this post was submitted on 05 May 2024

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Unpopular Opinion

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Arrowhead is at fault for the Helldivers situation, and only Sony can save them. (hackertalks.com)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I don't have this opinion lightly.

Arrowhead executives knew for 6 months before launch that this would be a mandatory PSN required situation. That happens when you take a deal with the devil and you take Sony's money.

By removing that requirement for 3 months at launch, they created a situation where many hundreds of thousands if not millions of players purchased a game they can no longer play at the end of this month. I don't blame them, they did what they thought they needed to do, and a very scrappy startup way, to get things working. But it was a failure of executive leadership to put them in a position where they've locked their own players out of the game, and their own money, and their progress.

I 100% believe this is a failure of the Arrowhead executive leadership. Their decisions have created this public outcry, and Sony is ostensibly taking the blame, because they're enforcing their contractual terms.

I predict Sony will back down, and allow an exception, at least for players who've already purchased the game in PSN blocked regions. But they're only going to do that to prevent themselves from getting dragged into regulatory quagmires around the globe.

From an executive position the Arrowhead CEO has completely failed, he put his financiers in a position where they are the public bad guys, and then when the heat turned up, the organization as a whole redirected the blame to the publisher, when they should have been the ones at fault. One might say this was a 4D chess move, to get their game free of the PlayStation Network requirements, but even if that's what falls out in the end, other executives looking at this performance will not appreciate it. Especially when it comes to them negotiating another project.

I do have a part to play. I am not blameless in all of this - it was my decision to disable account linking at launch so that players could play the game. I did not ensure players were aware of the requirement and we didn't talk about it enough.

We knew for about 6 months before launch that it would be mandatory for online PS titles.

https://twitter.com/Pilestedt/status/1787076609188483254

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Just so we're all on the same page:

Sony are generally the bad guys, but in this situation they're not the most at fault. They're just sociopaths.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

I think they're plenty at fault. Mandating an online platform up front rather than seeing how the market breaks down is tail-wags-the-dog stupid.

I could marginally see if it were a console title and they wanted the PS Plus revenue or to be consistent with other online games on the platforn, but to throw away the biggest hit of the year to demand free accounts, it screams desperate data thirst.

Hey, isn't this exactly how Microsoft torpedoed Win11 by mandating accounts too? I guess nobody even looked over at their taskbar for precedent.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The phrasing here is biased. They didn’t “disable account linking” on day 1.

They did not require account linking on day 1 so as to enable PC sales. The problem today is not that they enabled account linking, but that Sony has chosen to mandate it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Everything you said is true. But from the Arrowhead CEO, we know that the mandate was 6 months before the release of the game to the public.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Can’t change system requirements after sale.

Doing it for business reasons is especially odious.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Agreed. The at fault party is arrowhead CEO. We could say Sony should have back down, and not made this announcement. However, from the data we have, they have respected the agreements they had with arrowhead. No surprises for Arrowhead here. So the main issue is Arrowhead created a situation to surprise and abandoned customers 3 months after the launch

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Damn, didn't know the execs knew about this. Definitely on them, then.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Quick note... After typing this up I realized this is more a response to the OP than to you. Sorry for the rant lol.

They knew about it and implemented it but the game blew up at launch and the stupid PSN requirement caused tons of server issues. So to allow people to play they temporarily disabled it. Now, after all this, the CEO was incredibly transparent about the whole situation and was working to get it resolved with Sony.

To me the CEO is a breath of fresh air. He cares about his product and was open about everything going on.

Sony put themselves in this position.

6-7 years of development and 6 months before they drop this requirement? Which does little to nothing except inconvenience your customer... Not to mention Sonys track record with data breaches... And on top of all that the launch would have been ruined due to this requirement and possibly wouldn't have allowed the game to get as big as it is?

Fuck that and fuck Sony.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Indeed an unpopular opinion but you're missing a key point that Sony, being the publisher, decides where the game is sold. They chose to sell it in countries that cannot create PSN accounts. A huge reason this blew up is because of that fact.. along with their (Sony) response to that, or at least the representatives people got responses from.

Whether it was an accident, stupidity, malice, whatever... Doesn't matter, Sony screwed that up.

Edit: On top of all that the PSN requirement was crippling the release of the game. If the CEO hadn't disabled the requirement to link to PSN the game may not be as successful as it is now.

Honestly the CEO probably saved the game and increased sales, which helps Sony...

6-7 years in development and 6 months before they drop this requirement that does little to nothing except inconvenience the customer, not to mention Sony's track record with data breaches...

Give me a break. Greed did this. Sony's greed. Nothing else.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Worth pointing out that the game being in development for 6-7 years likely means paperwork was already signed going that far back.

Arrowhead knowing about this 6 months earlier suggests their hand was forced.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Community checks out at least

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I want to upvote, but I don’t know if this is unpopular, it’s just an expansion of information. It still means Sony sucks, but if Arrowhead knew, then they suck also and it was a greedy cash grab.

I think unpopular would have been blaming Arrowhead and they didn’t know about the change.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

It's definitely an unpopular opinion as many people want to be on AH side, since they're the underdogs. But all they had to do to prevent this was better transparency up front. Just tell this to us in big bold letters when we first start the game up and problem solved. Instead they left it as basically a footnote on the steam page and all of a sudden things change.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

As u said 4D chess move. Its the weaponisation of gamers. Gg Sony u got played guess that's ur problem now.

[–] boletus 1 points 6 months ago

I can see where you're coming from but you have to understand:

arrowhead never wanted Sony integration. Publishers always do this and force devs to add services to games that don't need it.
arrowhead had to disable it for people to be able to play the game due to the server issues.
arrowhead is not responsible for the distribution of the game. Sony handles the publishing, including which regions the game is available in. Arrowhead didn't choose to sell the game in regions without PSN support.
the developers were and still are under immense pressure for something nobody wanted but Sony execs. The attitude and franticness at the studio would have been intense and confusing. I know this because I work in a game studio, that has a publisher, and I've had to implement this kind of stuff in our games and I can guarantee that most of the choices and sensibility are well out of the studio's control.