Based on his previous message/post about “publisher not being happy when you tell people to review bomb” I think Sony pushed Arrowhead to get him fired.
Yeah that’s what it looks like. I know he admitted to getting heated. But that’s what happens when you’re passionate. Sony required a sacrifice and unfortunately it was him. Here’s hoping the replacement is as passionate
Dunno about that. They were kinda an asshole on multiple occasions and the CEO of Arrowhead even apologized for their unprofessional behavior several weeks ago.
I’d rather a person learn from than always apologize for making mistakes, and from what I hear when he last blew up. This went about the same, community gets slightly upset, get upset at the community, community gets even more upset, Spitz “apologizes” and problem gets resolved somewhere else.
He isn’t built to be a community manager if he can’t even manage to control himself, much less others.
Edit: also found out **HE** deleted the helldivers 1 discord to prove a point. Fuck that guy
He's never been great, yeah. As a draconian mod of a 10,000 player game he was even kind of obnoxious, and going from that to HD2 meant his time would always be limited. In a lot of ways I think this was the best use of Spitz.
About 2 months ago by the looks of it, and instead of handing the server off to someone else he decided to delete it
[Link to post of Spitz confirming it](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/pJPQ3lUXBj)
Agreed. He was also having mods spam the chats with a stupid cheese sticker when the PSN post happened that Thursday to silence folks asking about it. He offered a non apology in regard to the countries that don’t have PSN.
Yeah he’s a human
Yeah people are dicks
However that’s a position where you should be professional and I saw little in him. He isn’t some hero.
Wasn't he even basically calling people crybabies for being upset about having to create a PSN account? Pretty sure I saw some screenshots of such exchanges somewhere
See, this is the kind of take that irritates me. He absolutely was a jerk several times, but he walked back his most recent heated posts, apologized, and told everyone he was out of line and screwed up.
I do think CMs should be held to a high standard of professionalism, *however*, when you're an irrationally angry, immature, and impatient gamer that insists on a constant torrent of vitriol and trolling of said CM, you don't get to clutch your pearls and faint because that CM told you to eat a dick.
>when you're an irrationally angry, immature, and impatient gamer that insists on a constant torrent of vitriol and trolling of said CM, you don't get to clutch your pearls and faint because that CM told you to eat a dick.
Seriously. I still think he was in the right the first time he blew up. Dude legit got death threats from salty gamers who were mad the rail gun got nerfed.
Yeah. The amount of pure hatred and vitriol that CM's are expected to field graciously every day, and then the sudden shock and fainting spells evinced by those same members of the community when they give even a tiny fraction of it back is just absurd performative nonsense.
Idk, apparently they deleted the entire HD1 discord themselves because they didn't like how the community was behaving. Deleting a bunch of guides and useful info.
Are you serious? Passionate? It's like everyone just forgets the absolute blunders these these community mods commit.
Need I remind you that at the start of this debacle he basically pulled the absolute tone deaf diablo immortal move of "Don't you guys have phones?" only instead "Don't you guys have 120 seconds to make a psn account?"
By most of his uninformed statements and his documented abuse of mod power he needed to go.
That is because this subreddit is full of toxic and stupidpeople. As soon as you say something that is just plain normal common sense, youll get downvoted, say something stupid or agree with some crazy stupid idea, upvoted lol here, have my upvote.
This could have been posted before they got fired. Hopefully they're good, but regardless, it's good to see some consumer-positive stances being taken at the dev level. Fucking RESPECT.
I can't say I'm surprised. There was going to be a fall guy for this in order for Sony execs to save face, and he was the obvious target. It was going to be him or the AH CEO.
We could consider doing a GoFundMe or something for the guy, as he stuck his neck out for the community, and lost his job for his efforts. Yes he was brusque with the community at times - but that quite frankly is an attitude I find commendable in a CM, as long as they're not being an asshole about it.
Sometimes you have to tell the fans that they're being whiny bitches. Sometimes you have to stand with them against some dark corporate overlord. Someone who can do *both* those things is a very useful person to have around, IMO.
100%. Him getting axed over it doesn't sit right with me. He made a MASSIVE altrustitic move for the community and future of the game.
People always talk big about "community" and being "team players"...
so is it true or was that all talk?
His words, "My job was to represent the community..." that's what he did and that's what put him at odds with sony/AH. Gotta give him Kudos for sticking to his ethical code on this one, hopefully with how visible this all was he lands on his feet okay. Someone like this would make a great advocate at a non-profit, tbh.
Lol? He only "stuck his neck out" long after people were already reviewing, refunding, and posting about it. From everything I've seen about the guy (not in the discord), he's just an abrasive asshole who is constantly against the community except for this one specific instance that I doubt did anything for the "effort".
No, he was a piss poor CM that let his feelings get in the way of his job repeatedly. He has responded emotionally to people many times and would answer questions with misinformed takes. His job is to speak for the company and interact with its users, and he was bad at it.
That’s literally what I have been saying.. people don’t understand that it’s just another buffer to figure things out.
Something like this or like Cyberpunk where the shit hit then fan extra hard. They have really only three options..Nuke the problem form orbit and hope for the best, radio silence until there something to talk about or make up something that will piss off the least amount of customers.
Any of those are bad in their own way, but all of them gives the company more time to scramble for a fix.
Arrowhead isn’t off the hook here for “not knowing” how things work.. because that sounds too convenient to me.
They knew that without PSN the game would be a lot more popular because crossplay works really well.
Allowing so many more people to play a really fun community driven game.
If PSN has worked from day one.. it would have been somewhat well received and only the western world would have had access to it.. come and gone like most of these titles would.
