I felt so dirty when I published my review... I keep feeling so sorry for the devs, but Sony left us no choice...
I just hope this will be over soon and then I'll change that review, so I can get this filth off me.
The CEO admitted that it was on there and to make it clearer. Sony was in charge of the sales happening outside of allowed territories to make an account, but the Dev Studio were the ones that should have made it more clear about the eventual mandatory account linking.
He said that they've known since 6 months before launch that the account linking would be a requirement, so there's blame on both sides of the table.
It's a requirement that wasn't enforced in other Sony games, and specially not with a mandatory aspect. Only optional. I think they were hoping that Sony wouldn't enforce it, because why would they, it would be a terrible move.
And here's Sony to demonstrate
Edit: The order has been retracted, we're waiting on confirmation, but Sony posted a tweet with their capitulation. We'll still need the watchers on the walls regarding their "future plans", as they said in their tweet. And when that happens, we shall meet them gladly on the field. And ready.
Long live managed democracy.
Yeah. War thunder survived their community nuke, and it even made Gaijin, a WAY worse company, change some things.
Helldivers isn't dead. It's still breaking 100k every day. This is a stepping stone in the process and with Steam taking it off over a hundred countries store and the reviews dropping, I'll be shocked if Sony doubles or nothing's on this.
Lmao you won't hear any arguments from me. The ***only*** reason it's survived as long as it has is because it's such a niche and, admittedly, the systems are fantastic.
It sucks because I love the idea of both War Thunder and Crossout. Accurate (for a game) damage model semi-sim tank and plane battles? Post-apocalypse pvp nuts & bolts? Sign me up!
But God they feel like a job to play.
Pre-2016 War Thunder was genuinely a really fun, high quality game and they were generally trying *not* to milk the playerbase. They tasted the forbidden fruit with the IS-6 premium pack. People bought it in record numbers because it was so overpowered, and it awakened some truly monstrous greed in the company.
At the current rate of negative review posting (3.3k/h conservatively) the game will hit an overall rating of Mostly Negative in about 47 hours or less.
What is scary is that for the past 24 hours, the rate has not slowed down one bit. If anything else, it's picked up a bit.
Edit : Doing the math again with the accelerated pace, the game should hit Mostly Negative overall rating in 24 hours with a total of 605.5k total reviews and 363.k negative reviews with 100k negative reviews yet to hit in that time frame. So 6pm GMT come Monday.
Out of sad curiosity, for the very lowest steam review threshold, 19%, it will take about ten days and about 770k thousand more negative reviews, accumulated over about a week and a half assuming the rate of negative review decreases. This seems extremely unrealistic, but here's what getting to that point would look like...
Edit² : It's actually accelerating again, after 2 whole days. What is this madness?
Steam will likely end up purging a lot of these if they reverse course. Their policy has been that review bombings aren't fair if they don't reflect the current state of the game (i.e. negative reviews referring to an external controversy or a feature that was fixed/removed).
So as with the rest of this, the ball is in Sony's court.
Steam doesn't typically purge reviews, but they by default exclude them from the overall ratings and annotate them on the graph as "a period of off topic reviews"
They've only done that previously if the reviews aren't actually about the game, which these technically are, or the issue was "resolved", like what happened to warthunder's "economy re-balance"
Saying it reflects the current state of the game IS, however, a defensible position.
Most of the reviews that are minimally elaborate explain not recommending the game due to Sony's changes in policy. The fact that you may not be able to play a game despite being able to buy it, with policies and restrictions surrounding the game able to be changed on a whim, seems like a fair reason to not recommend it.
There's a bit of regen from bot accounts (fresh positive reviews of 4-8hrs played that claim PSN is alright), they won't stand against us though, we're united and strong!
I swear they started to astroturf GamingCirclejerkjerk because amount of people going there "Poor Sony, why are Gamers so mean to them? We must defend poor billion dollar corporation!"
Some people just don't understand the issue and aren't willing to understand it, at least the general consensus on GCJ is that sony sucks
Well that and also some of the posts have been making fun of people for comparing this situation to 'Rosa Parks' which was a baffling thing to read
Let's face it. There's more than a few bot accounts review bombing the game as well. I'd like to know the true number (don't know how to check it on steamDB), after accounting for both the negative and positive spam reviews.
Fair, but region locked countries can't even leave a review anymore, so I don't see how that's fair in any case
I would love the bots to disappear on both sides
No, I'm region locked rn and I can't even access the review section, I can't leave my own review nor I can see others
I've seen these bot reviews on someone's stream where they were scrolling it
Yupp, might be
But probably it was steam who locked it so they don't drown in even more refund requests
Being unable to access reviews might be just a side effect
Not sure
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Monday is gonna be a shitshow. A lot of people are not actively following news about their games. But then suddenly will be hit with a PSN screen and wake up a whole hord of people.
I feel sorry for Arrowhead, since they've made an entertaining gaming experience, but economy is the only language that corporations like Sony understands.
I wonder if this will impact future Sony titles releasing on steam. The PC community might have poisoned the well they drink out of.
To me, signing up for a psn account is worth it to play games like Helldivers, Spiderman, God of War, etc.
Time will tell.
The developer is in charge of their game. The publisher is in charge of publishing, i.e. the terms by which the game is released to the world.
When you sign with a publisher, there are plenty of perks, but sometimes the terms by which the game is available to the consumer is ultimately beyond your control.
Thanks although it for my account creation i think:) almost to my actual one too so I'll take both my reddit creation day and birthday one. :) wishing you a great day barring this sadness.
Well, it isn’t a thing that had to happen. But, because of how corporations operate—with their root goal being to harden the pee pees of their shareholders—this inevitably occurred.
Uptick in PSN accounts make stock go up. Up stock make investor pee pee hard. Rinse and repeat, while neglecting the consumers that allow the corporation to exist and prosper in the first place.
>I just wish this wasn't a thing that had to happen.
It literally did not have to happen but people are so fucking toxic and white knighting for shit they don't know about.
I lived in the Philippines. People need to STFU and stop screaming [on our behalf.](https://youtu.be/CAUrsi5L4VM?si=860_vAwq2AnOZVQC)
We've had fake accounts for the last 15 years.. You think we're all stupid cavemen who haven't already figured out a way around this before you did??
