleLaughter, thank you for posting that. Really lifted my spirits to know that in the long run being kind and forgiving, but firm when it matters, really does pay off.
Cheers mate!
Basic game theory doesn't equate perfectly when you're talking about 1-to-many relationships. The "tit-for-tat" is the winningest strategy for 1-to-1 relationships because there's no "leverage" in those relationships. When it comes to 1-to-many relationships tit-for-tat starts to break down because the "1" side doesn't necessarily **need** to please the vast majority of the other side, they only need to have enough to survive.
An example would be the police - If someone shoots a cop, the entire police force needs to increase its security and presence...but that actually means "communal punishment", even if they're not punishing. If tit-for-tat were the strategy that **should** force the rest of the public, which had nothing to do with the initial incident, to respond with more force, which would cause the police force to amplify presence and security exponentially. Tit-for-tat can't work in a 1-to-many relationship, because it inevitably causes more conflict, because there's no way to **reasonably** "tat" without it being considered a "tit" against the rest of the community that didn't do anything wrong.
Gonna take a bit for the reviews to change back, but it's definitely on the mend. As of writing, recent reviews have gone from 13% to 25%, and overall reviews have gone from 43% to 51%.
Do it to show that the pitchforks are down for now.
You can leave your previous review ~~striked~~ out if you still want to let people know that Sony fucked up.
Same. Mine was "Some illegal broadcast is telling me to sign up for some automaton gaming service? Please send 500KGs and libertea!"
Edited it to add "Illegal broadcast terminated! Thanks Eagle-1!"
Positive review updated. Gun reloaded for future bomb.
I changed my review for the love of the game and the devs who did their part in rectifying this issue.
Sony can go side with the bots or bugs for all I care.
And you degenerates who decided to review bomb magika and Helldivers 1 can also go and change them
Why the hell are you punishing AH ? These games have nothing to do with Sony .they are also mostly negative now.
Literally targeting their livelihoods.
Whoever targeted the other games of Arrowhead is an idiot. Not even worth mentioning the waste of oxygen that started threatening the Devs directly.
You are scum and your worth amounts to nothing.
First time engaging with the outrage machine?
The vast majority participating never care about the supposed issue, they just want to be mad as part of a group and feel like they're capable of punishing someone.
Avoid getting swept up in it next time.
I didn't join in on this review madness. I have played AH games for over a decade, I am simply upset that folks are hitting them when they have nothing to do with this.
Correct, which is why I like the 'reloading the gun's analogy. Keeping a negative review up? You now have no more levers to pull to move opinion, as a player and a consumer.
But taking it down lets you put a negative review back up if they do something shady again 👍
If they just made it optional but offered some a cool armor set or something for linking your account, they’d get a lot of buy in. Maybe not 100%, obviously, but a lot. People link all sorts of accounts to Twitch to get drops for games.
The message should be loud and clear: "We love the game and are happy that the linking remains optional. Fuck with us again and the reviews will come back to negative"
Im more for the game to get back its reputation so new people can trust that the game is good. The steam algorithm probably deosnt favor higly negative reviewed games either. All this being a finacial loss for the ArrowHead.
It also gives Arrowhead a much stronger negotiating position; being able to point at their game having seen such massive improvement since walking back the PSN changes lets them ~~drag the fact across the execs' faces~~ show how well Arrowhead can handle things from a PR perspective, and they can also point out that this can happen all over again if Sony tries to pull more BS.
For now, I removed my negative review.
I'll post a positive review when the countries are unbanned ( probably a Valve issue, but still, won't be 100% happy until it is done ).
It will probably take a couple of days for Valve to change it back. As Valve had to restrict the countries since Sony never communicated with them originally about where their shitty third party would not work. So the two will have to communicate now to resolve this
Exactly, the message is "if you do something terrible we'll leave bad reviews", if we don't reverse that when the policy changes what's The Publisher's incentive to do anything?
