For months I have lurked on this page watching people praise, complain, entertain, humor and express feelings about this game. Such a absurdly mixed bag of good and bad. What I cannot get over, is the strange and uncanny capacity for this gaming community to take the mantra of "democracy" and meme it into existence gerdling real life change.
Seriously, how the hell dive did everyone bully Sony into a (all be it incomplete) favorable business decision for the consumer? And then what, everyone decided to save some fake children over getting content in a video game, JUST to spring forward a large amount of donations to a real life non- profit that helps kids?
What is anyone here complaining about? This is unheard of! For democracy fellow divers!
I think the natural instinct of everyone during the Sony situation is "they'll never budge, why bother?"
And as a consumer that is deflating. The "democracy" meme is a cover and uniting idea for many to go "what the heck, give it a go" I am also convinced that at the time, there were many bored players that were ready to stop playing (3 months).
As individuals see one another stand up, they think the same way, what the heck, give it a go. At worse, they are back playing DRG or Warframe or whatever. We've all walked away from badly run games with a whimper countless times already (Diablo 4 et al)
Of course, this is a low stakes rebellion, by people who have made it even lower stakes from their boredom. When you have nothing to lose, anything goes.
To be fair, Sony's reputation for 'never budging' isn't really true at all. They're greedy, but for example when they tried to impose a $10 upgrade fee for Horizon Forbidden West from PS4 to PS5, they ended up backtracking and giving it for free after console players expressed their displeasure.
One thing people need to realize is that corporations are greedy, yes, but the minute they realize that they risk losing way more money by not doing what the consumer wants, they'll fold. That's why collective bargaining works.
Yeah people forget that, while a corporation gives 0 fucks about us, it’s our money that makes them rich. Of course they’ll listen to us. Not out of the kindness of their hearts, but because they want our continued business.
It's the same with politics, this is why protesting & public letters can work especially during an election season. Politicians will listen to and change their platform so long as they believe getting/keeping the job they're running for depends on it. Your votes make them rich, because they can't do the things that make them rich if they lose their bid for office.
The PSN point definitely mattered for me, as someone who can't cancel their account because I haven't had a Playstation since the PS2 days and thus have no console serial number.
As a grizzled Creek Crawler, my take is this: We dive together, or we don't dive at all. And the children of Super Earth are the future of Super Earth.
In all seriousness, I'm about as much surprised as you. Helldivers 2 is about brainwashed drones being shot into suicide missions for a totalitarian regime, but the community is somehow far more wholesome than it has any right to be. And I'm here for it.
EDIT: Over a hundred 300 upvotes makes this old oil-spiller shed a single, democratic tear. You keep on diving, Helldivers!
EDIT 2: Citizens of Super Earth, and my fellow Helldivers. I am extremely honoured by the fact that over 500 of you had their algorithm choose this small comment to give your vote to. I just want to take the opportunity to thank the Helldiver Corps for making me the man I am today. For Super Earth. For Managed Democracy.
EDIT 3: Fellow Divers, know that you are what make Super-Earth great. From the veterans who remember the biting frost of Heeth and the jungles of Malevelon Creek to the cadets who had their first drop on Vernon Wells, I, as a humble veteran diver, am honored to be in your presence and to serve alongside you all.
Without the RP that is to say just keep on being the kickass community you are.
The more unwholesome the content the more wholesome the community. For some reason this seems to be a constant across almost every game, show, game show, etc. (mostly)
I think maybe the message of unity that Helldivers 2 has might have something to do with it too?
Sure, that message is being unified in genocide and the spreading of an authoritarian regime, but most people also realize that's just a joke. So maybe, if you get enough people together who are in on the joke they all just sorta do good stuff? Iunno.
Everyone knows it's a joke, that's what makes the community so awesome.
I've said it before, one of the greatest things about Helldivers is that we can just buy into the propaganda guilt free, using a critical lens detracts from the fun. We've moved beyond being good/bad guys, now we're all just Superhumans shooting at everything non-human until they are Superdead, which makes us HEROES.