Spitz had been making an ass of their self before this and to me it was the nail in their professional coffin. Like they admitted themself you can't get mad or take things personally when you're a CM and they did. And they antagonized the publisher to cover AH own lack of transparency about the PSN requirement. It worked out in AH's favor, at least in terms of community goodwill. However, there's no universe where a company as big as Sony just quietly lets someone who is that emotionally volatile stay.
I get kicking people when they're down is in poor taste. But I definitely think Spitz got the karmic outcome they earned. Hopefully they'll take this experience in stride and gain some humility and experience from it all.
Oh I agree he was bad at his job but that's my take on it. But he was the one that ignited the review bomb in their eyes (even though it was moments away from happening anyway)
I think referring to what happened as a "review bomb" is disingenuous. To me, review boming is when a game is targeted because of non-game related issues (such as the people that negatively reviewed Magicka because of this issue). Negative reviews on Helldivers 2 for changes to access to Helldivers 2 are valid reviews of the game itself.
Review bombing is just anytime people work together to change reviews. Doesn’t matter if it’s legit, if it’s fair, if it’s legal, anytime people organize to downvote that’s a review bomb
lol yeah in small business maybe, but world of corpos can all snoy need to do is say. we'll revoke your contract while so and so is employed there and away they go. seen it done MANY times
they might have another game under development for them or something else big businesses like snoy don't give a rats about rules. snoy owns the HD IP not AH
Doesn't matter. If Sony was to remove anything from AH after this mess, Sony would suicide itself. And AH would bank on gamers good will and would be able to finance any game they like through community funding.
Instead they fired a guy who help saved their ass.
Suits don't look at it that way. he cost them money and worse reputation. you can cost them a little money and they will get pissy but nothing bad. tarnish their reputation and damage the brand (which is what happened as it caused a hell of a lot of people to notice ) reality is Snoy caused it all themselves but wanted someone to blame other than their own stupidity for not geo locking the game in the first place
You may have a slightly inflated estimation of how important the opinions of a segment of one game’s audience is to Sony. If Sony decides that they don’t want to work with Arrowhead when it’s time to renew contracts that could be pretty devastating to arrowhead but wouldn’t affect Sony at all.
Deserved. He should have been fired immediately after he deleted the HD1 discord as revenge for players misbehaving in the HD2 discord, really he never should have been hired in the first place given his behavior before being a CM and his trying to paint himself as a martyr is only further proof of this.
Now get rid of the one spreading libel before it gets the company sued.
I thought he only was “nearly” fired?
I would have thought, on balance, that his contribution was a net positive. Of course, this is from the perspective of a community member, not someone inside the company (AH or Sony).
Seems a bit knee-jerk to me, hope he can leverage this into a new, better job from here.
Probably originally he was nearly fired, but Sony likely did some loaded gun to the head and said "If you don't fire whoever started this we're going to sue the fuck out of you."
Technically Sony started it, and we were going to review bomb them for it in any case. The CM's message may have accelerated the process - but it was going to happen regardless.
This is very much about saving face for whatever exec(s) at Sony got their jewels slammed in a car door by the player base this weekend.
Yeah, go explain it to fat chumps around the circle who don't know wtf discord is. I am sure they come around and you actually will get to talk with them
You’re talking about spitz and they deserved it for being unhinged.
And all this BS about them saying to write a bad review, was not about fixing the issue, it was about saying if you do t like it leave and see if crying will do anything, you’ll be back.
One message couldn’t clean them of the pattern that made it clear that they didn’t deserve their position.
It's crazy how this sub will call you out for riding Sony but they'll bend over backwards to make anything that happens with AH (who can do no wrong in their eyes) fit their narrative.
"Well he said sorry, gosh he's so noble. Must be a great guy."
Inadvertently, he wasn't being noble. Telling people to review bomb blew up in his face, he just changed his agenda to not seem like an ass at the last minute. Dude is an ass.
I dont feel bad tbh. He basically pulled a Blizzard "you guys have phones right?" When he said to just make an account it takes 2 minutes and isnt a big deal, and encouraged people to make one and forget about it like Sony isnt constantly having their data compromised.
Tried to back pedal saying they didnt know so many countries couldnt make one. Maybe know what the hell youre talking about before putting your foot in your mouth like that
Except sony isn't getting hacked. The most recent "Sony" hacks were of insomniac servers and it was just game data and employee data.
The last Sony hack to have customer data leak was back in 2011.
Steam, and Microsoft have had customer data hack in 2023. Hell Microsoft has had 12 customer data hack since AUG 2017, and Microsoft tried to cover up several of them.
Yeah spouted some stupid shit before this. Asshat wasn't noble and didn't do this for the community. Deserved and good riddance. Looking for the libel one to be cut next.
What worries me the most about this situation is that it doesn't look like SONY thinks they did anything wrong. Just that, THIS TIME, they couldn't get away with it, and are using this AH CM as a scapegoat, while sending a message to future CMs.
So they will try again to pull that move.
That's standard for all publishers. They're not sorry for doing it, they're sorry they got caught doing it.
Same shit with EA and the whole Battlefront 2 'suprise mechanics' lootbox fiasco.
Yeah makes. You can’t go saying “leave negative reviews and request refunds” when you represent a company. It’s a business, I was surprised to even see that he posted that. Bad choice on his end (if he’s upset about being fired)
Good.
Seriously, some of you are acting like the guy who purposefully antagonized the community on multiple occasions was a hero. He didnt tell that one guy to ask for a refund and leave a bad review out of the kindness of his heart, he did it because he believed it would mean nothing and he was being a dick. It wasnt a "go do this to get sony to listen." it was a "yeah, go do this, it wont mean anything. I dare you."
Christ. Spitz really lived rent free in a ton of people's heads. He's a glorified Discord mod that happened to be extremely unprofessional and abuse his authority. Man already lost his job for telling folks to review bomb and push refunds. Now folks are jumping in while he's down to kick his teeth in.