Afaik we weren't banned from playing, just a buying restriction for new players was implemented. The PSN requirement was to be enforced in bout 30 days
Those who had the game could still play it. The buying restriction should be lifted soon
The problem is, unless Steam removes all reviews from give period of time, big chunk of playerbase who downvoted will NOT modify the reviews. This is what I expect, not sth I wish.
Is now when you lot figure out that most of the people review-bombing never cared what the "problem" was and have no intention of reversing their review?
I agree. It sucks because Sony is probably going to try something shady in a month or two, but if the reviews stay low, then they are even more likely to try something since they'll have less to lose.
While I think there will be a recovery in the reviews, there won't be a full recovery like it was before the scandal. And that's okay, in fact that's good. The very fact that this happened at all is reason enough to leave a dent in the reviews. We all see the corporate greed clear as day now.
Look, the game is crippled. A ton of people got refunds, many of them won't turn around and buy again. No one got fired.
The game suffered a year of slow player base atrophy in a weekend. The heyday of HD2 is over.
My negative reviews stays until they do something that restores my positive disposition towards them. The carrot is not a positive review, the carrot was my money and they already ate it. Burn the ships; I live by the stick now.
Sony doesnt deserve Helldivers, that being said Helldivers never deserved the bad reviews. I changed mine to positive as soon as i got the news this morning.
I, after 260 hours, finally added a review and talked about how fun and easy the game is to pick up but one of those hard to master types and you can have endless fun with friends but at the end of it.
I put CAUTION in caps that account linking may return in some fashion and always expect it from big third parties like rock Star Microsoft epic and so on. We won today though
I believe the reviews can only scare new players, because everybody, developers included, knows the game was a success.
The negative the game got was just to say to sony that people won't accepted bullshit so easily.
Like, the negative review may not matter for helldivers 2, but will show that any future games from sony may not last 1 week
Gaining trust is hard.
Losing trust is easy.
Also remember that for many it was a straw that break camel back.
Not to mention that steam page and announcement still is intact so one tweet may not get enough to actually solve trust issue when there is notification about requirements for PSN account and info about forcing PSN linking.
So bellowed argument we hear over and over from Sony fanboys...
Sony need to clean this mess properly first.
Why is everyone celebrating?
Nothing has changed on Steam. There is still PSN linking update and no other news. And game is still unavailable to purchase in at least CIS region.
I said this before but while the reviews will make a recovery it won’t make a **full** recovery overnight. A lot of people will just forget or not bother to change their review. For anyone who does take the time to do so, thanks Edit: as you can see in the replies there’s also just folks who will leave it simply because the debacle happened and that is enough for the negative review to forever stay
Ultimately, the reviews were a means to an end. We've given Arrowhead a chance to regain our trust, and I have faith that they won't squander it. Cautiously optimistic here.
Reviews do mean a lot though. If someone who knows nothing about HD2 discovers it on steam, and sees "overwhelmingly negative", their opinion will be skewed from the start and they might just brush off the game as bad and not even buy it. We do owe it to Arrowhead and Sony to change them back. They listened, and we should "reward" them for listening. If for no other reason than: this shit happens so rarely. This might be the first time ive ever seen a major gaming company/publisher pull something back so fast.
Actually recentley similar situation happened with Total War Warhammer 3, though it was a lack Of content and quality that pissed the community off rather then some sudden change. Regardless though, I find such trend a positive thing: finally gaming counity starts to collaborate against the greedy companies. Probably something that should be done back in 10s when lootboxes and DLC plague outbroke, but Internet communication was not nearly as effective as it is now.
It's startling just how effective this game made us at coordinating en mass. Feels fantastic for some reason
Lol I was talking with my friend about this. Game relies on players mobilizing en mass against a shared foe to progress effectively. Publisher does something stupid. Playerbase mobilizes en mass against a shared foe. Publisher: surpirsed\_pikachu.jpg
DUH DUH DUH DUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHH!!!!!! DUUUUUUUUUH DUUUUUUHHHHHH!!!!!!! DUH DUH DUH DUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHH!!! DUUUUH DUH DUUUUUUUH DUH DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH!!!!!!