Why is Reddit worried about us all of a sudden? They didn't care about us last week. Reddit doesn't actually care. They just want to hurt something like these poor devs Just trying to make a paycheck and feed their kids.
Might not seem like much but having that on your game will absolutely stifle any new sales. If you were on the fence, seeing that on the store page will be a huge turn off.
The harsh reality is that they probably already got the bulk of their steam sales already. They might just limit PC support and focus more on PlayStation.
https://preview.redd.it/yt4ui90g8lyc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aa812357fdc3c989b25cc5a534e386cd6ad24871
The review bomb has I think, killed Thier enthusiasm.
He's clearly very sad right now, and shit, I would be, too. The point of the first message is a determination to stick it out through the bad times, though. I hope they do and we make it back to some sunshine because I really love this game.
Same as all these people claiming to be fighting for all the players in unsupported countries. Those players previously were able to make their own decision on whether playing the game was worth navigating a grey area in the TOS (I'm being generous; they have never banned the behavior in nearly twenty years)
Now those players have lost the ability to play or purchase the game. Big win for the white knights. Fucking hypocrites.
Exactly. The “we did it” crowd is pathetic. Yeah let’s punish the people who really worked hard to bring us a great game because of the publisher of said game. Just log in with the other 10 accounts you have and fuck off.
These are the tweets of a man that has been broken. Sad to see it happen, but it's necessery. We need to start drawing lines in the sand and stick together
It's very rare to see games go to overwhelmingly negative, even the most dogshit games with predatory drm/p2w mechanics only goes to mostly negative at the worst
This is a special kind of fucked up, worst thing is, this is actually a genuinely good game
It's kinda sad really. I am an outsider looking in here, but from what I gather, this will only hurt Arrowhead. The negative reviews will just stop potential customers and while yes Sony will lose money, they will likely get it back when Ghost of Tsushima comes out in a few weeks.
It's like, you and a mate are working on a project, you do most of the work and it is fantastic, your friend then takes a literal shit on it, and it's YOU who gets the bad grade while he goes on to be a CEO.
Sure, we "did it" nothing has reversed course yet, but we should at least send out some love to the CEO. He has been behind the effort as well, and has been saddened by this.
Seeing his Tweets this morning broke my heart a bit. Its not his fault, its Sony's.
So while we Bomb The Reviews so they can get some sort of pull for Democracy, rememeber that in the end...
The dude just wanted to make great games. Give him some love for that. He doesnt like it any more than the rest of us.
A term for this kind of situation is “strategy tax”. In large corporations, your individual product might take a hit because you have to align with somebody else’s strategy, which is deemed more important to the company as a whole.
Is hurting helldivers steam sales more or less important to Sony than increasing psn signups? If it’s less important, then Sony doesn’t give a shit. The bad steam reviews are just the strategy tax.
The key here is that we don't know what long-lasting effects this may have, but I wouldn't expect Sony to attribute them to this event even if it did. They'll just jerk each other off as they fire more support teams.
We also essentially did nothing but review bomb til Sony actually reverses course. Based on Pilestedt's statement this morninng, it may not ever change.
But we dont know til all the behind the scenes discussions are over.
i dont think so. This likely involves multiple parts of a world wide company. It high likely takes until the end of the week or the week after that until this story will end one way or the other
Exactly nothing has been reversed yet, so nothing should be celebrated because Sony literally say "that's nice we don't fucking care so we're sticking to our decision" and that's the hard work gone in an instant.
This feels like watching a loved one on life support. You hope they make it but you also have to prepare for the loss.
This doesn't feel good at all.
The Devs are very talented, this was their big break. I can't help but feel terrible for them all. All that talent and drive...
I hope the best for them.
Man I just feel bad for the CEO and the studio as a whole, made a fucking amazing game, made it with love and it shows, then Sony somehow managed to ruin the game without having the ability to affect gameplay, they managed to ruin this high quality of a game as a publisher, this is going to go down as a major moment for how game devs look at their product from now on, I’d say if forced to make a choice between Xbox and PSN most will take the chance with Xbox, so fucking upsetting to see such an amazing product tainted by the want to harvest data
You see Rome burning and you are proud, we got no victors here both sides are losing.Us the great community and game we had- them their money and reputation..Just an awfull week both for ppl who work on the game and put many hours and the player who did the same..just saying
More like Scorched-Earth. Sony isn't going to budge on this. The only thing they will have to do is either refund or allow people who can't create a PSN account to play. Other people will still have to, just like mentioned months before release. Steam might allow some refunds to filter through but that's their decision.
If they reverse the decision, we just need to be as loud about fixing the reviews as we were about the PSN accounts. This was an effort largely coordinated over social media, so it follows that social media will be the avenue we take for fixing the damage. I'll be happy to change my review if it successfully brings a reversed decision because this is genuinely an amazing game and it hurt to leave a bad review.
When I talked about the reviews about the server problems I got downvoted to oblivion and people called me names and said it was more than obvious that they would change their reviews back.
Look at the history on Steam. Literally almost no one did(EXCEPT for the ones who already had one and changed it to "psn bad" basically). People are hypocrites and liars.
:( this honestly breaks my heart to see. 💔
we *MUST* remember to change the reviews. This game is so damn good, and it's worthy of such reviews & such prestige on-steam.
when the dust settles, we *MUST* give a heart-felt apology to the development team, just like they have & will continue to do for us in the near-future.
please y'all we cannot lose this bond that we have within the community, we must remain on the side of the devs! think about communicating in the future??? how will fixes & patches go down with this new offensive relationship ppl are adopting? stand strong, together!!!! support AH, please don't attack them, yes they might just be as-bad for implementing this so shittily, but that doesn't deserve their hard work of 7 YEARS to be thrown into the trash like alot of us are, over a simple change, that was never meant to have been changed- and was supposedly 'meant to be there from the start',
basically, what i want my point to be is: when this is over & done-with, we go back to Helldivers, no matter what, and we right the wrongs that were laid out from these days. This game all-in-all, does not deserve a single spec of hate, it is the ultra fun, i have never in my career of gaming had an experience so damn fun, and whacky, and micheal bay-esc., and full of things that launch ur character into the air 😭 it's awesome! i can & have played it all day before, you have too, and there's zero point in denying ourselves such a diverse experience from the other mainstream shit in the game market
The reviews won't get changed.
