True enough but the fact is day after day or review bombing will impact the bottom line in the long run. Companies usually wait when bad press comes around, if it disappears by itself then good for them. If it doesn't then you need to take some kind of positive action.
It is incredibly stupid for EA and others to sell games on Steam (as they crawling back to Steam) only to force you to login in their own launcher or networks to be able to play even single player games.
@@Woupsme I had been completely unable to even install the EA launcher, it would error out during install. Support kept just giving me the same old scripted speal, regardless of how much I told them I had already been through this and there was something more serious going on. In the end, I needed to reinstall Windows to fix it. This was clearly an issue with the EA launcher, as I've been using Steam for damn near 20 years and never had a problem like this.
DRM on top of DRM on top of DRM. If about 20 years ago you´d tell me the future of gaming would be like that I would have say you were crazy, that most players would never accept it. To think you´d buy a game - that would come with a physical box, manual, sometimes with some extra goodies - and after a couple of years you would not be able to play it because it would require an online connection at all times would be enough to cause a gaming uprising.
@@Daniel__Nobre I would not think gamers would be ok with buying unfinished games, dlcs, pay for loot boxes or pay to win, but here we are. I stick to GOG when I can these days.
Most people still did not reverse the review to Positive, reason being that the game is still unavailable in 91% of the worlds countries, when they reverse that then I personally will make my review positive again.
@@thedofflin The reason why the community asked players to change the review to positive is in case Sony fucks up again (or Arrowhead) so that they can switch back to negative and show that they still have the power to fuck with the reception of the game. Instead of just leaving it on negative and only changing the text of the review, which Sony probably never reads anyway.
@@thedofflinbut that's not the point of the review, the point is to help others make a better decision, not make commentary on their publisher. All you're doing is punishing Arrowhead, when it's Sony's fault
@@AmateurHuman19 Surely you're not actually claiming that review bombing doesn't punish Sony. While Arrowhead may get caught in the crossfire, there's no doubt that Sony care about the game having good reviews.
Even though I'm not a Helldivers2 player, I felt and loved the community spirit that this whole problem created. And it's very visible in the way that even after the problem was "solved" they went back and switched up their reviews to show that they actually love the game and they only had a temporary issue with a decision from Sony.
Isnt Helldivers 2 Still blocked and cannot be played in those 91% of countries?(even if you already bought it) meaning the whole "psn network" connection resolution was also a smokescreen? and people got juked again.
"Hopefully more of these folks reverse their reviews" Why? The country ban still hasn't been reversed and was actually implemented into Ghost of Tsushima as well.
Since it's not available in those countries again I reckon they'll sneak in the PSN linking down the line. Else they'd just open it up to every country right away to get the sales.
Lessons learned: - for PC players "your voice matters", "platforms that allow you voice your opinions are good", "platforms with *easy* refund methods are great for the customer" - for PS players "PC players are whiny" - For Sony "dont let your customers hsve a voice", "make refunds difficult", "give them a little promise without actually doing something and the majority will be ok with it"
"platforms with easy refund methods are great for the customer" Something Steam wouldn't even have if it wasn't forced upon them by Australia's Consumer Protection Watchdog.
Lessons learned: - Don't buy a game at launch, wait until it's properly patched, all the changes are made final, all the dlcs released and only then get, with some discount, couple of years later, full/complete edition of the game.
There's inaccurate information here. Initially you were required to sign up/log in to PSN in order to play at all. But there was a bug that prevented some people from doing so during the first 2 weeks of the launch. That is when the PSN sign up requirement was delayed, with players receiving an in-game msg upon launch that they will need to sign up after the grace period. The PSN requirement wasn't a surprise that was sprung on players, people just don't read. And now because of the refusal of a vocal minority in the Helldivers community to take 5 min and sign up for PSN (something which every other launcher and business routinely asks people to do in this era) Helldivers 2, along with Ghost of Tsushima are now indefinitely unavailable for people in most of the world to purchase. Not to mention all the other future games that are in jeopardy
@@joelmichaelviado1226 literally no one in these regions has had a problem with being able to access games until the helldivers Community started complaining about a non- issue
An important part of the story was missing and I think wrongly understood in Danny's video. It wasn't a charity period from Sony, that they allowed PSN linking to be absent - Arrowhead devs f*ed up. They were given the task to implement the link by Sony prior to the games launch. The devs did not want or could do it. And when the game launched, Sony and Arrowhead focused on fixing the game instead of implementing the PSN link. So when the game got stable, Song asked Arrowhead to align with what was agreed about the link. Arrowhead used then the passionate crowd to push back on Sony and the task they didn't want to do.
I think part of the successive helldivers 2, was the fact Star Wars battlefront two was abandoned by EA and they not only look very similar but play quite similar as well and once again EA missed a trick.