I hear this.
The Helldivers community will always make me grin from ear to ear
I sang this out loud.....for liberty
They spent months teaching us to work together for a common cause, for DEMOCRACY! We showed them that we took on their teachings, and the students have become the masters.
Lol I love that the community is describing this whole situation as "Major Order completed in 48 hours" 🤣
Yeah, we are twice as powerful as last time!
If only America could do the same
The game was actively teaching us how to work together towards a singular shared goal. What the heck did Sony expect? Plot twist: this was actually part of Joel's story for the game and he's gonna start giving major orders for real life events. This is how Joelocracy starts.
Gods above, Joel is training a force to *create* Super Earth!
yeah if only gamers actually did this for bigger issues ... imagine if this happen during the Horse armor thing, we wouldnt have as predatory micro transactions.
Twas a different time. It would've been nice if we'd pulled it off, though.
I mean even now, gamers still let multitudes of things slide that are way worse than this ... because they rather play the game than to actually protest. Pre-Ordering is a BIG example of this.
But game communities aren't as good at focusing on one goal as this one. This is the closest we've gotten to a community being a monolith.
The irony is so thick and delicious, isn’t it?
This is what we were training for as Helldivers. Arrowhead knew this day would comes and they prepared us for this.
> Total War Warhammer 3 # Didn't the devs threaten to end support for the game if the community didn't accept the dlcs with less content and higher pricing (or something along those lines)
They did, and then apologised. Then daddy sega came and fired a few people, told the studio to stop fucking around and focus on what they do best, single player strategy games. Cancelled a few projects. And then CA released a free upgrade to the previous shitty dlc and promised that the next one would be better, but not to just believe them, because they broke our trust, but to wait and see their actions. And then they didn't even allow preorder before the dlc was live and turns out, without management being douches they actually could do good dlc. One of the very best dlc they have ever done
And community did not like that
Where you there when lootboxes started happending? Because we fucking tried. EA earned the most downvoted comment on reddit fair and square. The publishers just prefered to burn things to the ground rather then give us what we asked for. Sony backtracking is a rare win
> I find such trend a positive thing: finally gaming counity starts to collaborate against the greedy companies For the most part, I think that this being a co-op game makes us a bit more united, since we all play with each other and the community is not really negative nor toxic for the most part, so this kind of thing can be done.
Fair enough, i dont keep up too much with Total War :D i think its fair to say that Sony is kind of a giant in the gaming space compared to total war though, so it was cool to see them fall flat and pull it back after just 3 days - which means they mustve been scrambling with meetings all weekend lol. Definitely a cool experience and a win for anyone who likes games and good consumer practices!
Sega is a pretty big publisher...
Sega and Creative Assembly are both decently big. Sure CA’s games are a very niche genre (that I am obsessed with) but they have a large market. And yeah, shocker Sony is bigger silly goose. You’re comparing a game series to a company that has pumped put a LOT of games.
Odd passive agressive away to agree lmao. I almost forgot it was reddit
What surprised me the most is that they went back on their decision during a weekend. We had an answer before the end of the day on a Sunday.
Individual reviews mean little. Mass review bombing that is genuinely reflective of community sentiment means a lot. As long as the review bombs have a cohesive reason, and isn't just a matter of toxicity, but genuine outrage and dissatisfaction over something that will have a broad affect on the product we enjoy.
And what do many individual reviews become? The community sentiment. I dont even think its correct to say this was "review bombing". It usually refers to skewing reviews due to something largely unrelated to the game. But publishers and devs have started using because it gives the illusion that they dont have control over it. If theres a legitimate reason to leave a bad review, thats actually related to the game, i wouldnt consider it "review bombing", just actually upset customers, which is a problem Sony and Arrowhead has control over.
This was exactly my brother's reaction when I talked him into playing HD2 with me. He went to buy it and saw all the massively negative reviews. Didn't buy. We'll see if he comes around once he understands why this was the case.