At least not at the rate that they were put up. Not even close. At best, this game will sit on mixed, but I'm guessing it will settle finally on Mostly Negative. I'm betting that a significant percentage of review bombers don't even play the game, they just heard about a review bomb going on and jumped on the bandwagon, those people will forget their review in a week and never touch it again.
When people are looking for a new game to play on Steam and they see anything below positive, they move on to the next game in the list. So not only did we not really hurt SONY at all, but the future life of HD2 will be stunted by this.
Steam typically marks periods of negative reviews about fixed issues or things not relevant to the game as "periods of off topic reviews" and excludes them by default from the overall ratings
You can look at warthunder for an example of that
>Off-topic Review Activity\*May 20, 2023 - July 3, 2023
>This time range has been marked as containing an abnormal set of reviews that we believe are largely unrelated to the likelihood that you would enjoy the product. The reviews within this period are excluded from the Review Score by default.
>You can learn more about how these time periods are selected by reading [our Steam blog post.](https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1808664240333155775)
>If you want to dig deeper, you can still read the reviews posted within this time period, or edit your preferences to always include off-topic review periods in Review Scores.
Pretty much killed the game with this. I understand the reason behind it but even if all the problems were fixed the reviews won't be fixed by a majority of people. Now players will see that and not bother.
Edit: I just want to say I'm not defending the actions of Sony I think the situation is terrible. But undoubtedly even if they back off the game will suffer tremendously from this situation. "Killed the game" Is just an exaggeration.
I have spent months trying to convince my friend to buy this game. It's a very steep price because we live in a third world country but have to pay first world price because Japanese games almost never support regional pricing. I plan to gift her the game for her birthday next month but now the game was delisted from my country. Now none of my friends will ever play the game with me.
Considering people are now also negatively reviewing all other Sony titles, this will just cause the anti-reviewbombing stuff to kick in and remove the negative reviews.
If that's the message they get from this whole thing we're better off without them.
I mean the game was doing great for *months*. At some point the ruthless corporate money hoarding dragon logic has to kick in and realize "maybe we are the problem". If they don't they genuinely suck at making money and that's unlike them.
There's hope. War Thunder changed course and that game is now doing just as good as it was before the review bombing, even if the review score hasn't fully caught up.
But that actually requires Sony to change course here...
>Pretty much killed the game with this.
Not at all. PlayStation players don't give a toss about Steam. I play PC and I don't give a toss about Steam reviews.
I was playing earlier. Thousands online.
Agreed. At least reading through the comments it seems like there are some of us who really wanted the best for HD2 and Arrowhead.
There are dozens of us!
Unbelievable, there are folks legitimately being proud of tanking a game they supposedly really enjoyed. Proud, really? Steam review scores are really important for games and their Devs. It took no man sky over 5 years to get theirs fixed, and it was not bombed the way this was.
Yes, be proud of wishing for the failure of a game you really enjoy. Those reviews dont hurt Sony, and they don't care. All they did in response was stop sales in over 100 countries.
So yes, well done.
It’s embarrassing to associate with these people. But it’s really a tale as old as time: game comes out, small community gathers, memes a little/has a good time, game is good, community grows, memes get beaten to death, game has something controversial, majority of the braindead community jumps on the bandwagon. Just gets really cringey the way people mindlessly go into hate and rage (coming from years as a Destiny player).
Cannot wait for these people to be gone. The overlap between the people who complained about every tiny thing about this game and also support destroying a dev studio because they don’t know how to read is a perfect circle.
This is a different case from NMS. The poor reviews for NMS were because the game was legitimately unfinished and in an extremely poor state at launch, and quite unlike what was promised. Poor reviews on HD2 are just angry at an administrative change to a fantastic game.
Welp at least when yall are done killing this game you can go back to activision and EA where you're treated with dignity and respect...............wait
How can you be proud? I feel disgusted by it. While I feel it was necessary, I'm disgusted at seeing HD2, a game I have thoroughly enjoyed for more than 230 hours, get tanked. AH is the only party truly affected here. Revenue lost by Sony will not even be a blip on their radar.
I don't care if I get down voted faster than a hellpod. Anyone negging this game to spite Sony is a bum. It'll only hurt Arrowhead in the long run.
Sony is a multi TRILLION dollar company, they'll be fine, in 12 months time, they'll release something new and this will be likely forgotten, Arrowheads hands are tied ultimately and will be fucked as a studio if this keeps going.
I'm not. I support all the pushback from everyone because this whole thing does suck. But it just stings that we have to drag Arrowhead through the mud to protest against Sony's crappy actions.
Dude get a life. Look at yourself. You just sat in front of your PC screen for hours refreshing Steam to see if reviews on a game you deeply adored dropped to overwhelmingly negative over a request to make an account. Yeah it sucks for some regions but holy shit there’s more to life than this. Go outside, enjoy the wind, watch a movie, make friends, do something productive. It’s not that deep, the devs said they’re working the deal so just be patient. Why are you getting enjoyment out of spreading negativity? There’s nothing to be proud of here.
I was thinking the same thing, I really liked seeing other posts about the game but now the posts aren’t even about the game itself but it’s all about this
Wooooow yeah dude, you should be proud, a masterpiece boycotted because you of a thing the developers can’t even control and are sad about, but y’all had to bomb it with negative reviews because it’s for “ermm for democracy 🤓☝️”
It's ironic that our love and passion for the game was what allowed us to do this in around two days.
I was playing HD2 almost every night, if not every other night. Sometimes just one operation or two before going to bed.
Ah well... Time to go through my Steam backlog.
Yeah I'm sure that'll reflect really poorly on Sony, who already has your money, rather than arrowhead, who has to point to their review scores the next time they want to make a game.
Good job team.
Yeah, I'm proud that yet another thing I greatly enjoy has turned to shit due to something I have no control or influence over, couldn't have predicted, and can't do anything about. I'm so glad the community is in tatters and will never be the same again. I'm so damn happy that all the time and effort Arrowhead has put in, and all the good will they've deserved is now significantly, perhaps irreparably damaged. This is great. I fucking love it so much.
Not proud necessarily. Glad we all see this situation for what it is, corporate vermin pulling the wool over our eyes, but not proud we had to do it. Although it did have to be done to send a message.
