Helldivers 2 Is Being Review Bombed

welcome back I hope you're doing well today we at the very least have got an interesting story to talk about with the whole debacle happening with hell divers 2 and of course that's all is a sad thing I mean I absolutely love hell divers 2o I think it's a fantastic game I think Arrowhead have been a fantastic developer and it's been so amazing seeing a company actually run a live service in a way that works for players so broadly speaking the picture has been really positive they've just recently actually had um like some information about how well the game has sold and it just proves that this is an amazing experience an amazing win and that's why it sucks when something like this happens so there is a bit of a mess going on in Steam right now where well you'll soon have to log in with a PlayStation account and that's one of those things that I mean it's just annoying right we don't like the idea of having a launcher for a game and then opening a game in that launcher and then having to log in to something else not because I think it's some sort of horrendous like transgression or something that's very offensive or even necessarily like super you know evil it's just that it's a bit bloody annoying so let's dive into it then didn't intend to do that it wasn't a joke anyway let's dive in uh hell divers 2 was obviously a mess at launch right it was more of a success than they thought and they ended up in a situation where it wasn't even about adding more server capacity it was their infrastructure the other sorts of challenges that really don't scale as easily as just saying spin up more servers they just had this crazy all hands on deck situation for the launch of this game there were concerns with crossplay as well and ultimately because of that they suspended the PlayStation account registration requirement for hell divers 2 that account requirement was always there in Steam like you know the way when you get a game in Steam you take a look at the store page and if there's anything that valve think that uh thinks that you should know about the game it'll be called out so there was one of those kind of like golden color call out things saying about like a third party account thing being needed right so that was always there but at the end of the day when you hit the play button you did not need to link a PlayStation account what's changed though is a new update okay so this was posted on Steam and it just says hell divers 2 account linking update so this update dropped today May 3rd and it confirmed that the suspension of the PlayStation account requirement that that was because of launch difficulties okay they then said that as of May 6th it will no longer be an option right for a new player to not sign in using a PlayStation account of course if you're playing in PC there is a chance you won't have a PlayStation account so for me logging in was very easy you know just QR code phone app whatever um my password manager had my info saved there were no problems but if you don't already have a PlayStation account it's just kind of frustrating you don't want to have to make another account for something generate another password put that in your password manager and it's one of those accounts you really think you'll never actually use so as as a player you really don't see any benefit in that and it's just a bit of friction right that I can understand and the ultimate rub here is that this is a mandatory thing for all hell divers players eventually so if you have been playing the game but not with a PlayStation account you will soon be forced to uh to make one and this I suppose that's the weird thing it technically has always been a rule it's just it's a rule that was suspended for uh you know for technical reasons and I suppose if a rule isn't being enforced do you really say it's a rule and I think that's why we've ended up in this situation where people like quite literally haven't been betrayed by the wording of steam pages right like technically but emotionally it does feel a little bit like that because it's you know forcing you to take a rather different action now you might be wondering why do this like why on Earth is this going to be a thing why would Arrowhead do this in the grand scheme it seems that Sony are the ones who handle user moderation and banning and it seems that Sony do that through their account system right rather than anything that is uh Linked In through Steam and they explain this in their post saying this is our main way to protect players from griefing and abuse by enabling the Banning of players that engage in that type of behavior it also allows those players that have been banned the right to appeal so essentially it's them just bringing all of this into their system from you know for this live service that they're running and they are not willing to take the L and I suppose have the PC side of things be a less first party moderated experience from the perspective of lots of people this is just a game being taken out uh from under them and they now have to do a new thing to get it back and while that's a frustration for some people it's altogether a more serious problem because they live in regions where PlayStation accounts are not actually that easy to make so for those people it really does feel like quite a bad form of rug no surprises for this because it's obvious uh this has led to review bombing you can see a very very large spike in negative reviews on that steam graph now some people are calling for a class action suit here some people are demanding refunds and that sort of thing essentially claiming that they never wanted this and they wouldn't have purchased the game if they knew this would be a requirement and that's the sort of interesting thing right technically it has been it's just that they suspended the requirements though per the steam page that like need for a third party account that had always been on the steam page um that being said if you don't need to like log in with a PlayStation account you're probably not going to notice that because ultimately people are excited about a game they buy the game and uh they just generally don't expect uh so those details are not the sort of thing that players will um will often read like I at least know that personally I only really look up that stuff to know like does it game happen to run in Mac in case I'm like on a work trip and I'd like to play it it's one of the only times I check that stuff so I do understand people not being fully aware of this I get it now some are saying that this is almost a form of conspiracy to deny refunds I don't think it's conspiracy to deny refunds however if something wasn't enforced and then it is enforced even though it's always been a rule how do we deal with that because in a way you could say it's a changing of the terms of a deal like if it wasn't overtly framed to people as a grace period and then you have to do the account thing then well yeah I mean obviously they're they're not going to be aware that this is coming down the line so I think obviously this has been a very easy thing for people to just feel bad about right when you boot this game for the first time it does prompt you to link your Playstation network account for um for online access so you know here's what it says right partial controller support it lists the ones you know like the box the jewel shock and the jeel sense it says that it incorporates third party DRM in the form of n protect gameu guard and also requires thirdparty account PlayStation Network supports linking to steam account and then of course they also say that the game has got its own Ula that stuff had actually been there the entire time and it was a minor controversy at launch because essentially the actual wording of the splash screen that explicitly says that