They are actually one of the most well-respected venture capital firms. I think their bullishness on crypto is not the smartest, but they are not “shady”.
I'd wager Sony tried this not to sell the data, but to collect it for themselves. Suddenly getting an influx of millions of PC users data has to be valuable to them as they look to expand their PC presence in the future.
Could've easily coax the players to signup for Playstation account by offering some in-game armor or skins. There's no need to go all Hostile on players, what a PR disaster.
HD2 was pretty clearly built with its player management backend tied to PSN, given that its friend and block lists still only barely function, and that the PSN requirement was intended to be the fix for the clunky solution the game was released with. Ultimately, this feels more like an 'own goal' for Steam users, as drawing attention to Playstation's very lax policies about making out-of-country PSN accounts (as people have done as long as PSN has existed, and since when do PC players care about boilerplate Terms of Service?) forced their hand to actually enforce something they wouldn't have, otherwise. So now less people can play the game, and the player management still doesn't work, and it's largely because of the review bombing on Steam. Obviously Playstation reworking PSN to be more global would be ideal (which probably will happen in time as they expand PC publishing efforts), but it's not like gamers in those 'unsupported' countries weren't already playing on Playstation with well-known workarounds (and making out of country accounts is how Western console users have been playing Japan-only releases for ages - it's commonplace).
I left a negative review and my review is still negative for one single reason: the ban for the countries was never lifted, they are still banned. In Fact: they added 3 more countries to the list after they announced the backtracking.😖
It's not a 'ban,' they just don't have a storefront for every country/currency, and they only had to restrict sales in those countries because the review bombing brought attention to the policy mismatch.
@@GorgonautAnimation thank you for clarifiying that i made a grave mistake by choosing the wrong word. Now that you corrected me, the players in these 177 countries can now finally play helldivers 2. it is great that you stood up for these people. Have a nice weekend. i will not further argue Tldr: it doesnt matter wich words i use if you ignore the message behind it
Not a bad plea to reverse the bad reviews, but I will say I don't believe in such a such thing as corporations calling any kind of money "Small Fry" XD NO money is beneath them! Edit: This game has YET to recover, we've got 1/10th the players we used to... the "Reviews" isn't denting that.
while yes, the PSN thing was bad, a lot of people ignore that the devs weapon balancing philosophy has been steadily sucking all the fun out of the game. and that's what's causing them to lose the players
Humanity is so bizarre. There will be always absolutely "lacking in intelligence" whales willing to pay as much as its asked just to feed their egos. And I don´t even buy that at this point, with how loud this discussions are now, that they have no conscious of how they help screw everything for everyone. They just don´t care because it´s and addiction to have their egos stroke like that. How does the community playing Tarkov accept that predatory crap is beyond my understanding. You are just setting yourself and the community up to be exploited to the maximum. It´s just not worth it.
And yet after all that review bombing and s.. and the sony "backpedal" ... the game is not available anymore on steam on all those 177 countries ... so yeah .... nothing got solved ... steam removed most of the negative reviews, and the game .... :(
How to get 500k+ positive reviews. 1. Make people log in with your stupid system that leaks data like a rainy day. 2. Block 91% of the countries. 3. Tell people that you'll fix it. 4. Profit. Don't even have to do shit. Create a problem, promise to fix it, get good reviews.
What a strange thing to say considering the biggest issue is that the game is unplayable in those non first World countries. Did you not watch the video?
Always a good day seeing/hearing Danny O'Dwyer.
I don't think it was the reviews that made Sony listen, it was the refunds
True enough but the fact is day after day or review bombing will impact the bottom line in the long run. Companies usually wait when bad press comes around, if it disappears by itself then good for them. If it doesn't then you need to take some kind of positive action.
I think it's also their loss of credibility. Afterall, Sony is a Japanese company and losing your name is one hell of a death sentence.
It is incredibly stupid for EA and others to sell games on Steam (as they crawling back to Steam) only to force you to login in their own launcher or networks to be able to play even single player games.
I always have to troubleshoot for hours when trying to launch an "old" EA/Origin game. And support isn't worth shit.
@@Woupsme I had been completely unable to even install the EA launcher, it would error out during install. Support kept just giving me the same old scripted speal, regardless of how much I told them I had already been through this and there was something more serious going on. In the end, I needed to reinstall Windows to fix it. This was clearly an issue with the EA launcher, as I've been using Steam for damn near 20 years and never had a problem like this.
DRM on top of DRM on top of DRM. If about 20 years ago you´d tell me the future of gaming would be like that I would have say you were crazy, that most players would never accept it. To think you´d buy a game - that would come with a physical box, manual, sometimes with some extra goodies - and after a couple of years you would not be able to play it because it would require an online connection at all times would be enough to cause a gaming uprising.