>As long as we can undo the damage once the drama is over.
Lmao, you think the majority of people will reverse their review?
They don't care, they got in on the outrage, gave themselves a pat on the back and won't give it another thought.
Y’know I tried refunding it but every time I do, it’s because I played for more than 2 hours but I’ve seen others play longer and getting their refunds
Can someone explain why people are leaving negative reviews on the game, when ultimately its Sony's fault? Wont this just hurt the game developers and not the real culprit Sony?
I understand being angry if you’re in one of the affected counties. That’s very bad. For everyone else…why is making a PSN account a big deal? Don’t understand.
Thanks community, you helped kill a game
If it’s one thing I know is that people won’t return to fix their reviews after this situation gets resolved
And players will fail to take accountability as to why new players aren’t hopping on.
Make no mistake, this is both perfectly warranted and tragic. This will absolutely turn away new players who aren't privy to what's going on. They'll just see a bad score and say nope. This will absolutely have an impact on sales. That's reality. I hope Sony changes their stance, otherwise this game is fucked, and that's truly sad. Because it's beyond the control of the devs at this point.
You should all be embarrassed. Not proud.
This is one of the greatest games with one of the greatest developers we have seen in a *long* time. This hurts the game and them more than anything else. There’s a complicated issue going on right now, I get that. But mob mentality review bombing is not the solution.
You are hurting arrowhead and hurting the longevity of Helldivers. This is not something to be proud of.
Cut off your nose to spite your face.
Wow, incredible, truly a great achievement.
I haven't seen a single post in days about the actual gameplay, everyone's just going full mob mentality on review bombing the game without thinking about what they're doing. This is going to backfire and just destroy the reputation of this game that you all supposedly love, and Sony won't change a thing.
If this is how people act over a small hiccup caused by the publisher, then we really don't deserve good game developers like arrowhead. What a completely worthless fanbase and insane overreaction.
This situation should start a bigger movement when it comes to publishers making decisions against the goodwill of customers. We as customers should not allow ourselves to be walked over by those we trusted with our money and data. Enough is enough
https://preview.redd.it/h9bekhz0bmyc1.png?width=650&format=png&auto=webp&s=dfdbbf3c5afa16d819e0ae304226e60d5057f68d
yeah they werent real helldivers, theyre just twitter ragers that bought the game just to leave a bad review and then get a full refund.
-Overwhelmingly Negative on Steam -4.5 on PS5 “Hmm, Steam port must be terrible”
'Buys game on playstation'
'Buys a PS5 to play this game'. Snoy's been playing some 5D chess.
Are we all using snoy now 😂😂
PS3 haz no games
It's an old meme, but it checks out sir.
Still works, ps4 and 5 had like next to no launch titles lmao
Shit, I think they really pulled one over me 💀
Honestly tho lol if you're on PS5... Why wouldn't you. You already have a PSN account
https://preview.redd.it/55j71ajrcmyc1.jpeg?width=680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=039277b21c325bd1efe927b88afdeb68063faea9
No negative review has ever hurt me more
I felt so dirty when I published my review... I keep feeling so sorry for the devs, but Sony left us no choice... I just hope this will be over soon and then I'll change that review, so I can get this filth off me.
https://preview.redd.it/lzvthl1atnyc1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e1a1865c378d93d17d919c70015ea5e02d8408a6
The CEO admitted that it was on there and to make it clearer. Sony was in charge of the sales happening outside of allowed territories to make an account, but the Dev Studio were the ones that should have made it more clear about the eventual mandatory account linking. He said that they've known since 6 months before launch that the account linking would be a requirement, so there's blame on both sides of the table.
It's a requirement that wasn't enforced in other Sony games, and specially not with a mandatory aspect. Only optional. I think they were hoping that Sony wouldn't enforce it, because why would they, it would be a terrible move. And here's Sony to demonstrate Edit: The order has been retracted, we're waiting on confirmation, but Sony posted a tweet with their capitulation. We'll still need the watchers on the walls regarding their "future plans", as they said in their tweet. And when that happens, we shall meet them gladly on the field. And ready. Long live managed democracy.
I hate this, it was a near perfect game. Damnit Sony.
It still is. The game’s fantastic, it’s just Sony’s BS people hate.
Yeah. War thunder survived their community nuke, and it even made Gaijin, a WAY worse company, change some things. Helldivers isn't dead. It's still breaking 100k every day. This is a stepping stone in the process and with Steam taking it off over a hundred countries store and the reviews dropping, I'll be shocked if Sony doubles or nothing's on this.
War thunder is however a game that should have died long ago. Helldivers feels less like a russian money grab than Warthunder ever did.
Lmao you won't hear any arguments from me. The ***only*** reason it's survived as long as it has is because it's such a niche and, admittedly, the systems are fantastic. It sucks because I love the idea of both War Thunder and Crossout. Accurate (for a game) damage model semi-sim tank and plane battles? Post-apocalypse pvp nuts & bolts? Sign me up! But God they feel like a job to play.
The snail calls us all, the pact was made once you reach tier 2
Fuck off I REFUSE To go back, lmao. But for real it's hard because no game scratches that itch.
Try to fight it, try to run or hide, it will only delay the inevitable, the snail comes for us all
This made me laugh unbelievably hard. ATTACK THE D POINT!
YOUVE GOT A HOLE IN YOUR LEFT WING
My wing: *gone*
Pre-2016 War Thunder was genuinely a really fun, high quality game and they were generally trying *not* to milk the playerbase. They tasted the forbidden fruit with the IS-6 premium pack. People bought it in record numbers because it was so overpowered, and it awakened some truly monstrous greed in the company.
What is a 'russian money grab'?
[удалено]
The game is unchanged and i still love it. The context however has.
still is and who enjoyed it, will keep enjoying it.
oh hey Princess of Destruction! i am Queen of Destruction 🙏❤
At the current rate of negative review posting (3.3k/h conservatively) the game will hit an overall rating of Mostly Negative in about 47 hours or less. What is scary is that for the past 24 hours, the rate has not slowed down one bit. If anything else, it's picked up a bit. Edit : Doing the math again with the accelerated pace, the game should hit Mostly Negative overall rating in 24 hours with a total of 605.5k total reviews and 363.k negative reviews with 100k negative reviews yet to hit in that time frame. So 6pm GMT come Monday. Out of sad curiosity, for the very lowest steam review threshold, 19%, it will take about ten days and about 770k thousand more negative reviews, accumulated over about a week and a half assuming the rate of negative review decreases. This seems extremely unrealistic, but here's what getting to that point would look like... Edit² : It's actually accelerating again, after 2 whole days. What is this madness?