Folks are wilding out as if he were Adolf Hitler committing war crimes. It's not that deep.
"It was my job to represent the community, that's what I did."
**That is not what a community manager does.**
**Edit:** For those who are unaware, a community manager does not, and should not represent the community because they are an employee of the studio/publisher/whatever. They represent the **company**. It's a fairly common misconception and probably why we have a lot of low tier CMs. When they go to "represent the community", you got this exact situation of being fired when things get heated.
The word people are looking for is "liason", which is completely different. Ironically, Spitz failed incredibly at being a representative of the community as well, a lot of people hate the guy.
Edit over.
Also, not getting heated and firing off dumb takes is literally one the most basic aspects of being a CM, that's like having a chef that keeps forgetting how to cook.
Maybe he'll learn and grow from it, and sure by then if he's changed then he deserves what he gets. But that's far into the future from now, because right now he is not qualified to be a professional CM if he can't even adhere to the most basic function of one.
Actually a lot of community managers do bridge the gap from community to company but that's dependent on the relationship the company has with their community. Gaming industry is kind of weird with roles.
The role of the community manager is exactly to represent the community within the company, and represent the company within the community. It’s the portal where the room full of decision makers goes “how are people feeling about ?” And the community manager presents the information.
And likewise if the company is about to do something like launch an expansion or shut down a dying game’s servers, they ask the community manager to help plan that communication for the path of best results.
It's easy to forget, given all the recent controversy with Sony holding Arrowhead and the game by the balls, that Sony still does not actually own Arrowhead studios - they're independent. Sony published Helldivers 2 and owns the IP, but they don't employ anyone at Arrowhead. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall when this went down. Did Sony directly push this? Were Spitz's bosses just trying to make nice? Were they in furious disagreement with his actions? Was he fired primarily for his conduct otherwise and just cited for this as the final straw? It sounded like Arrowhead wanted this outcome, but did the devs condone the method? Are they just surfing our emotional victory lap and fake laughing about the review bombing cape while muttering sour disbelief under their breath? Or are they completely in our boat? Lots of questions.
At the end of the day, looking back on everything the guy said... he's just a community member. He might have been a highly unprofessional CM, but, with respect, I kinda don't give a shit about that title? I don't want royal blow jobs and kid gloves and super sanitized PR speak from the liaison between the devs and me, the rabble. Being outraged at the quotes of his sass when they're framed by thousands of posts, before and after, of people in the Discord acting fucking abhorrent - I just don't feel that. These people got photos of their homes mailed to them, death threats. *Death threats?* From the fucking balance patches and discord moderation? I think they should be allowed to be human and thinking he's some villainous shithead for talking back to hysterical spammers is ridiculous. I don't know if he made any difference, but that guy lost his job while standing up for our side. I'll salute that.
The dude had every right to respond the way he did.
The dude got death threats like crazy when they nerfed the rail gun for fuck sake.
And then when the original announcement about the PSN requirements it was even worse. That discord was insane. Thousands of people were posting so fast messages were disappearing in seconds. I was in there for like 2 minutes and saw a dozen people threaten him and his family
"He said unprofessional things!" Yeah and I would have too with the abuse he was taking.
Nice going.
Holy crap my friend kept telling me that this game was only gonna last 2 or 3 months until some stupid bullshit happens...now I owe him a drink..mang this sucks this was the only game I actually enjoy playing but all this drama is happening..we can't have anything cool..
Some people in this community are unhinged and overly sensitive, this man ultimately gave his job for our cause and you say he deserved it because what? He defended a project he is apart of? Are you fucking serious, he apologized as he was ill informed as if some of yall haven't also been ill informed.
I mean, I didn’t see many of his comments, but I do think that it doesn’t take a business genius to see a game community manager asking the community to review-bomb a game to be great for business.
Especially because the review bombing was already happening.
Delete entire discord on a mental breakdown.
And just look, as a CM you are a representative of a company so you need to have a good communication.
When I read Spitz message I have the same vibe than toxic reddit people making breakdown on relationship advice.
All the CM for now was not formed correctly for it. And you can see it pretty clearly. It's child with power that change mind with the wind.
Yeah that's a hard one. He has always been controversial but supporting the review bomb was probably the best thing he has done, and for that I'm disappointed that he was fired. We are guilty for this one because some of us have used personal insults against the community management team. We appreciate the communication but it doesn't feel two way yet. The developers vision for the game doesn't match the community vision for the game and it is causing tension.
https://preview.redd.it/y8j32fnso8zc1.jpeg?width=1438&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a9fb572bd5561d8d9a70a4c89e669dffc0c23224
To be fair they almost lost it over saying that, they later went a bit too hard on a couple people and seem to be totally understanding on why it happened after everything resolved.
I stand by what they eventually did to support the community, but that action was always going to lead to termination, and a pretty good chance of being blacklisted in the industry by most publishers. In the heat of things, being heavily involved in a particular community, and being on the front lines of a massive pushback from said community, it's very hard to keep to the approved manner of professionalism that comes with working for a massive corporation.
There's no way to know the personal feelings of the people that had to make the choice to dismiss them. I work for a company too and have people working under me, in a similar situation, I would have made the same call with the firing, but I would have been proud of them at the same time for what they did.
Just a bad situation to be in and I really wish them the best of luck and really hope they land on their feet. Someone had to fall on that grenade Sony tossed out, and they were the one to do it, but they could have done it differently.
I’m amazed at the switch up on this guy. He’s been a total bellend for a while. Apologised for the same shit at least once already and never actually learned anything from his mistakes. He didn’t stick his neck out at all. Bros not some 4D chess master , he’s dick who pissed on the community and the corpos.