@@Daniel__Nobre I would not think gamers would be ok with buying unfinished games, dlcs, pay for loot boxes or pay to win, but here we are. I stick to GOG when I can these days.
@@woodcat7180 exactly! It’s so crazy how the limits kept being pushed gradually until we came to where we stand today.
Most people still did not reverse the review to Positive, reason being that the game is still unavailable in 91% of the worlds countries, when they reverse that then I personally will make my review positive again.
Even if they do fix everything I'm not reversing my review, they messed up and they need to remember their mistake
@@thedofflin The reason why the community asked players to change the review to positive is in case Sony fucks up again (or Arrowhead) so that they can switch back to negative and show that they still have the power to fuck with the reception of the game. Instead of just leaving it on negative and only changing the text of the review, which Sony probably never reads anyway.
Why would you reverse a review on a game that you can’t even play if the servers shut down? To me this is just a waste of time.
@@thedofflinbut that's not the point of the review, the point is to help others make a better decision, not make commentary on their publisher. All you're doing is punishing Arrowhead, when it's Sony's fault
@@AmateurHuman19 Surely you're not actually claiming that review bombing doesn't punish Sony. While Arrowhead may get caught in the crossfire, there's no doubt that Sony care about the game having good reviews.
Even though I'm not a Helldivers2 player, I felt and loved the community spirit that this whole problem created. And it's very visible in the way that even after the problem was "solved" they went back and switched up their reviews to show that they actually love the game and they only had a temporary issue with a decision from Sony.
Love you Danny! Been a fan since your early GameSpot days. Always an instant click when I see one of your videos.
Great video as per usual by Danny.
Appreciate the work Danny ... also dang Titanic catching strays
Isnt Helldivers 2 Still blocked and cannot be played in those 91% of countries?(even if you already bought it) meaning the whole "psn network" connection resolution was also a smokescreen? and people got juked again.
yes it still blocked .... but now you cant even review bomb ... cause is not on the store anymore ...
"Hopefully more of these folks reverse their reviews" Why? The country ban still hasn't been reversed and was actually implemented into Ghost of Tsushima as well.
Not my issue. *shrugs*
Since it's not available in those countries again I reckon they'll sneak in the PSN linking down the line.
Else they'd just open it up to every country right away to get the sales.
@@DJHEADPHONENINJA LMAO you're part f the problem then
Regional Pricing for it (and other PlayStation PC games) are still extremely high.
Game is 56% MORE EXPENSIVE than usual for India.
Lessons learned:
- for PC players "your voice matters", "platforms that allow you voice your opinions are good", "platforms with *easy* refund methods are great for the customer"
- for PS players "PC players are whiny"
- For Sony "dont let your customers hsve a voice", "make refunds difficult", "give them a little promise without actually doing something and the majority will be ok with it"
"platforms with easy refund methods are great for the customer" Something Steam wouldn't even have if it wasn't forced upon them by Australia's Consumer Protection Watchdog.
Lessons learned:
- Don't buy a game at launch, wait until it's properly patched, all the changes are made final, all the dlcs released and only then get, with some discount, couple of years later, full/complete edition of the game.
This was a great video! Thank you, well written commentary
That Dannys quite the hot gamer boy eh
Anyone know the background music used in the beginning of the video?
There's inaccurate information here. Initially you were required to sign up/log in to PSN in order to play at all. But there was a bug that prevented some people from doing so during the first 2 weeks of the launch. That is when the PSN sign up requirement was delayed, with players receiving an in-game msg upon launch that they will need to sign up after the grace period. The PSN requirement wasn't a surprise that was sprung on players, people just don't read. And now because of the refusal of a vocal minority in the Helldivers community to take 5 min and sign up for PSN (something which every other launcher and business routinely asks people to do in this era) Helldivers 2, along with Ghost of Tsushima are now indefinitely unavailable for people in most of the world to purchase. Not to mention all the other future games that are in jeopardy
The bug being Sony's servers being unable to handle that many requests
Another bug then would be allowing people to buy from regions that cant get psn in the first place eh.
@@joelmichaelviado1226 literally no one in these regions has had a problem with being able to access games until the helldivers Community started complaining about a non- issue
Hell hath no fury like a gamer scorned
An important part of the story was missing and I think wrongly understood in Danny's video. It wasn't a charity period from Sony, that they allowed PSN linking to be absent - Arrowhead devs f*ed up. They were given the task to implement the link by Sony prior to the games launch. The devs did not want or could do it. And when the game launched, Sony and Arrowhead focused on fixing the game instead of implementing the PSN link. So when the game got stable, Song asked Arrowhead to align with what was agreed about the link. Arrowhead used then the passionate crowd to push back on Sony and the task they didn't want to do.