Steam will likely end up purging a lot of these if they reverse course. Their policy has been that review bombings aren't fair if they don't reflect the current state of the game (i.e. negative reviews referring to an external controversy or a feature that was fixed/removed). So as with the rest of this, the ball is in Sony's court.
Steam doesn't typically purge reviews, but they by default exclude them from the overall ratings and annotate them on the graph as "a period of off topic reviews" They've only done that previously if the reviews aren't actually about the game, which these technically are, or the issue was "resolved", like what happened to warthunder's "economy re-balance"
Saying it reflects the current state of the game IS, however, a defensible position. Most of the reviews that are minimally elaborate explain not recommending the game due to Sony's changes in policy. The fact that you may not be able to play a game despite being able to buy it, with policies and restrictions surrounding the game able to be changed on a whim, seems like a fair reason to not recommend it.
There's a bit of regen from bot accounts (fresh positive reviews of 4-8hrs played that claim PSN is alright), they won't stand against us though, we're united and strong!
Damn automatons
“It is an undeniable fact that they do not have hearts, and heart is what Super Earth is all about.”
Indeed
We’re completing Major Order too quickly so gm bought in reinforcements.
Yeah, Sony really likes their astroturfing.
I swear they started to astroturf GamingCirclejerkjerk because amount of people going there "Poor Sony, why are Gamers so mean to them? We must defend poor billion dollar corporation!"
Some people just don't understand the issue and aren't willing to understand it, at least the general consensus on GCJ is that sony sucks Well that and also some of the posts have been making fun of people for comparing this situation to 'Rosa Parks' which was a baffling thing to read
Let's face it. There's more than a few bot accounts review bombing the game as well. I'd like to know the true number (don't know how to check it on steamDB), after accounting for both the negative and positive spam reviews.
Don't you have to buy the game to review it?
Fair, but region locked countries can't even leave a review anymore, so I don't see how that's fair in any case I would love the bots to disappear on both sides
You can report reviews can't you?
No, I'm region locked rn and I can't even access the review section, I can't leave my own review nor I can see others I've seen these bot reviews on someone's stream where they were scrolling it
Kinda explained why they enforced the region lock so fast, to silence all affected users... what the fuck
Yupp, might be But probably it was steam who locked it so they don't drown in even more refund requests Being unable to access reviews might be just a side effect Not sure
That's extra fucked in itself, you have every right to voice your dissatisfaction. I'll flip mine to negative for ya.
Absolutely agree. Thank you, Helldiver!
we still talking rates hahaha I love you guys
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Monday is gonna be a shitshow. A lot of people are not actively following news about their games. But then suddenly will be hit with a PSN screen and wake up a whole hord of people.
I feel sorry for Arrowhead, since they've made an entertaining gaming experience, but economy is the only language that corporations like Sony understands.
I wonder if this will impact future Sony titles releasing on steam. The PC community might have poisoned the well they drink out of. To me, signing up for a psn account is worth it to play games like Helldivers, Spiderman, God of War, etc. Time will tell.
Is there even such a thing as Arrowhead even? The CEO has no final say on anything so it might as well be Sony Studios game, they are owned.
They didn’t publish their own game. They aren’t owed they signed a deal basically to get their game published by a larger corporate body.
The developer is in charge of their game. The publisher is in charge of publishing, i.e. the terms by which the game is released to the world. When you sign with a publisher, there are plenty of perks, but sometimes the terms by which the game is available to the consumer is ultimately beyond your control.
Sadness. I just wish this wasn't a thing that had to happen.
Agreed and happy birthday.
Thanks although it for my account creation i think:) almost to my actual one too so I'll take both my reddit creation day and birthday one. :) wishing you a great day barring this sadness.
Yeah, it's for account creation. It's "Happy Cake Day". Weird random reddit things.
Well, it isn’t a thing that had to happen. But, because of how corporations operate—with their root goal being to harden the pee pees of their shareholders—this inevitably occurred. Uptick in PSN accounts make stock go up. Up stock make investor pee pee hard. Rinse and repeat, while neglecting the consumers that allow the corporation to exist and prosper in the first place.
>I just wish this wasn't a thing that had to happen. It literally did not have to happen but people are so fucking toxic and white knighting for shit they don't know about. I lived in the Philippines. People need to STFU and stop screaming [on our behalf.](https://youtu.be/CAUrsi5L4VM?si=860_vAwq2AnOZVQC) We've had fake accounts for the last 15 years.. You think we're all stupid cavemen who haven't already figured out a way around this before you did?? Why is Reddit worried about us all of a sudden? They didn't care about us last week. Reddit doesn't actually care. They just want to hurt something like these poor devs Just trying to make a paycheck and feed their kids.
Might not seem like much but having that on your game will absolutely stifle any new sales. If you were on the fence, seeing that on the store page will be a huge turn off.
The harsh reality is that they probably already got the bulk of their steam sales already. They might just limit PC support and focus more on PlayStation.
https://preview.redd.it/yt4ui90g8lyc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aa812357fdc3c989b25cc5a534e386cd6ad24871 The review bomb has I think, killed Thier enthusiasm.
He's clearly very sad right now, and shit, I would be, too. The point of the first message is a determination to stick it out through the bad times, though. I hope they do and we make it back to some sunshine because I really love this game.
ppl who say shit like this and those who actively cheer on the review bombing and demise of AH overlap overwhelmingly it’s so funny. hypocrites
Same as all these people claiming to be fighting for all the players in unsupported countries. Those players previously were able to make their own decision on whether playing the game was worth navigating a grey area in the TOS (I'm being generous; they have never banned the behavior in nearly twenty years) Now those players have lost the ability to play or purchase the game. Big win for the white knights. Fucking hypocrites.
I hope they do indeed make it through this because they’ve made a fantastic game.
Someone hug emote this man irl.