you need an account to play and that is actually why I didn't question it and I just linked my own Playstation network account so from the perspective then of Sony and of steam this has always been part of the deal because it has been there it has been a disclosure on the store Page and I've got to imagine that from their perspective they would sort of say well okay if your principles are detailed uh in this way and you know a third- party account being required is a deal breaker for you I think Sony and valve would probably say well if you have those detailed principles you're probably the sort of person who would check this kind of thing on a store Page before buying the game that's ultimately what they will say and I think if they end up with people requesting refunds because of this that's probably the default retort that they're going to have now there is then another angle to this that essentially this is coming from PlayStation and that it's being imposed on the developers right that it is some sort of cheap move to just get a new surge of account signups right and in a way that's not dissimilar to what happens with say locking the multiplayer functionality of the the upcoming ghost of sushima Port so if you want to do the multiplayer Legends mode you will have to link your PlayStation account now to me and you might just be an annoying thing that we're asked to do a lot of people could say for Sony well what does that mean if a game sells 500,000 copies a million copies something like that well Sony will almost certainly want to convert those into PlayStation Network accounts it's good for one of their numbers it makes it go up that's literally Sony get your information frankly they will will want that data right so they want that they also are the people who are handling like moderation Banning dealing with griefing and that sort of thing and they are moderating that based on their own internal systems that PlayStation have built for running PSN that's obviously what they're going to be dealing with here and so I'm ultimately left feeling that this is quite the failure in communication because this is a system that yes even if it is mandated by PlayStation well it was implemented by Arrowhead before the game launched so Arrowhead definitely knew about this I think what's less clear though is the messaging here because developers do not always control their steam Pages mostly they don't it's the publisher who does that sort of thing and that's where it gets interesting PC Gamer spotted that a community manager from Arrowhead responded to a user complaining about all of this and they essentially said the statement wasn't ours and that piece of important information was missing and um that specific thing was about the region locks uh right so a user complained about that and the CM essentially said yep we did not put that statement out and they went on to say that as soon as they as in Arrowhead saw the statement they um basically started asking for more updates um and information and details as to how all of the like the linking requirements were being handled so it does seem like this is something that that uh certainly PlayStation have done maybe PlayStation and Arrowhead should have had better communication here so it could just happen in a more balanced way now the CM did eventually add this quote we need an official statement before doing anything anything we say can and will be picked up and can be misunderstood by players media Etc we are replying to this as much as we can but for uh for more information we are waiting for more info from Sony which is understandable we all get that a CM has you know also got to like coordinate between all the different parties and if they were just going off half coocked well it were it would probably be their head that would roll right so it does seem that Sony have effectively said that they want this rolled out sooner rather than later and that is why that update happened and going by the reaction here it does appear that Arrowhead were somewhat caught off guard I say appear but it really does look like they were caught off guard like just look at how the Arrowhead community managers uh are talking there so I think that's basically that Sony were a little bit pigheaded and how they did this there should have been better communication and there's rules and there is you know are the rules technically there cuz in this case the steam page always said a third- party account a PlayStation account would be required for the game that has always been the case people have used way back machine and been able to confirm that okay so that is the rule the rule has not changed but when the enforcement of a rule changes that's when a rule actually goes from may as well not exist because it literally isn't enforced to it does exist so ultimately the situation here is that this is a game that has got crossplay it doesn't actually have cross progression so if you own the game on console and PC like those are actually separate but if you are playing on Console you can join your friends in PC that would present a bit of a moderation problem for Sony what happens if you have let's just say half of your player base on PSN accounts the other half of your player base is just on an unlined steam account well Sony then would have somewhat of an issue when it comes to their own like Community Management dealing with reports and that sort of thing if half of it is happening on their own accounts and the other half isn't that's why they're doing this I don't think that it's some sort of move uh you know out of pure Badness what I do think it is though is just poor communication across the board they didn't think about some of the obvious things that they should have thought about and whenever a decision was made to suspend this requirement they should have been very clear with people and said listen we are suspending this requirement here's why is a requirement and how and why we will enforce it in the future for a few months you won't have to do any of it but after then you will and the reason why is this and then they leave it at that they should have said that months ago so that people wouldn't feel surprised is this an evil move like no I don't think it's an evil move it's a frustrating one but ultimately from Sony's perspective if they're going to have their game be on Steam with multiplayer functionality and still have them hand handling uh you know handling like user moderation well this probably just is a requirement of that either that or they would have to get some sort of deep integration going with uh with valve because um currently they rely on a linked Steam and PSN account so unless they could somehow just say hey valve um we would like to moderate your steam players when they're playing our game and for those two parties to then come with you know come come to a deal so ultimately that's the situation then technical things can be really annoying and I suppose it would be nice if these parties could work together a bit more it's a problem of service and friction the ideal way to solve this would be to reduce those things let me know what you think then sorry I've rambled on just because I think this is an interesting story of like policy enforcement and Technical requirements for lots of different parties uh but at the end of the day I know that for most people it's just a ball Lake anyway I'll be back with more news shortly hope you have a good one and I'll see you then

Channel: Bellular News

Views: 144,429

Keywords: helldivers 2, helldivers, arrowhead interactive, helldivers 2 steam, helldivers psn, helldivers 2 psn account, psn steam link, bellular, bellulargaming, bellular news, game industry, industry news, videogames, gaming news, game news

Id: 10kBtOnPiTo

Length: 14min 44sec (884 seconds)

Published: Fri May 03 2024