I think part of the successive helldivers 2, was the fact Star Wars battlefront two was abandoned by EA and they not only look very similar but play quite similar as well and once again EA missed a trick.
Also it’s a great game
why exactly is Danny O'Dwyer fronting videos for what appears to be some shady crypto-scam investment company?
They are actually one of the most well-respected venture capital firms. I think their bullishness on crypto is not the smartest, but they are not “shady”.
@@danholbert7606 'most well-respected venture capital firm' is a little bit like claiming to have the 'worlds largest micropenis'
Does anyone else hear Limp Bizkit's "My Way" every time the A16Z Games melody plays? ruclips.net/video/LMsBHDoC51c/видео.html
I'd wager Sony tried this not to sell the data, but to collect it for themselves. Suddenly getting an influx of millions of PC users data has to be valuable to them as they look to expand their PC presence in the future.
Could've easily coax the players to signup for Playstation account by offering some in-game armor or skins.
There's no need to go all Hostile on players, what a PR disaster.
HD2 was pretty clearly built with its player management backend tied to PSN, given that its friend and block lists still only barely function, and that the PSN requirement was intended to be the fix for the clunky solution the game was released with. Ultimately, this feels more like an 'own goal' for Steam users, as drawing attention to Playstation's very lax policies about making out-of-country PSN accounts (as people have done as long as PSN has existed, and since when do PC players care about boilerplate Terms of Service?) forced their hand to actually enforce something they wouldn't have, otherwise. So now less people can play the game, and the player management still doesn't work, and it's largely because of the review bombing on Steam. Obviously Playstation reworking PSN to be more global would be ideal (which probably will happen in time as they expand PC publishing efforts), but it's not like gamers in those 'unsupported' countries weren't already playing on Playstation with well-known workarounds (and making out of country accounts is how Western console users have been playing Japan-only releases for ages - it's commonplace).
I left a negative review and my review is still negative for one single reason: the ban for the countries was never lifted, they are still banned. In Fact: they added 3 more countries to the list after they announced the backtracking.😖
It's not a 'ban,' they just don't have a storefront for every country/currency, and they only had to restrict sales in those countries because the review bombing brought attention to the policy mismatch.
@@GorgonautAnimation thank you for clarifiying that i made a grave mistake by choosing the wrong word. Now that you corrected me, the players in these 177 countries can now finally play helldivers 2.
it is great that you stood up for these people. Have a nice weekend. i will not further argue
Tldr: it doesnt matter wich words i use if you ignore the message behind it
Not a bad plea to reverse the bad reviews, but I will say I don't believe in such a such thing as corporations calling any kind of money "Small Fry" XD
NO money is beneath them!
Edit:
This game has YET to recover, we've got 1/10th the players we used to... the "Reviews" isn't denting that.
It's fire 🔥🔥🔥
hey.
shout out to Ireland, for being unfathomably based
Do you consider yourselves "game players" or "fans of games"?
I sure hope that comment about info brokers was in gist considering oh IDK ... Meta FB, IG etc
Did sony even walk back anything?
They didn't force PSN linking - yet.
Anti-democratic of Sony to slaughter 180 countries from playing Helldivers 2.
while yes, the PSN thing was bad, a lot of people ignore that the devs weapon balancing philosophy has been steadily sucking all the fun out of the game. and that's what's causing them to lose the players
Humanity is so bizarre. There will be always absolutely "lacking in intelligence" whales willing to pay as much as its asked just to feed their egos. And I don´t even buy that at this point, with how loud this discussions are now, that they have no conscious of how they help screw everything for everyone. They just don´t care because it´s and addiction to have their egos stroke like that.
How does the community playing Tarkov accept that predatory crap is beyond my understanding. You are just setting yourself and the community up to be exploited to the maximum. It´s just not worth it.
The game is still delisted in 91% of the countries. I can play it. But can’t enlist my friends anymore….
And yet after all that review bombing and s.. and the sony "backpedal" ... the game is not available anymore on steam on all those 177 countries ... so yeah .... nothing got solved ... steam removed most of the negative reviews, and the game .... :(
Flat ears?
How to get 500k+ positive reviews.
1. Make people log in with your stupid system that leaks data like a rainy day.
2. Block 91% of the countries.
3. Tell people that you'll fix it.
4. Profit. Don't even have to do shit. Create a problem, promise to fix it, get good reviews.
I think you might be confused, they have less positive reviews now than they did before the controversy.
PC players and their first world problems
What a strange thing to say considering the biggest issue is that the game is unplayable in those non first World countries.
Did you not watch the video?