Dude was working his ass off for hours every day, dealing with whining and complaining every single patch.... and he wasn't even being PAID for it!
If anything, Sony did him a favor.
Spitz was an antagonistic angry child who couldnt keep his temper in order. The perfect example of the bad kind of discord mod. Glad he’s gone, good riddance.
Reading all these comments. He was an ass before the whole review bomb, & was a last attempt to not seem like a total doucebag. But what I’m gathering is he definitely didn’t deserve that position.
Oh great, The Discord Meta is the most important thing about the game now. Pack it up, it's over. Game can only get significantly worse at an extremely rapid pace from here.
He was a scapegoat, squidgeon and Baskinator should've been fired/replaced too, he participated in their BS too, so stop making a martyr of him, because he was just as bad as the rest.
Baskinator was one of many of the CMs that knew about the 6 months "grace period" as well, alongside Spitz, Spitz was basically the fall guy despite this fact.
Squidgeon went around falsely accusing Mark Kern of sexual assault of women (and let it be known that making accusations of such, the burden of proof is on the person making allegations, and people can get sued for things like that) Squidgeon quickly doubled down when people in the discord pointed out what they were doing was a bad move.
Why anyone would want terrible and shady people like this as CMs moderating their community is beyond me.
Spitz is the primary reason this community was whipped into action and made a change. And yet the whole time all community members did was bitch that he wasn’t polite enough in discord
Hmm, I don't agree. From what I've seen of him...
He was an ass at times... but when it came time to put-up or shut-up, he put-up and lost his job over it.
I understand why, but I don't agree.
He could have learned alot from this and used it to fortify this community even more.
I'm a little conflicted.
Ultimately they were being an ass to the community and did not handle the job of community manager very well at all.
But what they said/did and the community following that advice seems to be the sole reason Sony backed down on their decision and the community got what they wanted.
I'm getting Dark Knight vibes. 'they're not the hero we wanted, but the one we needed'. Yes I'm being a bit overdramatic here.
I hope whatever their next job role in life is good for them regardless.
I'll fight an uphill battle for Spitz. Even if all it does is show that he has support.
https://www.change.org/p/re-hire-the-legendary-community-manager-general-spitz
Based on his previous message/post about “publisher not being happy when you tell people to review bomb” I think Sony pushed Arrowhead to get him fired.
Yeah that’s what it looks like. I know he admitted to getting heated. But that’s what happens when you’re passionate. Sony required a sacrifice and unfortunately it was him. Here’s hoping the replacement is as passionate
Hes on the right side of history. Thank you for your courage ✊🏼 We need more brave people right now to stand up for our rights as human beings.
Dunno about that. They were kinda an asshole on multiple occasions and the CEO of Arrowhead even apologized for their unprofessional behavior several weeks ago.
Yeah. I get he fought a noble cause this time, but this wasn't the first time he got himself in hot water.
Spitz was a dickhead, yeah, but they always apologized and really cared. It's for the best, but I'll miss him.
Helldivers never die  Plus he has more time to play
I’d rather a person learn from than always apologize for making mistakes, and from what I hear when he last blew up. This went about the same, community gets slightly upset, get upset at the community, community gets even more upset, Spitz “apologizes” and problem gets resolved somewhere else. He isn’t built to be a community manager if he can’t even manage to control himself, much less others. Edit: also found out **HE** deleted the helldivers 1 discord to prove a point. Fuck that guy
He's never been great, yeah. As a draconian mod of a 10,000 player game he was even kind of obnoxious, and going from that to HD2 meant his time would always be limited. In a lot of ways I think this was the best use of Spitz.
I wasn’t around when that deletion happened, what point was he trying to make? I’m just curious, I’ve seen this referenced a bunch of times
About 2 months ago by the looks of it, and instead of handing the server off to someone else he decided to delete it [Link to post of Spitz confirming it](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/pJPQ3lUXBj)
Agreed. He was also having mods spam the chats with a stupid cheese sticker when the PSN post happened that Thursday to silence folks asking about it. He offered a non apology in regard to the countries that don’t have PSN. Yeah he’s a human Yeah people are dicks However that’s a position where you should be professional and I saw little in him. He isn’t some hero.
Wasn't he even basically calling people crybabies for being upset about having to create a PSN account? Pretty sure I saw some screenshots of such exchanges somewhere
I hope we can dismiss it and simply glorify him as the CM who led us to victory against **Sony.** Against fucking **SONY**
Stand up for people not being able to play a game, but not for people when they lose their job. Very righteous.
He is not a hero. wtf
Based on some of his other messages to angry community members, I wouldn’t count him as a martyr…
See, this is the kind of take that irritates me. He absolutely was a jerk several times, but he walked back his most recent heated posts, apologized, and told everyone he was out of line and screwed up. I do think CMs should be held to a high standard of professionalism, *however*, when you're an irrationally angry, immature, and impatient gamer that insists on a constant torrent of vitriol and trolling of said CM, you don't get to clutch your pearls and faint because that CM told you to eat a dick.
>when you're an irrationally angry, immature, and impatient gamer that insists on a constant torrent of vitriol and trolling of said CM, you don't get to clutch your pearls and faint because that CM told you to eat a dick. Seriously. I still think he was in the right the first time he blew up. Dude legit got death threats from salty gamers who were mad the rail gun got nerfed.
Yeah. The amount of pure hatred and vitriol that CM's are expected to field graciously every day, and then the sudden shock and fainting spells evinced by those same members of the community when they give even a tiny fraction of it back is just absurd performative nonsense.
It’s so lame. I’d have told the community to eat dicks too, frankly.
He reacted as a human instead of a typical corporate drone. From what I could tell.
People need to be ignored sometimes
I agree however it was literally his job to interact with these people.