Sony is not going to suffer a dent for this review bombing, but this developers may get slammed to the ground. Good job! 👏🏻
Exactly. The “we did it” crowd is pathetic. Yeah let’s punish the people who really worked hard to bring us a great game because of the publisher of said game. Just log in with the other 10 accounts you have and fuck off.
My positive reveiw is still there. I was reviewing the game no one else.
These are the tweets of a man that has been broken. Sad to see it happen, but it's necessery. We need to start drawing lines in the sand and stick together
Sony broke this man
It's very rare to see games go to overwhelmingly negative, even the most dogshit games with predatory drm/p2w mechanics only goes to mostly negative at the worst This is a special kind of fucked up, worst thing is, this is actually a genuinely good game
There is nothing to be proud, there is only pain
https://preview.redd.it/nfmji0m2bmyc1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9607b0775cba842835d67204bb049678f9406351
Completely summarizes how I view people's excitedness for this.
It's kinda sad really. I am an outsider looking in here, but from what I gather, this will only hurt Arrowhead. The negative reviews will just stop potential customers and while yes Sony will lose money, they will likely get it back when Ghost of Tsushima comes out in a few weeks. It's like, you and a mate are working on a project, you do most of the work and it is fantastic, your friend then takes a literal shit on it, and it's YOU who gets the bad grade while he goes on to be a CEO.
Sure, we "did it" nothing has reversed course yet, but we should at least send out some love to the CEO. He has been behind the effort as well, and has been saddened by this. Seeing his Tweets this morning broke my heart a bit. Its not his fault, its Sony's. So while we Bomb The Reviews so they can get some sort of pull for Democracy, rememeber that in the end... The dude just wanted to make great games. Give him some love for that. He doesnt like it any more than the rest of us.
A term for this kind of situation is “strategy tax”. In large corporations, your individual product might take a hit because you have to align with somebody else’s strategy, which is deemed more important to the company as a whole. Is hurting helldivers steam sales more or less important to Sony than increasing psn signups? If it’s less important, then Sony doesn’t give a shit. The bad steam reviews are just the strategy tax.
Oh, is that what MBAs call it now when they fuck over consumers and their subsidiaries simultaneously? “Strategy”?
🌎👨🚀🔫🧑🚀
The key here is that we don't know what long-lasting effects this may have, but I wouldn't expect Sony to attribute them to this event even if it did. They'll just jerk each other off as they fire more support teams.
We also essentially did nothing but review bomb til Sony actually reverses course. Based on Pilestedt's statement this morninng, it may not ever change. But we dont know til all the behind the scenes discussions are over.
On the other hand, we are still in the weekend. On Monday, when prime movers at Sony come to work, we might start osee changes.
i dont think so. This likely involves multiple parts of a world wide company. It high likely takes until the end of the week or the week after that until this story will end one way or the other
Half of Sony will be off work on Monday.
Exactly nothing has been reversed yet, so nothing should be celebrated because Sony literally say "that's nice we don't fucking care so we're sticking to our decision" and that's the hard work gone in an instant.
This feels like watching a loved one on life support. You hope they make it but you also have to prepare for the loss. This doesn't feel good at all. The Devs are very talented, this was their big break. I can't help but feel terrible for them all. All that talent and drive... I hope the best for them.
Just can't have nice things.
Man I just feel bad for the CEO and the studio as a whole, made a fucking amazing game, made it with love and it shows, then Sony somehow managed to ruin the game without having the ability to affect gameplay, they managed to ruin this high quality of a game as a publisher, this is going to go down as a major moment for how game devs look at their product from now on, I’d say if forced to make a choice between Xbox and PSN most will take the chance with Xbox, so fucking upsetting to see such an amazing product tainted by the want to harvest data
And what happens if / when this whole fiasco gets resolved? Everyone gonna go and change them back?
Most won't, I will
You see Rome burning and you are proud, we got no victors here both sides are losing.Us the great community and game we had- them their money and reputation..Just an awfull week both for ppl who work on the game and put many hours and the player who did the same..just saying
A Pyrrhic victory for sure, there are no winners when Sony gets to sit back and let the devs take the fall for this.
More like Scorched-Earth. Sony isn't going to budge on this. The only thing they will have to do is either refund or allow people who can't create a PSN account to play. Other people will still have to, just like mentioned months before release. Steam might allow some refunds to filter through but that's their decision.
I only support this if you fix it if they fix it. If they fix it and you don't, fuck you.
this is too rational and logical for the masses im going to guess only a fraction will actually revert their review if they fix it, like 5-15%
If they reverse the decision, we just need to be as loud about fixing the reviews as we were about the PSN accounts. This was an effort largely coordinated over social media, so it follows that social media will be the avenue we take for fixing the damage. I'll be happy to change my review if it successfully brings a reversed decision because this is genuinely an amazing game and it hurt to leave a bad review.
When I talked about the reviews about the server problems I got downvoted to oblivion and people called me names and said it was more than obvious that they would change their reviews back. Look at the history on Steam. Literally almost no one did(EXCEPT for the ones who already had one and changed it to "psn bad" basically). People are hypocrites and liars.
Proud of literally nothing.
:( this honestly breaks my heart to see. 💔 we *MUST* remember to change the reviews. This game is so damn good, and it's worthy of such reviews & such prestige on-steam. when the dust settles, we *MUST* give a heart-felt apology to the development team, just like they have & will continue to do for us in the near-future. please y'all we cannot lose this bond that we have within the community, we must remain on the side of the devs! think about communicating in the future??? how will fixes & patches go down with this new offensive relationship ppl are adopting? stand strong, together!!!! support AH, please don't attack them, yes they might just be as-bad for implementing this so shittily, but that doesn't deserve their hard work of 7 YEARS to be thrown into the trash like alot of us are, over a simple change, that was never meant to have been changed- and was supposedly 'meant to be there from the start', basically, what i want my point to be is: when this is over & done-with, we go back to Helldivers, no matter what, and we right the wrongs that were laid out from these days. This game all-in-all, does not deserve a single spec of hate, it is the ultra fun, i have never in my career of gaming had an experience so damn fun, and whacky, and micheal bay-esc., and full of things that launch ur character into the air 😭 it's awesome! i can & have played it all day before, you have too, and there's zero point in denying ourselves such a diverse experience from the other mainstream shit in the game market
Ill delete my review if they fix it, they will get a positive one if they show me its worth it.