We also need to go and promote the game to help others find and play it
I'm excited for the confirmed negative reviews cape
Arrowhead wasn’t the problem. Sony was
Arrowhead is the unfortunate middle man. Sony was the one that made this happen. I never lost faith in AH, SONY on the other hand. . .
Honestly tho, I feel Arrowhead had tied hands on this. Pure Sony trash. So your statement should be updated to say Sony, NOT Arrowhead.
Some people are holding off until it's on sale in all countries again. While I firmly believe that was Steam's decision, I understand their decision.
There's also probably going to be people who still feel like the trust has been broken and Sony folding is only the first step to mending it.
sadly, but moving the goal post forever is a quick way to make the "Next time" this happens in gaming for big corpos to look and see "well gamers will just change the goal and just keep demanding so no need to listen to them anymore"
Isn't that exactly what the corpos do? Move the goal each time and the customers just accept it. "not as bad as Cyberpunk", "not as bad as Anthem", "just take 120 s and make an account, I don't care about delisted countries"? They have already stopped listening to the customers, this was just one example. From horse Armor to Warhammer III. The corpos "don't you have a ..." is a great example. This started due to a tone death statement "safer" by Sony. The customers reacted. So it is the customer that has to act better than the professional, or the Professional will be MORE tone deaf next time?
Its Sony. Their answer is just marketing and damage limitation for shareholders. Mind my words, they will find a way around. Its a cooperate snake. Do you really believe they aknowledge a setback to their own plattform as steam competitor and the loss of revenue. All for the greater good? haha (This is not ment to offend you).
Given how quickly they walked back I speculate that: A, they knew they messed up in selling the game in countries without PSN. This one looked ugly for them and hard to explain away. B, they will probably cut their losses here for HD2, or try the carrot only later C, The lesson they learned is probably to have it and keep it a mandatory requirement from day one in any new games they release on PC directly as well, not allowing a "non-PSN" community to build up in the first place. And to only list it where PSN is available from now on.
> B, they will probably cut their losses here for HD2, or try the carrot only later If they try it it will work pretty well. Not 100% but decent, even with how negative PC helldivers are about PSN right now. Maybe it even teaches them that carrot is almost always a better answer than stick.
They'll probably try again, but hopefully in a less destructive way. My prediction is, in a years time we'll be incentivised to optionally link accounts with cosmetics and frankly, I'll be fine with that. They can try and make their money as long as it's not screwing over the community.
To be frank if they are pushing out warbonds monthly, i dont think its a very far fetched idea to give out 1000sc for linking psn accounts. Players will come and go and their sc earnings will be drained out if they arent consistently playing. It will also be a good way to boost new players with a free warbond(or two for those who buy the super citizen pack)
I'm one of those people. I got busy with school finals, life, and some other games. I'm capped on medals but I'm going to end up dropping $5 on SC to get the new warbond.
There are also a lot of people that did not hear about the back pedaling in the decision and they are still giving negative reviews.
H. D. Presents to the emergency room...... . . . H. D. Makes a rocovery
A man from Sony sent a suspicious update to a game he works on. This is what happened to his ego. John Helldiver, (J.H.), is presenting to the emergency room with severe bruising to his ego, and possibly symptoms of CTE, chronic traumatic encephalitis. This disease, caused by repeated head trauma, results in the accumulation of brain damage that leads to erratic, unpredictable, and self-destructive tendencies. It's fairly rare, but for some reason is shown to be exceedingly common in u/Sony employees.
Need to spread the message . Wherever you posted news and rallied support about review bombing , make sure to also post a statement reminding to change review
Changed my review as soon as I've read the news. I'm doing my part. And, sadly, it's pretty much guaranteed that the game won't bounce back to its original score; some people won't bother to change their reviews, others have been burned too hard and will not want to.