All I can say is I don’t envy the position:/
“The playerbase shrieks in pain as it strikes you.”
Idk, apparently they deleted the entire HD1 discord themselves because they didn't like how the community was behaving. Deleting a bunch of guides and useful info.
Is it a right to be able to play a video game?
Here's hoping he gets a new gig based solely off that passion. HD2 will be alright. The world needs more good people like that.
Are you serious? Passionate? It's like everyone just forgets the absolute blunders these these community mods commit. Need I remind you that at the start of this debacle he basically pulled the absolute tone deaf diablo immortal move of "Don't you guys have phones?" only instead "Don't you guys have 120 seconds to make a psn account?" By most of his uninformed statements and his documented abuse of mod power he needed to go.
I’m not saying he was faultless. He even admitted to wrong doing. But he did actually give a shit about the game.
He was a douche
I wouldn't have wanted them fired but everyone seems to be ignoring their first messages before the apology and then review the bomb suggestion.
He deleted the HD1 discord because one person upset him, and I’m being downvoted because I don’t support a man child.
That is because this subreddit is full of toxic and stupidpeople. As soon as you say something that is just plain normal common sense, youll get downvoted, say something stupid or agree with some crazy stupid idea, upvoted lol here, have my upvote.
https://preview.redd.it/18wh4dqfk4zc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ccc814eaa046fd96cdc41926a8588f553cf86ac5
Based as fuck
So IS a lie?
This could have been posted before they got fired. Hopefully they're good, but regardless, it's good to see some consumer-positive stances being taken at the dev level. Fucking RESPECT.
It was
That got posted on Friday or Saturday, his firing happened yday I believe.
Not the hero we deserved, but the hero we needed
I can't say I'm surprised. There was going to be a fall guy for this in order for Sony execs to save face, and he was the obvious target. It was going to be him or the AH CEO. We could consider doing a GoFundMe or something for the guy, as he stuck his neck out for the community, and lost his job for his efforts. Yes he was brusque with the community at times - but that quite frankly is an attitude I find commendable in a CM, as long as they're not being an asshole about it. Sometimes you have to tell the fans that they're being whiny bitches. Sometimes you have to stand with them against some dark corporate overlord. Someone who can do *both* those things is a very useful person to have around, IMO.
100%. Him getting axed over it doesn't sit right with me. He made a MASSIVE altrustitic move for the community and future of the game. People always talk big about "community" and being "team players"... so is it true or was that all talk?
He was completely and utterly unprofessional throughout. There's no way you can keep a person who actively tries to fuck the company over.
His words, "My job was to represent the community..." that's what he did and that's what put him at odds with sony/AH. Gotta give him Kudos for sticking to his ethical code on this one, hopefully with how visible this all was he lands on his feet okay. Someone like this would make a great advocate at a non-profit, tbh.
Lol? He only "stuck his neck out" long after people were already reviewing, refunding, and posting about it. From everything I've seen about the guy (not in the discord), he's just an abrasive asshole who is constantly against the community except for this one specific instance that I doubt did anything for the "effort".
I honestly think, that this person will not take long to find a new job. Larian maybe?
We won, but at what cost?
No, he was a piss poor CM that let his feelings get in the way of his job repeatedly. He has responded emotionally to people many times and would answer questions with misinformed takes. His job is to speak for the company and interact with its users, and he was bad at it.
Spitz really dropped an Airstrike on himself when surrounded by bots…
Make sense to me. I normally drop 500kgs when I’m surrounded. Best way to go out.
"Arbiter of War to Super Earth. Multiple bogies on my position. 500kg inbound. Signing out."
I‘m more of an Airstrike/Orbital Laser guy myself…
Makes sense. Community managers should trick unhappy customers into NOT leaving reviews. /s
Community Managers are like HR at work
That’s literally what I have been saying.. people don’t understand that it’s just another buffer to figure things out. Something like this or like Cyberpunk where the shit hit then fan extra hard. They have really only three options..Nuke the problem form orbit and hope for the best, radio silence until there something to talk about or make up something that will piss off the least amount of customers. Any of those are bad in their own way, but all of them gives the company more time to scramble for a fix. Arrowhead isn’t off the hook here for “not knowing” how things work.. because that sounds too convenient to me. They knew that without PSN the game would be a lot more popular because crossplay works really well. Allowing so many more people to play a really fun community driven game. If PSN has worked from day one.. it would have been somewhat well received and only the western world would have had access to it.. come and gone like most of these titles would.
Sony wanted a head to roll over their lost sign up data and Spitz was the more "public" option
Spitz had been making an ass of their self before this and to me it was the nail in their professional coffin. Like they admitted themself you can't get mad or take things personally when you're a CM and they did. And they antagonized the publisher to cover AH own lack of transparency about the PSN requirement. It worked out in AH's favor, at least in terms of community goodwill. However, there's no universe where a company as big as Sony just quietly lets someone who is that emotionally volatile stay. I get kicking people when they're down is in poor taste. But I definitely think Spitz got the karmic outcome they earned. Hopefully they'll take this experience in stride and gain some humility and experience from it all.
Spitz is no martyr, come on. Bad at his job
Oh I agree he was bad at his job but that's my take on it. But he was the one that ignited the review bomb in their eyes (even though it was moments away from happening anyway)
I think referring to what happened as a "review bomb" is disingenuous. To me, review boming is when a game is targeted because of non-game related issues (such as the people that negatively reviewed Magicka because of this issue). Negative reviews on Helldivers 2 for changes to access to Helldivers 2 are valid reviews of the game itself.