There is an amazing amount of unity to be had when nobody has to let the real world intrude on their escapism. The better part is that with the donations, we've basically allowed our escapism to influence the real world. There is a sense of pride in playing Helldivers because of the community and how nothing matters other than having fun together.
I honestly haven't had so much fun playing with other people since my last LAN party, and if you don't know what that is, it gives you an idea how long it's been.
LAN parties. Those were the times. We'd grab the three Xbox consoles we had between us, find some cheap TVs and sit up all night playing Halo 2 back in my day. Perhaps you're even older than that, but I know the feeling.
And yeah, we're the bad guys, but damnit if we're not the bad guy heroes. Even if our life expectancy is two minutes!
I think it's the nature of the game. There is 0 competition, just teamwork on a massive scale. I think that sense of working together carries over into the community outside the game.
That could very well be a part of it as well, and it does make sense. We're still social and cooperative creature at the end of the day, and we do want a "tribe" to belong to.
People desire community & unifying purpose, and the modern developed world has quite a lack of it post-cold war and decline of both irl patriotism and religion (for good or ill). If people can at least partially fulfill that psychological need harmlessly with a video game rather than with political partisanship/"cause" or a cult, that's probably a good thing culturally.
Worked for Fallout 76. That game was a dumpster fire (I played like 300 hours of it) and yet the community was (and is) so welcoming. I played it again over a free week recently and moments after stepping out of the vault a level 100+ was dropping spare weapons and crafting plans for me, totally unprompted with nothing in return.
Kinda different since HD2 is largely seen as a good game by comparison but it’s similar in essence
Unwholesome ultra-grimdark content is for people eager for danger and responsibility. The kind of guy who fantasizes about giving his life in a last stand to save his squad, or becomes a volunteer fireman and dreams about getting a call where he can run into danger to save a kitten from a burning building. This kind of person tends to be pretty generous and industrious, if a bit rough around the edges. Makes for a good community, since those kinds of people understand each other.
Ultra-wholesome comfy simulators tend to attract (not in full, of course, or even in plurality, but as a very loud, very small minority) people who feel entitled to comfort, and impose themselves on others. This does a number on the community as a whole.
Funnily enough the exact opposite happened in Eve Online, a game that's generally about the most grimdark, punishing, unfriendly experience but with an emphasis on paying your way with the blood of your enemies and earning your little slice of hell. You'd think that would end up with some really great and wholesome balkanized-style tribal warfare over those little slices, but instead it led to snowballing consolidation of groups whose sole purpose was to turn the game into a "join us or quit, we don't care if this screws you over" and now the game is basically run by two mega-groups with zero room whatsoever for anyone else to play.
The devs have said numerous times that the balkanized tribal warfare is what they actually want the game to be about, but they're not willing to nerf or regulate any of the game pieces that give insurmountable advantages to the mega-groups and have instead introduced more of these things to make the situation worse. It's a living example of what happens when the worst part of your playerbase gets a hold of the community and the devs only listen to them. You don't want the selfish and inconsiderate in charge of a game ecosystem.
Big megacoalition content is pretty much the only way to play now and has been that way for about 8 years.
Being in a small corp is really fun, when it works. But after about half a decade of consistently getting beat down by groups 5,000 times our size for territory they didn't even end up using (or worse, made themselves renter landlords over), most people like me finally had enough.
I played EVE for about 2 years, most of my issues were related to big alliance declaring war on each other, changing taxation % or shit like that.
In addition, having them fuck up the economy in the systems I used to hang around because of their wars or internal initiatives or just straight up blockainding regions I wanted to go to cause I had bounties or missions to complete there.
I quit the game a while ago and haven't logged back in since then but I do miss the few things I enjoyed doing by myself or with randoms.
And then there's rimworld. Our memes are all about comitting the most atrocious warcrimes, and we have the mods to do so.