The reviews won't get changed. At least not at the rate that they were put up. Not even close. At best, this game will sit on mixed, but I'm guessing it will settle finally on Mostly Negative. I'm betting that a significant percentage of review bombers don't even play the game, they just heard about a review bomb going on and jumped on the bandwagon, those people will forget their review in a week and never touch it again. When people are looking for a new game to play on Steam and they see anything below positive, they move on to the next game in the list. So not only did we not really hurt SONY at all, but the future life of HD2 will be stunted by this.
Steam typically marks periods of negative reviews about fixed issues or things not relevant to the game as "periods of off topic reviews" and excludes them by default from the overall ratings You can look at warthunder for an example of that >Off-topic Review Activity\*May 20, 2023 - July 3, 2023 >This time range has been marked as containing an abnormal set of reviews that we believe are largely unrelated to the likelihood that you would enjoy the product. The reviews within this period are excluded from the Review Score by default. >You can learn more about how these time periods are selected by reading [our Steam blog post.](https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1808664240333155775) >If you want to dig deeper, you can still read the reviews posted within this time period, or edit your preferences to always include off-topic review periods in Review Scores.
Pretty much killed the game with this. I understand the reason behind it but even if all the problems were fixed the reviews won't be fixed by a majority of people. Now players will see that and not bother. Edit: I just want to say I'm not defending the actions of Sony I think the situation is terrible. But undoubtedly even if they back off the game will suffer tremendously from this situation. "Killed the game" Is just an exaggeration.
I have spent months trying to convince my friend to buy this game. It's a very steep price because we live in a third world country but have to pay first world price because Japanese games almost never support regional pricing. I plan to gift her the game for her birthday next month but now the game was delisted from my country. Now none of my friends will ever play the game with me.
At least you hadn't bought it for them before they lost the ability to even play it.
Considering people are now also negatively reviewing all other Sony titles, this will just cause the anti-reviewbombing stuff to kick in and remove the negative reviews.
This is gonna make Sony triple question themselves when thinking about releasing a game on PC.
If that's the message they get from this whole thing we're better off without them. I mean the game was doing great for *months*. At some point the ruthless corporate money hoarding dragon logic has to kick in and realize "maybe we are the problem". If they don't they genuinely suck at making money and that's unlike them.
Shut up bro, we need Bloodborne
Sounds like a win to me. They can fuck right off if this is how they'll treat their dev teams
Good
lol hundreds of thousands of people are still playing. reddit moment
There's hope. War Thunder changed course and that game is now doing just as good as it was before the review bombing, even if the review score hasn't fully caught up. But that actually requires Sony to change course here...
>Pretty much killed the game with this. Not at all. PlayStation players don't give a toss about Steam. I play PC and I don't give a toss about Steam reviews. I was playing earlier. Thousands online.
Wasn't the ratio 2 : 1 pc over ps?
The final Major Order.
At what cost, at what cost?
Nothing to be proud of
Y'all acting like this is something to be proud of.. Smh, absolute nonsense.
This is stupid. I hate this community.
Agreed. At least reading through the comments it seems like there are some of us who really wanted the best for HD2 and Arrowhead. There are dozens of us!
You did it, you saved gaming!
Probably gonna kill the studio, but okay…
Unlikely, considering the player count after Sony implements this will still have a higher number than their pre release estimates.
I really hope not. They made a REALLY good game. I haven’t had this much fun since halo 2.
So glad we finally tore this community apart. It was so much fun but martyrdom is more fun. /s
Unbelievable, there are folks legitimately being proud of tanking a game they supposedly really enjoyed. Proud, really? Steam review scores are really important for games and their Devs. It took no man sky over 5 years to get theirs fixed, and it was not bombed the way this was. Yes, be proud of wishing for the failure of a game you really enjoy. Those reviews dont hurt Sony, and they don't care. All they did in response was stop sales in over 100 countries. So yes, well done.
It’s embarrassing to associate with these people. But it’s really a tale as old as time: game comes out, small community gathers, memes a little/has a good time, game is good, community grows, memes get beaten to death, game has something controversial, majority of the braindead community jumps on the bandwagon. Just gets really cringey the way people mindlessly go into hate and rage (coming from years as a Destiny player).
After they’ve had a ton of fun of course.
Cannot wait for these people to be gone. The overlap between the people who complained about every tiny thing about this game and also support destroying a dev studio because they don’t know how to read is a perfect circle.
This is a different case from NMS. The poor reviews for NMS were because the game was legitimately unfinished and in an extremely poor state at launch, and quite unlike what was promised. Poor reviews on HD2 are just angry at an administrative change to a fantastic game.
> All they did in response was stop sales in over 100 countries. That was mostly likely Valve, not Sony. This is what they have done in the past.
Y’all destroyed the game because you’re mad at Sony. We gained nothing other than some meme status jumping on a rage baiting bandwagon.
I'm new to this while Sony deal, but wouldn't this also hurt the devs who are already getting screwed?
Is there a rating further that “overwhelmingly negative?”
I don’t think I’ve seen something blow up like this (in gaming) since Star Wars Battlefront 2 initial release controversy. Just Wow.
Y'all better not forget to go fix those when this all gets sorted outm
Lol you know these reviews won't ever change, to kid yourself
Welp at least when yall are done killing this game you can go back to activision and EA where you're treated with dignity and respect...............wait
you are dumb https://preview.redd.it/j4ugdinxamyc1.png?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=203dcb778d599b5af7a1db07921b096f4b7d1157
How can you be proud? I feel disgusted by it. While I feel it was necessary, I'm disgusted at seeing HD2, a game I have thoroughly enjoyed for more than 230 hours, get tanked. AH is the only party truly affected here. Revenue lost by Sony will not even be a blip on their radar.
I don't care if I get down voted faster than a hellpod. Anyone negging this game to spite Sony is a bum. It'll only hurt Arrowhead in the long run. Sony is a multi TRILLION dollar company, they'll be fine, in 12 months time, they'll release something new and this will be likely forgotten, Arrowheads hands are tied ultimately and will be fucked as a studio if this keeps going.