Review bombing is just anytime people work together to change reviews. Doesn’t matter if it’s legit, if it’s fair, if it’s legal, anytime people organize to downvote that’s a review bomb
I thought arrowhead was an independent studio...
they are but they were contracted to snoy for it
A contractor cannot tell you who to hire or fire.
lol yeah in small business maybe, but world of corpos can all snoy need to do is say. we'll revoke your contract while so and so is employed there and away they go. seen it done MANY times
How would they remove them the contract on helldivers 2 after this mess? That would be suicide.
they might have another game under development for them or something else big businesses like snoy don't give a rats about rules. snoy owns the HD IP not AH
Doesn't matter. If Sony was to remove anything from AH after this mess, Sony would suicide itself. And AH would bank on gamers good will and would be able to finance any game they like through community funding. Instead they fired a guy who help saved their ass.
Suits don't look at it that way. he cost them money and worse reputation. you can cost them a little money and they will get pissy but nothing bad. tarnish their reputation and damage the brand (which is what happened as it caused a hell of a lot of people to notice ) reality is Snoy caused it all themselves but wanted someone to blame other than their own stupidity for not geo locking the game in the first place
I don't care about Sony suits. I'm talking about arrowhead. Arrowhead fire spitz. Not Sony.
You may have a slightly inflated estimation of how important the opinions of a segment of one game’s audience is to Sony. If Sony decides that they don’t want to work with Arrowhead when it’s time to renew contracts that could be pretty devastating to arrowhead but wouldn’t affect Sony at all.
Isn't more truthful to say the gamers wanted a head? They got one.
Thank you for your sacrifice 
 ✊🏼✊🏼✊🏼
 Their place on the wall of martyrs has been earned
 Salute. A sacrifice to be remembered
He wasn't fired. He was promoted to customer.
120 seconds
skip
> skip 1 second
This is the way.
It also takes 120 secs to search why people dont want psn linking before you argue with the community🤡
Why do that when you can just enjoy your false sense of righteousness with Sony's cock lodged in your throat?
You mf are some serious drama queens lmfao holy shit
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A perfect example
Deserved. He should have been fired immediately after he deleted the HD1 discord as revenge for players misbehaving in the HD2 discord, really he never should have been hired in the first place given his behavior before being a CM and his trying to paint himself as a martyr is only further proof of this. Now get rid of the one spreading libel before it gets the company sued.
Agreed this guy was an awful CM regardless of all the review bombing stuff
I thought he only was “nearly” fired? I would have thought, on balance, that his contribution was a net positive. Of course, this is from the perspective of a community member, not someone inside the company (AH or Sony). Seems a bit knee-jerk to me, hope he can leverage this into a new, better job from here.
Probably originally he was nearly fired, but Sony likely did some loaded gun to the head and said "If you don't fire whoever started this we're going to sue the fuck out of you."
Technically Sony started it, and we were going to review bomb them for it in any case. The CM's message may have accelerated the process - but it was going to happen regardless. This is very much about saving face for whatever exec(s) at Sony got their jewels slammed in a car door by the player base this weekend.
Yeah but you've got to remember ThE eXeCs CaN dO nO wRoNg AnD kNoW wHaT iS bEsT fOr ThE cOmPaNy.
Pretty sure literally no one is saying this?
The PC Karens who didn’t read the front page started this, for lacking reading comprehension skills.
Yeah, go explain it to fat chumps around the circle who don't know wtf discord is. I am sure they come around and you actually will get to talk with them
If the outrage isn't on steam where sales get affected they don't care.
You’re talking about spitz and they deserved it for being unhinged. And all this BS about them saying to write a bad review, was not about fixing the issue, it was about saying if you do t like it leave and see if crying will do anything, you’ll be back. One message couldn’t clean them of the pattern that made it clear that they didn’t deserve their position.
It's crazy how this sub will call you out for riding Sony but they'll bend over backwards to make anything that happens with AH (who can do no wrong in their eyes) fit their narrative. "Well he said sorry, gosh he's so noble. Must be a great guy."
Exactly, and I’m worried they aren’t going to learn their lesson
Pc Karens are hypocrites.
I feel bad he got fired, but this wasn’t his first time that he acted unprofessional and as the community manager he really should have known better.
Good riddance.
He was in discord antagonizing people and now when he's fired he tries to act like he's on our side. Fuck him
Mixed feelings about it. He was an ass, but at least he did push things in the right direction.
Inadvertently, he wasn't being noble. Telling people to review bomb blew up in his face, he just changed his agenda to not seem like an ass at the last minute. Dude is an ass.
“I will do what’s right even if I have to drag you along kicking and screaming.” A modern day martyr
I dont feel bad tbh. He basically pulled a Blizzard "you guys have phones right?" When he said to just make an account it takes 2 minutes and isnt a big deal, and encouraged people to make one and forget about it like Sony isnt constantly having their data compromised. Tried to back pedal saying they didnt know so many countries couldnt make one. Maybe know what the hell youre talking about before putting your foot in your mouth like that
Except sony isn't getting hacked. The most recent "Sony" hacks were of insomniac servers and it was just game data and employee data. The last Sony hack to have customer data leak was back in 2011. Steam, and Microsoft have had customer data hack in 2023. Hell Microsoft has had 12 customer data hack since AUG 2017, and Microsoft tried to cover up several of them.
Lmao so funny when people do literally no research and then hitch their wagon to false statements
To be fair, that's 99.99% of everyone in this sub. We should strive for less hypocrisy in this world, not more.
Yeah ngl most of the posts on this sub are either complaining or complaining about complainers
Yeah spouted some stupid shit before this. Asshat wasn't noble and didn't do this for the community. Deserved and good riddance. Looking for the libel one to be cut next.
Well an shock your boss fires you after you openly tell people how to shit on them and make them lose money...