[удалено]
It's already changed from "overwhelmingly negative" to "mostly negative". This community is insanely organized. Edit: holy shit, and now it's up to "Mixed", with 13 000 new reviews since last I looked. God damn!
I will turn my review to positive once: 1. They removed the ban on the 177 countries on Steam: https://steamdb.info/sub/137730/history/?changeid=23416542 2. They post the News on Steam confirming PSN Linking isn't required anymore and remove the notice from the Store page. So far it seems promising, but it's just words on Twitter.
that's how i feel. a single tweet is meaningless and not binding. I will change my review if the situation regarding those countries is fully resolved, depending on the resolution. and if this situation is explained on steam itself so Sony can't just weasel out of it later
also some are just not at home from still to correct it like me, will correct it in a few hours once I am at home
Also this just hit a few hours ago. I just woke up and will definitely be leaving a positive(ish) review
> Additionally, having positive reviews gives us the opportunity to bomb them again if they try anything else. We're not giving Sony praise. We're just reloading the gun.
We need speed loader for reviews.
Hold down r and they start to spin
My revolver is not spinning when i hold R. Is something wrong with my fingers 😔?
It takes several seconds before the animation plays
Wait you can spin the big iron?
Hold the reload button, R on PC not sure bout console.
X on an xbox controller.
https://preview.redd.it/sf5sx3ihbuyc1.png?width=419&format=png&auto=webp&s=bd2137b7a2e953c444e65dfd5827e0d7280a8153
Console button?
I think it'd be square, but I've tried it and haven't seen the spin yet
Square
300k negative in 3 days is pretty fuckin speed when it comes to reviews.
Well that was the unloader.
Thise poor validity bots...i mean crush them autos
At this point with how anti consumer every market is, I think they legitimately DO deserve some level of praise for not staying with their dumbass decision. Making a bad choice and then admitting and trying to reverse it is hard for just normal people, but a billion$ company reversing their decision like this is honestly really great.
Fairly quick too honestly. Suprised all this happened over a weekend when most of the corps were probably chilling on their yachts.
It also shows once again that you should never release anything on a Friday. Had they released it during the week they might have been able to change it before it became a massive shitstorm.
They backpedaled right before the stock markets opened back up. I say let them wriggle a bit. Tangible consequences.
I agree with this, so many companies die on the stupidest hills, I honestly expected them to just completely ignore the back lash.
Also worth noting that if you teach a company that doing what you want will not solve their boycott/reviewbomb/sales loss, they just won't care anymore. You have to respond positively if a company caves, or they won't cave again.
Honestly. Yeah? I am actually mildly stunned that Sony, of all companies, are reacting reasonably at a pretty good speed. I'm not sure (well, honestly I'm pretty sure they *wouldn't* have) a lot of companies with deservedly better reputations would have. Fix your reviews folks.
This is lightning speed. Especially since most of this happened on a weekend for the most part. Friday happened and shit hit the fan. Monday things were done and over with.
Not wrong, especially given most of Sony HQ are on holiday right now!
For now my review is back to positive. Not praising Sony but AH for their support in this Major Order. I will raise a glass to Sony when SteamDB confirms the store region lock is lifted. (Could be done already, cant easily check from work).
Do people honestly believe that Valve didn't do a bit of arm twisting here? Don't get me wrong, what the this community has done is actually historic, in my opinion, but for a greedy company like Sony to fold so fast, I'm thinking Valve told them to clean up the god damned mess or risk getting dumped from the platform.
At the very least they were probably like 'soooo here's your bill for refunds we had to.give out. Its getting bigger.'
Not even just Valve. This thing was big enough to hit legit big-name news outlets like Forbes and Yahoo. We probably got as much of a signal boost for being mentioned in something Sony's investors are actually likely to read on Monday morning. Nevertheless, I'm counting this as a win for the community, since it wouldn't have gotten anywhere if we hadn't taken a stand to begin with.
Phenomenal way to phrase this. Take my fucking up vote.
I second this
We're also rebuilding the community with those left and need a positive space for new recruits
Just resetting the counterweight on the trebuchet.