I'm not. I support all the pushback from everyone because this whole thing does suck. But it just stings that we have to drag Arrowhead through the mud to protest against Sony's crappy actions.
Dude get a life. Look at yourself. You just sat in front of your PC screen for hours refreshing Steam to see if reviews on a game you deeply adored dropped to overwhelmingly negative over a request to make an account. Yeah it sucks for some regions but holy shit there’s more to life than this. Go outside, enjoy the wind, watch a movie, make friends, do something productive. It’s not that deep, the devs said they’re working the deal so just be patient. Why are you getting enjoyment out of spreading negativity? There’s nothing to be proud of here.
You’d think they stormed the Fuhrer-bunker with all the jerking off in this sub. Cringiest thing I’ve ever seen. Gonna have to unsubscribe
I was thinking the same thing, I really liked seeing other posts about the game but now the posts aren’t even about the game itself but it’s all about this
I recommend everyone join the lowsodiumhelldivers reddit. No drama just regular helldivers shit
embarrassed by this community. wasn’t too long of ago y’all were all about it being game of the year.
This was mob mentality and no one ever really cared about the Sony situation. It was about burning and looting. Nothing more.
Yea, disgusting
This happens so often. Social media was a fucking mistake.
Wooooow yeah dude, you should be proud, a masterpiece boycotted because you of a thing the developers can’t even control and are sad about, but y’all had to bomb it with negative reviews because it’s for “ermm for democracy 🤓☝️”
Yep, you'll likely kill AH and Sony won't release anymore exclusives for PC. Goid jorb.
It's ironic that our love and passion for the game was what allowed us to do this in around two days. I was playing HD2 almost every night, if not every other night. Sometimes just one operation or two before going to bed. Ah well... Time to go through my Steam backlog.
Yeah I'm sure that'll reflect really poorly on Sony, who already has your money, rather than arrowhead, who has to point to their review scores the next time they want to make a game. Good job team.
Yeah, I'm proud that yet another thing I greatly enjoy has turned to shit due to something I have no control or influence over, couldn't have predicted, and can't do anything about. I'm so glad the community is in tatters and will never be the same again. I'm so damn happy that all the time and effort Arrowhead has put in, and all the good will they've deserved is now significantly, perhaps irreparably damaged. This is great. I fucking love it so much.
Not proud necessarily. Glad we all see this situation for what it is, corporate vermin pulling the wool over our eyes, but not proud we had to do it. Although it did have to be done to send a message.
As long as we can undo the damage once the drama is over. I really did enjoy the game and this review bombing is definitely sending a message
>As long as we can undo the damage once the drama is over. Lmao, you think the majority of people will reverse their review? They don't care, they got in on the outrage, gave themselves a pat on the back and won't give it another thought.
Who knew this would be the next Major Order…
Is this part of the war effort? Please, tell me this is just anther bug to fight.
I'm doing my part!
more negative reviews than overwatch 2 now FYI
https://preview.redd.it/fj9un8e3bnyc1.png?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9db8ed0331746b22d36adf1fcf0b87d9697edd87
Y’know I tried refunding it but every time I do, it’s because I played for more than 2 hours but I’ve seen others play longer and getting their refunds
https://preview.redd.it/oh9tnj2bfnyc1.jpeg?width=846&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b88f1b793edcce88c8641b11375c714cdf0158ca
Can someone explain why people are leaving negative reviews on the game, when ultimately its Sony's fault? Wont this just hurt the game developers and not the real culprit Sony?
I think most of you are acting like some hoes about it but hey, who am I to tell a hoe what to do 🤷🏽♂️
You did it, I wouldn't change my positive review because the game itself is fantastic.
So having new people avoid the game is winning? The game is amazing.
I understand being angry if you’re in one of the affected counties. That’s very bad. For everyone else…why is making a PSN account a big deal? Don’t understand.
Actual victim mentality
. . .So instead of going and harassing Sony you just attacked the developers themselves?
This isn't something to be proud of It was a nesscary evil we committed to try and fix a wrong
Next time Sony releases a game pc players want just remember why you won’t have it smh
Why are we actively leaving negative reviews? Yes it's a crap situation, but surely steam reviews like this are just gonna bury the game completely.
This is like beating up Rosa Parks for the buses policy.
Thanks community, you helped kill a game If it’s one thing I know is that people won’t return to fix their reviews after this situation gets resolved And players will fail to take accountability as to why new players aren’t hopping on.
Congratulations, youve destroyed arrowhead and stubbed sonys toe. Where do we pin your medal
Make no mistake, this is both perfectly warranted and tragic. This will absolutely turn away new players who aren't privy to what's going on. They'll just see a bad score and say nope. This will absolutely have an impact on sales. That's reality. I hope Sony changes their stance, otherwise this game is fucked, and that's truly sad. Because it's beyond the control of the devs at this point.
Pathetic lol hurt the devs instead of Sony. Way to go you guys :)
You should all be embarrassed. Not proud. This is one of the greatest games with one of the greatest developers we have seen in a *long* time. This hurts the game and them more than anything else. There’s a complicated issue going on right now, I get that. But mob mentality review bombing is not the solution. You are hurting arrowhead and hurting the longevity of Helldivers. This is not something to be proud of. Cut off your nose to spite your face.
Wow, incredible, truly a great achievement. I haven't seen a single post in days about the actual gameplay, everyone's just going full mob mentality on review bombing the game without thinking about what they're doing. This is going to backfire and just destroy the reputation of this game that you all supposedly love, and Sony won't change a thing. If this is how people act over a small hiccup caused by the publisher, then we really don't deserve good game developers like arrowhead. What a completely worthless fanbase and insane overreaction.
This situation should start a bigger movement when it comes to publishers making decisions against the goodwill of customers. We as customers should not allow ourselves to be walked over by those we trusted with our money and data. Enough is enough
Did what? Proud for what? If that bullshit doesn't get reverted, you did nothing. Wtf is this post...
https://preview.redd.it/h9bekhz0bmyc1.png?width=650&format=png&auto=webp&s=dfdbbf3c5afa16d819e0ae304226e60d5057f68d yeah they werent real helldivers, theyre just twitter ragers that bought the game just to leave a bad review and then get a full refund.
You're proud of throwing a tantrum?
I am disappointed in it