Helldivers 2 May Turn Negative Steam Reviews into a Fashionable In-Game Cape

They should make this into an emblem while they're at it:

Just a funny joke lads, please don't review bomb me.

The devs really know how to play it.

I have to imagine the people at Arrowhead are breathing a sign of relief about now.

For the record, they handled the situation way better than a lot of other smaller devs would've.

@ShogunRok Definitely make that into a cape design for the PS5 version of the game. Console exclusive.

@ShogunRok seconded!
I am happy they reverted the situation because it didn’t have any sense to delist the game in countries that have no access to psn, just don’t sell it there in the first place. Players from the remaining countries (95% or so, I’d imagine) could really benefit to learn to read before buying 🙃

@Nei I think I’ll start reading those TOS statements now. The whole thing!

@Nei @Nei Yeah, lets look at the game. "I like that game". Oh, I better don't buy that game, because it is illegal to play that game in around 190+ regions in the World by Publishers ToS

@ShogunRok Hey, looks pretty good
I can think of a member of staff or two who could use it. =)

@ShogunRok only 69 countries would be able to play the game, but because you're in one of them you don't care about it right? Talk about privilege.

It feels that Pushsquare and Playstation users are so entitled at the end. I look up in Youtube and nowhere I can find positive videos about Helldivers 2 linking issue. But here, in comments, 80% is blaming PC kids. Self-criticism is 0/10

@Pat_trick Yeah, if you don't live in Top world country. Don't you dare even looking up to Consoles and how dare you even thinking about playing games. Go back to your cave.

@REALAIS Exactly. I live in the UK but I'm from a poor country. It really resonates with me the struggle of countries that always get less access to everything.

@Pat_trick but yet all those people in those countries have been playing Sony games for years no?

Otherwise there would have been an outcry already.

It all happened because people brought up ToS etc. So Sony looked at taking the tough stance on it (wrongly) to stop any further outcomes.

I would proudly sign back in just for that cape. Haven't played since early March

@PsBoxSwitchOwner It doesn't matter what games they were playing. They were playing Helldivers 2 and their access was going to be revoked. No matter how you want to paint it, it's just wrong to sell a product and then remove access to it.

The Devs showing they have a sense of humour and honouring the community.

They were likely helpless in all this. Their game got tanked by a vicious combination of corporate suits making bad business decisions and the outrage mob converging into a perfect storm.

Let’s hope the game recovers from all this.

@REALAIS As you can read in my comment, l agree that selling and then making the game impossible to play in a lot of countries was incredibly stupid and that’s why this decision is the only logic one they could take.

@Ralizah

The new cape design only for PSN members 😂

It's a guarantee that I'll be donning this beast 😤 haha. See how many games you get kicked from.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner it is not hypocrisy from Sony? That those players have to break ToS just to play games? Sony easily takes money, but if something will not be up to Sony minds, they will easily choose to ban account by breaking ToS.

I'm glad some developer still have a sense of fun, good for sony too since they backtrack on their psn integration plan 😃

At least arrowhead have a sense of humour and can exploit negative press even at their own expense. How can you not respect them?

@Ralizah I’d wager they also had some very unfriendly words with Sony behind the scenes. It’s not like Sony to reverse course this quickly. Props to arrowhead for talking some sense into them.

@ShogunRok If they manage to somehow work a silver spoon into that emblem, I think you have a real winner.

Also, this cape is an epic troll pointed at the moronic professional complainers on the internet. Well played, Arrowhead. Well played.

Oh, I'm kinda disappointed that they reversed their decision. I thought they were going to stick to it being mandatory for online.

@wildcat_kickz I think this cape would be a proof that sometimes making a stand and voicing your opinion can actually cause change for the better. It's also a proof that sometimes publishers/developers are actually listening to player feedback. Even though the reviews were negative, this cape would be all about positivity.

How about a cape with a thumbs-down

@Kienda
If anything Arrowhead is also to blame, not only many of their community managers escalated the situation to this point, their own CEO admittedly knew about the mandatory PSN login 6 months before this whole fiasco.

@KoopaTheGamer Broadly speaking, I totally understand your point, but the amount of vitriol that was pointed at Arrowhead/Sony just for asking for an additional login (something that was stated would happen from the very beginning) was absolutely insane. The review bombing shows that. There's a difference between voicing your opinion to cause change for the better and cyberbullying developers to capitulate to a small nitpick.

