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this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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This has nothing to do with the shitstorm (it mostly hit Arrowhead anyway), and I think the review bombing didn’t affect their decision making that much. What I think happened was, Sony saw the massive refunds. They got hit right into the wallet 😩
This makes me smile.
The refunds may have hurt, but what hurt more was the fact that in the last week HD2 went from #1/2 on the Steam global top sellers to #11. The big red "Overwhelmingly Negative" next to a title is a huge turnoff to new buyers.
Some executive somewhere has a chart showing daily sales numbers and watched them fall off a cliff in the last week.
Point taken.
That's what pisses me off with the steam review bombing.
If that's the only way to express discontent then that will fucking sucks for everybody involved in game development.
If at least review bombing was a last resort but now it's the norm. These reviews will have a lasting effect on the game even though the drama bubble has now popped.
Good, let them learn their actions have consequences.
Sure let's destroy this game all together because of this issue.
A well thought out and mature reaction is to pretend the game is bad in the steam reviews even though you clocked 100+ hours into it.
I mean there is a ton of things Helldivers does better than any other games and we are gonna trash that because of a PSN account requirements ?
I understand this is a valid issue for certain players but is it a proportionate response to this situation to trash the game on steam? I don't think so.
Yes, next question.
No problem.
Legit question: Did you completely stopped playing Helldivers 2 ?
Is it uninstalled?
Did you ask for a refund ?
Because if you still play the game and at the same time say it should be trashed that's a lot of hypocrisy.
It can't be both. You can criticize the game that's fine. But if you still play it and you are so vocal for its demise then you are definitely part of the problem here.
Yes
Yes
I asked but was denied my first one, and did not submit a second one before Sony walked back the changes.
I don't actually have plans to return to the game, because Sony is consistently fucking with the dev team and the game has now accrued so much technical debt that the constant bugs and issues would impact me every time I log in.
I will also no longer be supporting Sony titles on PC. Even if they release my holy grail Bloodborne, I'll pirate it and play it offline.
Fuck Sony forever, and stop trying to gatekeep hating a company over their shitty practices.
I never played or bought it, because I hate Sony and don't play always online multiplayer games because they treat players as cattle and not as users.
So you are asking other players to review bomb and try to kill a game you never bought yourself?
Fascinating.
Edit: I think the above conversation is a good example of why I don't think Steam Review Bombing is the best solution. You get people delivering fake reviews sometimes for games they don't even play themselves. I understand why they do that I just don't think that's the right way to do so. And also thinks it's not fair for the actual devs working on the project.
I'm not asking anyone to do anything. I do all my trashing individually and independently. That's a straw man the size of the wicker man.
It’s a bad take to tell people their only means of effective protest is not going through proper channels.
Did you have a constructive suggestion or are you just here to defend Sony?
First would you mind telling me where I defend Sony ?
It must be very subtle.
This conversation already starts in bad faith. You are trying to undermine my comment by declaring I'm taking side with Sony. There is nothing in my recent comments that says Sony has done something right or that I agree with their move. Nothing.
Am I allowed to genuinely think this account issue wasn't that much of a big deal ? Or do I only get to choose if I'm a Sony shill or not ? I have seen my favorite game franchise getting shat on for years by their developers (EA) and I have seen things thousands of time much worse from EA than this account requirement from PS. Still right to call out Sony for this but this is not a "this game is unplayable" issue like we had many times on other games. So yeah I have a nuanced opinion on this and didnt immediately accept that Sony murdered Helldivers 2 and that the game is dead.
My suggestion is not complicated. Stay truthful in your reviews. That's not rocket science. A lot of these reviews are rating or presenting the game as much worse than they really think it is. Most of these players will review bomb and will play hundred of hours just after that. I'm fucking French I understand what protests are and that being an annoyance is kind of the point. But review bombing on steam and telling a naive player that would definitely enjoy the game that the game is trash will never be cool. You can say in your review that you don't like that aspect of the game but if the point is only to be negative and untrustworthy this is not the way. Again if you truly suddenly think that game is "the worst game ever" after playing hundreds of hours and learning of the PS requirements then fine but I doubt it's what happens.
Also did you stop to think what is your comment bringing to the table here ? It's just an unnecessarily aggressive comment and doesn't either provide anything beside telling me I'm wrong and it's a bad take.
Steam review bombing is absolutely not the proper channel to voice discontent. It's a review. Not a forum, not a dev support channel. It's a review. You are giving your honest feedback on a game. The good and the bad. Not just "the thing everyone told me is bad" and nothing else.
This is not cool to tell devs their game is trash on the steam page if you don't really and truthfully think so.
Absolutely despise th fact that devs have to constantly read their game is trash in steam reviews because some higher-ups decided to go full greed mode.
So yeah Steam REVIEWS are NOT the proper channel to voice discontent. Almost any other forum or social network is. Just not a steam review page.
This type of review bombing is actually against steams terms of service for reviews in the first place, they've stepped in a few times now to hide campaigns like that, I expect they will do the same with this one. Basically it'll keep the recent review metric but, it will hide the reviews from the historical and the overall metric. So worst case out of this will be it has a negative recent reviews for awhile.
your last sentence is actually the exact reason they implemented that policy and they moreorless quote it in their forum post where they talk about how the new system works
Steam has a specific thing that appears when you keep playing a lot on a game that you’ve negatively reviewed asking if you want to change it. I think a game is rarely impacted long-term by review bombing for a resolved issue, unless the reviewers actually dropped the game and went on with their lives.
Once again, Arrowhead decided to go with Sony as publisher, they agreed with PSN account linking. No offense, they are are an independent studio, they did not need to do that. It is sad they lost money, but the developers already got paid. The worst thing that can happen is they have to switch jobs.
Arrowhead did not have the infrastructure for this many people. Sony barely pulled it off at launch and cross play still sucks.
I mean, who would've pulled the sudden influx of players? The game being popular was expected, but not in such huge numbers.
Developers generally have a choice between going to one of the massive publishers (which allows for better promotion and for expensive games to pay off, but comes at a cost of their will over devs), or to self-release, which means way less players will even know about the game, not to mention buy it.
Arrowhead realistically only had the first option.
That's not to say there's no fault of theirs in the situation, just that it's not a free choice and that Sony is still the main culprit
If they truly go through that for the promotion, then they are idiots and deserve all the hate. Video games don't blow up because there is a commercial on time square that costs a million dollars, games blow up because they are good and people/youtubers and (yuck) influencers talk about it
If that would be true, all games would be indie titles.
Unfortunately, those promotions DO matter, and absolute majority of indie games never pull it off, because we never even get to hear about them.
Promotion makes a difference between a cool game no one knows about and a game everyone plays.
And when everyone is expected to buy your game, you have much bigger budgets to make the game not just conceptually good, but also greatly executed.