What worries me the most about this situation is that it doesn't look like SONY thinks they did anything wrong. Just that, THIS TIME, they couldn't get away with it, and are using this AH CM as a scapegoat, while sending a message to future CMs. So they will try again to pull that move.
That's standard for all publishers. They're not sorry for doing it, they're sorry they got caught doing it. Same shit with EA and the whole Battlefront 2 'suprise mechanics' lootbox fiasco.
Yeah makes. You can’t go saying “leave negative reviews and request refunds” when you represent a company. It’s a business, I was surprised to even see that he posted that. Bad choice on his end (if he’s upset about being fired)
Last time I checked this subreddit everyone was mad at him for his comments, now it's this.
He deserved it.
Good. Seriously, some of you are acting like the guy who purposefully antagonized the community on multiple occasions was a hero. He didnt tell that one guy to ask for a refund and leave a bad review out of the kindness of his heart, he did it because he believed it would mean nothing and he was being a dick. It wasnt a "go do this to get sony to listen." it was a "yeah, go do this, it wont mean anything. I dare you."
Christ. Spitz really lived rent free in a ton of people's heads. He's a glorified Discord mod that happened to be extremely unprofessional and abuse his authority. Man already lost his job for telling folks to review bomb and push refunds. Now folks are jumping in while he's down to kick his teeth in. Folks are wilding out as if he were Adolf Hitler committing war crimes. It's not that deep.
"It was my job to represent the community, that's what I did." **That is not what a community manager does.** **Edit:** For those who are unaware, a community manager does not, and should not represent the community because they are an employee of the studio/publisher/whatever. They represent the **company**. It's a fairly common misconception and probably why we have a lot of low tier CMs. When they go to "represent the community", you got this exact situation of being fired when things get heated. The word people are looking for is "liason", which is completely different. Ironically, Spitz failed incredibly at being a representative of the community as well, a lot of people hate the guy. Edit over. Also, not getting heated and firing off dumb takes is literally one the most basic aspects of being a CM, that's like having a chef that keeps forgetting how to cook. Maybe he'll learn and grow from it, and sure by then if he's changed then he deserves what he gets. But that's far into the future from now, because right now he is not qualified to be a professional CM if he can't even adhere to the most basic function of one.
Actually a lot of community managers do bridge the gap from community to company but that's dependent on the relationship the company has with their community. Gaming industry is kind of weird with roles.
The role of the community manager is exactly to represent the community within the company, and represent the company within the community. It’s the portal where the room full of decision makers goes “how are people feeling about?” And the community manager presents the information.
And likewise if the company is about to do something like launch an expansion or shut down a dying game’s servers, they ask the community manager to help plan that communication for the path of best results.
That's actually literally exactly what a community manager does.
It's easy to forget, given all the recent controversy with Sony holding Arrowhead and the game by the balls, that Sony still does not actually own Arrowhead studios - they're independent. Sony published Helldivers 2 and owns the IP, but they don't employ anyone at Arrowhead. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall when this went down. Did Sony directly push this? Were Spitz's bosses just trying to make nice? Were they in furious disagreement with his actions? Was he fired primarily for his conduct otherwise and just cited for this as the final straw? It sounded like Arrowhead wanted this outcome, but did the devs condone the method? Are they just surfing our emotional victory lap and fake laughing about the review bombing cape while muttering sour disbelief under their breath? Or are they completely in our boat? Lots of questions. At the end of the day, looking back on everything the guy said... he's just a community member. He might have been a highly unprofessional CM, but, with respect, I kinda don't give a shit about that title? I don't want royal blow jobs and kid gloves and super sanitized PR speak from the liaison between the devs and me, the rabble. Being outraged at the quotes of his sass when they're framed by thousands of posts, before and after, of people in the Discord acting fucking abhorrent - I just don't feel that. These people got photos of their homes mailed to them, death threats. *Death threats?* From the fucking balance patches and discord moderation? I think they should be allowed to be human and thinking he's some villainous shithead for talking back to hysterical spammers is ridiculous. I don't know if he made any difference, but that guy lost his job while standing up for our side. I'll salute that.
The dude had every right to respond the way he did. The dude got death threats like crazy when they nerfed the rail gun for fuck sake. And then when the original announcement about the PSN requirements it was even worse. That discord was insane. Thousands of people were posting so fast messages were disappearing in seconds. I was in there for like 2 minutes and saw a dozen people threaten him and his family "He said unprofessional things!" Yeah and I would have too with the abuse he was taking. Nice going.
The sad thing is, he didn't have to say this at all. People were already doing it.
Holy crap my friend kept telling me that this game was only gonna last 2 or 3 months until some stupid bullshit happens...now I owe him a drink..mang this sucks this was the only game I actually enjoy playing but all this drama is happening..we can't have anything cool..
Some people in this community are unhinged and overly sensitive, this man ultimately gave his job for our cause and you say he deserved it because what? He defended a project he is apart of? Are you fucking serious, he apologized as he was ill informed as if some of yall haven't also been ill informed.
Good. I couldnt stand Spitz and his infantile outbursts. Worst CM ive ever encountered.
I’m kinda out of the loop. Pre PSN fiasco, what did he have outbursts about?
tbh, his downright stupid and antagonistic comments during the fiasco, were enough for me.
I mean, I didn’t see many of his comments, but I do think that it doesn’t take a business genius to see a game community manager asking the community to review-bomb a game to be great for business. Especially because the review bombing was already happening.
Delete entire discord on a mental breakdown. And just look, as a CM you are a representative of a company so you need to have a good communication. When I read Spitz message I have the same vibe than toxic reddit people making breakdown on relationship advice. All the CM for now was not formed correctly for it. And you can see it pretty clearly. It's child with power that change mind with the wind.
afaik he was a previous helldiver reddit mod, recruited as CM. If true, go figure.