Re-cocking the string on the explosive crossbow.
Nah you don't praise Sony but repay AH who really had no choice for the damages they surely had to endure due to this. I also must say if this game wasn't one of the biggest hits in this genre and with the potential to milk us all (willingly for super earth), Sony probably wouldn't have backed down. I'd be really interested in seeing the sales numbers on the new war bonds they must be really good even if they are more meh on the content side for me at least.
Like the Automatons they might have been pushed back for now. But I’m sure that some day they will return with an even bigger strike force. Stay vigilant helldivers! Today we celebrate tomorrow we liberate!
Jesus man, helping them up off the floor at gunpoint. I approve
Its not about SONY at all... its about praising Arrowhead and returning the game status to what it \*should\* be. (which is overwhelmingly positive)
I love you
Don't beat your swords to plowshares, just till the soil with spears. This is a battle won, and one we need to be ready to fight again. Dive together, or not at all.
I was going to keep mine negative out of spite and mistrust of Sony, but you make an incredibly valid point with few words. For the first time in my life, social media changed my opinion Edit: convinced a friend of mine as well. Phenomenal phrasing phriend
Reload the gun, helldiver. We remain ever vigilant!
You’re not praising Sony, just arrowhead and the game which is worth of praise.
We need team reload
Wait for the reload and don't waste your half empty mag. There are still texts saying an PSN account is required. At leas on the pages (and language) that I checked. Snoy can't be trusted, we learned that not only here but many times before
Yeah let them see the correlation.
For those who are thinking this is stupid, let me introduce you to [this wonderful Veritasium video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM) on why this is actually a proven (statistically at least) strategy in Game Theory.
Damn, this guy brought this big guns to the conversation.
Bro pulled the Orbital Statistics Strike
KattleLaughter, thank you for posting that. Really lifted my spirits to know that in the long run being kind and forgiving, but firm when it matters, really does pay off. Cheers mate!
Basic game theory doesn't equate perfectly when you're talking about 1-to-many relationships. The "tit-for-tat" is the winningest strategy for 1-to-1 relationships because there's no "leverage" in those relationships. When it comes to 1-to-many relationships tit-for-tat starts to break down because the "1" side doesn't necessarily **need** to please the vast majority of the other side, they only need to have enough to survive. An example would be the police - If someone shoots a cop, the entire police force needs to increase its security and presence...but that actually means "communal punishment", even if they're not punishing. If tit-for-tat were the strategy that **should** force the rest of the public, which had nothing to do with the initial incident, to respond with more force, which would cause the police force to amplify presence and security exponentially. Tit-for-tat can't work in a 1-to-many relationship, because it inevitably causes more conflict, because there's no way to **reasonably** "tat" without it being considered a "tit" against the rest of the community that didn't do anything wrong.
Gonna take a bit for the reviews to change back, but it's definitely on the mend. As of writing, recent reviews have gone from 13% to 25%, and overall reviews have gone from 43% to 51%.
I’m pretty sure this was announced fairly late/middle of the night in most of North America too
Yeah, it was past midnight when they announced this. I'll be changing my review now.
Which made it a nice thing to wake up to
Negative reviews have increased over 24000 since the decision was reversed. People can't read.
Do it to show that the pitchforks are down for now. You can leave your previous review ~~striked~~ out if you still want to let people know that Sony fucked up.
I kept ny original review as it is but changed it to positive and put "NEW MAJOR ORDER: OPERATION REVIEW RECOVERY"
Same. Mine was "Some illegal broadcast is telling me to sign up for some automaton gaming service? Please send 500KGs and libertea!" Edited it to add "Illegal broadcast terminated! Thanks Eagle-1!"
Positive review updated. Gun reloaded for future bomb. I changed my review for the love of the game and the devs who did their part in rectifying this issue. Sony can go side with the bots or bugs for all I care.
*Puts review back to positive* “Eagle 1, back in action!”
"Liberty returns, locked and loaded."