@wildcat_kickz Yes, I agree that review bombing was unnecessary. But the principle behind it is still solid. You can't always expect things to get better without fighting towards the goal, preferably in a constructive manner of course.

There were some claims that the community manager of Arrowhead supported the review bombing, but I haven't done any research whether it was true. Doesn't really matter anymore, but I do believe that this conclusion is what they wanted as well.

If they made linking a PSN account an option, none of this would ever happen.

This is great! If the end result of this fiasco is a tongue in cheek cape, I’d say Sony and Arrowhead have sailed through this potential disaster brilliantly.

@ShogunRok 100% behind this. Let the people who review bombed the game mark themselves! Let the rest of us see that they are a player that doesn't understand that PlayStation products are sold across the globe, including in the Philippines, and all that they needed to do was select the closest region if theirs wasn't listed!

This whole debacle was pathetic. People crying that HellDivers couldn't be played in countries with no PSN, when those same countries sell PlayStation products with no issue. I guess it shows that PlayStation owners are smart enough to understand you select the closest region, while PC players just can't figure it out.

And before anyone comes with the "If you do that you'll break Sony's ToS and get banned!" bit, no, you won't. I run multiple PSN accounts, each set to different regions. A bunch of content creators do the same. I haven't been banned. They haven't been banned. I even went as far as to review the PSN ToS to reply to another person that cried that. The ToS just asks you select your region, not your city or country, just region i.e. North America regardless of whether you live in Canada, US, Brazil, Mexico etc. The whole "banned because of ToS" point was fabricated and spread as misinformation to justify all of the crying.

@Pat_trick
Nothin is stopping any of you from making a throwaway PSN account in the region of a country that does allow PSN. It's like how I can make a Japanese PSN account despite not living there. This is still a fabricated issue made by misinformed people.

This whole thing is just fanboying to the extreme, which is funny because PC players seem to genuinely think they are not supporting Sony if they buy the game on steam for whatever reason.

@Mortal "I run multiple PSN accounts, each set to different regions. A bunch of content creators do the same. I haven't been banned. They haven't been banned."

Running multiple accounts across multiple different regions have literally a hallmark requirement of PlayStation going back to PS3. You had to do it if you truly wanted the best experience since they never made it as easy as Microsoft to just swap regions.

I remember creating a Japanese account to play Demon Soul for free in Japanese XD

@ATaco Sony famously suffers more data breaches than all the other platforms.
I agree it's extreme fanboyism. A bunch of Sony fanboys can't take criticism because of a situation that was clearly mishandled by Sony. But as long as some people define their personality by which game system they have, we're going to have ridiculous arguments like this one.

@Pat_trick
Further ignorant misinformation, acting as if having a PlayStation account means you're definitely going to get hacked. This isn't criticism, this is plain hatred of a company. I own every system and a PC and not once in my near 10 years as a PlayStation network owner have I ever been hacked.

This is kind of amazing

@Pat_trick "Sony famously suffers more data breaches than all the other platforms." but they actually don't. They handle it differently. If the PSN gets hacked, Sony step forward and make people aware of it, and investigate if customer data has been accessed. Other companies, such as Microsoft, prefer to investigate if customer data has been accessed and then reveal the hack if it has.

If you want to know if Microsoft have been hacked, you have to go searching.

https://firewalltimes.com/microsoft-data-breach-timeline/

If you want to know if Sony have been hacked, they'll already have informed you.

@ATaco "Because it didn't happen to me, it can't be true" ok, buddy

@Mortal Fair enough. They still had historical data breaches and could've been more tactful with the implementation of PSN for PC users. No amount of supposed data safety will make it better the fact that they're only present in 69 territories and we're about to pull the rug from under the people not in these countries

@Pat_trick
"Because it happened to some it happens to everyone"
Do you understand how many PlayStation Network users there are in the world? If having your information stolen were especially common with Sony services don't you think there would be a massive uproar by now?

@Pat_trick but the "I can't get PSN in my country" point becomes moot when you realize Sony sells PlayStations in those countries. People buy the console and make accounts registered in the nearest region. The only people having issues here are PC gamers who either haven't done enough research to realize it's not an issue, or people who are just here to jump on the bandwagon.

The Freedom from Consequences cape:

The cape of those who agree to terms of service without reading them first and cry about it.

DO IT! I’m all about them taking advantage of this situation to do something funny. 🙌🏼

@ShogunRok you read my kind with that first comment haha. Maybe 4 tears running down the cape.