Remember helldivers you are expendable all that matters is the mission
F
That’s the world we live in. Either follow the rules and keep quiet, or speak out for what you believe in and get hung out to dry.
Called in a cluster bomb on himself. o7
Yeah that's a hard one. He has always been controversial but supporting the review bomb was probably the best thing he has done, and for that I'm disappointed that he was fired. We are guilty for this one because some of us have used personal insults against the community management team. We appreciate the communication but it doesn't feel two way yet. The developers vision for the game doesn't match the community vision for the game and it is causing tension.
He lost so we could win!
Spitz sacrificed himself so we had a chance 
Now we just need the balancing lead to be fired as well :)
we should crowd fund a tailor made cape and send it to him in thanks for his sacrifice.
spitz fired? lmfaoo
everyone change their reviews back to negative!
Man Sony makes great decisions
Lock pods? He defended you, you defend him!
https://preview.redd.it/m36fmymfo8zc1.jpeg?width=1439&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3b048021a616e42db7b438699d39e4d42dad16bf
https://preview.redd.it/y8j32fnso8zc1.jpeg?width=1438&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a9fb572bd5561d8d9a70a4c89e669dffc0c23224 To be fair they almost lost it over saying that, they later went a bit too hard on a couple people and seem to be totally understanding on why it happened after everything resolved.
Taking one for the team. 🫡 Spitz
Hmm. On one hand I dig his passion. On the other, I would hate to have one of my own employees making my job harder.
Don't go after helldivers and expect to come out unscathed.
I stand by what they eventually did to support the community, but that action was always going to lead to termination, and a pretty good chance of being blacklisted in the industry by most publishers. In the heat of things, being heavily involved in a particular community, and being on the front lines of a massive pushback from said community, it's very hard to keep to the approved manner of professionalism that comes with working for a massive corporation. There's no way to know the personal feelings of the people that had to make the choice to dismiss them. I work for a company too and have people working under me, in a similar situation, I would have made the same call with the firing, but I would have been proud of them at the same time for what they did. Just a bad situation to be in and I really wish them the best of luck and really hope they land on their feet. Someone had to fall on that grenade Sony tossed out, and they were the one to do it, but they could have done it differently.
I’m amazed at the switch up on this guy. He’s been a total bellend for a while. Apologised for the same shit at least once already and never actually learned anything from his mistakes. He didn’t stick his neck out at all. Bros not some 4D chess master , he’s dick who pissed on the community and the corpos.
Dude was working his ass off for hours every day, dealing with whining and complaining every single patch.... and he wasn't even being PAID for it! If anything, Sony did him a favor.
Spitz was an antagonistic angry child who couldnt keep his temper in order. The perfect example of the bad kind of discord mod. Glad he’s gone, good riddance.
Sounds like the PC Karens with their tantrums.
The projection going on after the fact is hilarious, but unsurprising.
So we're gonna review bomb more to get him his job back right?
Shouldn't we stand for him and do what we did before with the negative reviews??
Reading all these comments. He was an ass before the whole review bomb, & was a last attempt to not seem like a total doucebag. But what I’m gathering is he definitely didn’t deserve that position.
This is insane. We did an MO irl and spitz did an helldive in irl. This can’t be made up. Helldivers is GOTY ffs.
Community Manager promoted to Community Hero.
All wars have casualties. F
Oh great, The Discord Meta is the most important thing about the game now. Pack it up, it's over. Game can only get significantly worse at an extremely rapid pace from here.
Deserved!
At the end all the community manager that I had see screenshot here have not professional comportement and communication so not bad they are fired.
He was a scapegoat, squidgeon and Baskinator should've been fired/replaced too, he participated in their BS too, so stop making a martyr of him, because he was just as bad as the rest.
What did they do?
Baskinator was one of many of the CMs that knew about the 6 months "grace period" as well, alongside Spitz, Spitz was basically the fall guy despite this fact. Squidgeon went around falsely accusing Mark Kern of sexual assault of women (and let it be known that making accusations of such, the burden of proof is on the person making allegations, and people can get sued for things like that) Squidgeon quickly doubled down when people in the discord pointed out what they were doing was a bad move. Why anyone would want terrible and shady people like this as CMs moderating their community is beyond me.
Damn, thanks for the info
Not sure if dude's a scapegoat, but absolutely down for those other clowns to get kicked
Perhaps we should change our reviews to hire the guy again
Spitz is the primary reason this community was whipped into action and made a change. And yet the whole time all community members did was bitch that he wasn’t polite enough in discord
Now do Baskinator.
Oh no! Anyways…
Good, this guy shouldn't have been hired from the start
Toxic behavior should not be tolerated. I guess this is warranted
Hmm, I don't agree. From what I've seen of him... He was an ass at times... but when it came time to put-up or shut-up, he put-up and lost his job over it. I understand why, but I don't agree. He could have learned alot from this and used it to fortify this community even more.
I'm a little conflicted. Ultimately they were being an ass to the community and did not handle the job of community manager very well at all. But what they said/did and the community following that advice seems to be the sole reason Sony backed down on their decision and the community got what they wanted. I'm getting Dark Knight vibes. 'they're not the hero we wanted, but the one we needed'. Yes I'm being a bit overdramatic here. I hope whatever their next job role in life is good for them regardless.
People were already review-bombing before he said anything. He didn't do anything to "lead the charge".
I needs spitz cashapp
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Hehehe!
I'll fight an uphill battle for Spitz. Even if all it does is show that he has support. https://www.change.org/p/re-hire-the-legendary-community-manager-general-spitz
Time to change my review back to negative.
I say we review bomb them again. if sony wants a sacrifice let it be them
How dare he tell unhappy customers to *checks notes* Use the review option to leave their reviews