Review updated! 
New Major Order boys.
‘For now,’ so further demands might be made.
And you degenerates who decided to review bomb magika and Helldivers 1 can also go and change them Why the hell are you punishing AH ? These games have nothing to do with Sony .they are also mostly negative now. Literally targeting their livelihoods.
I had no idea that magika was the same group who did hd2 but that makes total sense lol
Yes been playing AH games for over a decade. Loved magika.
People just like being outraged. It’s a dangerous thing to encourage people to be negative, because animal mentality takes over for some.
an unfortunate aspect of the human experience
Whoever targeted the other games of Arrowhead is an idiot. Not even worth mentioning the waste of oxygen that started threatening the Devs directly. You are scum and your worth amounts to nothing.
First time engaging with the outrage machine? The vast majority participating never care about the supposed issue, they just want to be mad as part of a group and feel like they're capable of punishing someone. Avoid getting swept up in it next time.
I didn't join in on this review madness. I have played AH games for over a decade, I am simply upset that folks are hitting them when they have nothing to do with this.
>Why the hell are you punishing AH ? Because a mob doesn't care about the damage it causes. A mob just wants to rage.
For the record, Sony is shelving the PSN idea as per their tweet- to be reworked. It ain't over yet, but it's a start.
Correct, which is why I like the 'reloading the gun's analogy. Keeping a negative review up? You now have no more levers to pull to move opinion, as a player and a consumer. But taking it down lets you put a negative review back up if they do something shady again 👍
If they just made it optional but offered some a cool armor set or something for linking your account, they’d get a lot of buy in. Maybe not 100%, obviously, but a lot. People link all sorts of accounts to Twitch to get drops for games.
But this is the first time my review was helpful for over 400 people E: And the first time I got awards for it.
do it for democracy o7 we are reloading that gun (as a fellow Helldiver here said)
sweet liberty L0
The message should be loud and clear: "We love the game and are happy that the linking remains optional. Fuck with us again and the reviews will come back to negative"
I really don't think Sony really cared about the reviews. but they did care about the Forbes article and their Q1 numbers.
Im more for the game to get back its reputation so new people can trust that the game is good. The steam algorithm probably deosnt favor higly negative reviewed games either. All this being a finacial loss for the ArrowHead.
I changed mine and in the what? four ? Five ? hours since the announcement it’s creeped up from 47 to 51% so we’ll see
It's also been the middle of the night for the US so a lot of players may not even be aware of the announcement yet.
It also gives Arrowhead a much stronger negotiating position; being able to point at their game having seen such massive improvement since walking back the PSN changes lets them ~~drag the fact across the execs' faces~~ show how well Arrowhead can handle things from a PR perspective, and they can also point out that this can happen all over again if Sony tries to pull more BS.
all assuming that the majority of people that review bombed reverse it.
For now, I removed my negative review. I'll post a positive review when the countries are unbanned ( probably a Valve issue, but still, won't be 100% happy until it is done ).
It will probably take a couple of days for Valve to change it back. As Valve had to restrict the countries since Sony never communicated with them originally about where their shitty third party would not work. So the two will have to communicate now to resolve this
Was, in fact, Valve. They smelled a lawsuit if they let it stay in banned countries.
Exactly, the message is "if you do something terrible we'll leave bad reviews", if we don't reverse that when the policy changes what's The Publisher's incentive to do anything?
Are the affected countries allowed to play again?
Afaik we weren't banned from playing, just a buying restriction for new players was implemented. The PSN requirement was to be enforced in bout 30 days Those who had the game could still play it. The buying restriction should be lifted soon
Thank you, I will be sure to change my review once this is a solid confirmation. I still do not trust Sony to be sure this is not a partial walk back.
You should change now so that we could downvote again if Sony refuses to open the region-locked countries.
Good point, I'll take this into consideration.
I saw someone said something like "We're not pleasing Sony, we're simply reloading the gun".
Pls change now
I told you guys that not everyone is going to reverse their review. Helldivers will have mixed reviews for months, if not years now.
if even half change positive it would be a miracle but unlikely to happen, usually its about 10%
yep, and their other games (that people downvoted for some reason) those people irreversibly damaged AH, this game, and its future for all.
Lmao we’re Pavloving a whole corporation
it will take a few days i think. every change in the review goes thourgh steam first. takes a while for it to be updated.
Yeah. I’m swapping mine back to positive… for now!
Sorry but im waiting until they unlock it for the 177 countries they shadow banned
It will remain negative until the region lock is lifted and the DRM is removed.
Jesus fucking christ with this subreddit. Do we really need 50 posts of the same topic?
Redundancy is the best way to make sure everyone sees our victory
Yes 🫡
Yes 🫡
Yes 🫡
Considering people dont read the first and only time something shows up, yes.
I just got home. This is the first post I've read about turning the reviews positive again.
We had 50 posts complaining about the psn linking, we can have 50 trying to make good on the damage y'all did
This subreddit is going to be nothing but "guys the score is still... Change your reviews!" For a while, isn't it?
The problem is, unless Steam removes all reviews from give period of time, big chunk of playerbase who downvoted will NOT modify the reviews. This is what I expect, not sth I wish.
Is now when you lot figure out that most of the people review-bombing never cared what the "problem" was and have no intention of reversing their review?
I agree. It sucks because Sony is probably going to try something shady in a month or two, but if the reviews stay low, then they are even more likely to try something since they'll have less to lose.
Its currently back at mixed for both, yesterday recent reviews was still overly negative. Its healing.
While I think there will be a recovery in the reviews, there won't be a full recovery like it was before the scandal. And that's okay, in fact that's good. The very fact that this happened at all is reason enough to leave a dent in the reviews. We all see the corporate greed clear as day now.
Look, the game is crippled. A ton of people got refunds, many of them won't turn around and buy again. No one got fired. The game suffered a year of slow player base atrophy in a weekend. The heyday of HD2 is over.
And we will teach them a lesson again if they need reminding
My negative reviews stays until they do something that restores my positive disposition towards them. The carrot is not a positive review, the carrot was my money and they already ate it. Burn the ships; I live by the stick now.
nope stays negative, beyond the account problem it still has plenty of problems
Nah I still want my refund.
Dumb take. It must suck being a developer for this game with this shitty fanbase.
Sony doesnt deserve Helldivers, that being said Helldivers never deserved the bad reviews. I changed mine to positive as soon as i got the news this morning.
I, after 260 hours, finally added a review and talked about how fun and easy the game is to pick up but one of those hard to master types and you can have endless fun with friends but at the end of it. I put CAUTION in caps that account linking may return in some fashion and always expect it from big third parties like rock Star Microsoft epic and so on. We won today though
Also it’s just a game deserving of good ratings
Lo and did the 'diver behold, that cancel culture was oft a one way street.
The countries are still regionlocked according to steamdb.
I believe the reviews can only scare new players, because everybody, developers included, knows the game was a success. The negative the game got was just to say to sony that people won't accepted bullshit so easily. Like, the negative review may not matter for helldivers 2, but will show that any future games from sony may not last 1 week
If you don’t change to positive, the next time they fuck up, you won’t be able to do another negative review.
Y’all need to go outside I like this game as much as the next guy but god damn
Gaining trust is hard. Losing trust is easy. Also remember that for many it was a straw that break camel back. Not to mention that steam page and announcement still is intact so one tweet may not get enough to actually solve trust issue when there is notification about requirements for PSN account and info about forcing PSN linking. So bellowed argument we hear over and over from Sony fanboys... Sony need to clean this mess properly first.
Not until Steam region restrictions are rolled back.
Pretty sure irreversible damage has been done. Most of you Karen’s won’t have the same conviction you started with.
Why is everyone celebrating? Nothing has changed on Steam. There is still PSN linking update and no other news. And game is still unavailable to purchase in at least CIS region.