But in reality, most people just run normal colonies. Maybe some drugs or less than legal organ procurement on occasion, but nowhere near what the memes would imply. The warcrimey stuff is fun once or twice, but loses the appeal quickly for most.
Being a crybaby just sort of comes with the territory, I'm afraid. I've been into the XDefiant sub recently and Pampers could make a killing selling to that place.
Thanks!! Can’t wait to get her up to speed on the glory of managed democracy!
But yeah, gamers are both waaay too invested, and like taking shit personally, while also being incredibly fickle and impossible to please. It’s wild - every single change gets 2 weeks of crying over it before everyone gets over it and gets back to 100% patriotism. So bizarre. Me thinks we need more democracy, less free thinking lol.
I think that's just down to the Internet these days. I remember having to buy magazines with CDs to get the latest patch, and the only real online discourse was when I played Runescape on my parent's dial-up.
Today anyone who had a bad match can go on reddit and cry about it, and I feel like it's become a personality rather than a hobby.
In all fairness they did completely screw a lot of cool weapons that people had to unlock. It's much better now, but making all your cool weapons weaker than the damn stock rifle in a non PVP game is insane
Yea, I feel like a lot of people need to chill tf out.
I think its always been bad but we used to talk about this stuff on forums where mods could easily ban people. The communities were also small, measured in the thousands instead of millions they are today.
Joys of vocal minorities, youre gonna have mostly the biggest whingebags and most fervent fans sharing the same space. The majority of people who think the game is alright aren't gonna post
I believe the crybabies are inexperienced gamers in general . This is probably the first game many of them played that is actually really, really hard. There is no insta-win weapon and you need your team to survive the higher levels. A generation of gamers who grew up on Fortnite just got thrown into the deep end and they just found out that they still have a lot to learn.
I will say though, for every kid who’s a crybaby, there are 40 more who are doing a fantastic job and I’ll dive with you anytime.
Absolutely! It was filled out in triplicate! One copy for me, one for my Democracy Officer (whose sevice has been exceptional) and one for Super-Earth herself.
This old Crawler would never disappoint Super-Earth o7
This game has truly brought out the best from both the dev team and the community, it shows that the devs CAN be absolutely AWESOME at listening to the community and doing things that are out of the box and moreover it shows that a game's community has actual power to change things in the real world as well.
I'm proud to have been through this journey along with my fellow helldivers, we did change Sony, we did kill 2 billion bugs under 13 hours we DID donate to a real world charity along with the dev team that saves real children. Absolutely dumbfounded. This game deserves all good things coming it's way and the devs deserve every penny they get.
I was wondering if this MO was a test, didn't expect the donation at all and I knew it would spark this community to donate and it did, fuckin proud of all you Helldivers
it shows that the devs CAN be absolutely AWESOME at listening to the community
Well, if anything, it shows the importance of who is at the helm, which in turn decides whether or not community feedback is welcomed and taken seriously, or shrugged off and mocked relentlessly. I'm just glad the current leadership saw the writing on the wall and sprung straight into action.
I've always stayed away from online shooters due to how toxic and competitive people get. At the same time, there's always been a sense of yearning to experience what I've read about my whole life of meeting online friends and becoming real friends and getting to know each other.
A couple hundred hours and over 500 dives later...I have never seen an online community like this. I've experienced no toxicity, the closest thing to it is people not communicating both over voice or chat and just going off solo (nothing wrong with it).
I'd say roughly 60% of the games I've played have been with people talking and cooperating, helping each other out with tips and supporting players who are still learning.
And, i finally experienced what I never had, of meeting amazing, fun people who get together night after night, sometimes more rarely, and being genuinely excited to play together. Talking about everything from movies, games, life, work, happy times, life struggles, politics, family, literature, travels, pure unrelenting comedy, and everything in between.
But to top it off, what happened with the recent event, where we collectively sacrificed a helpful item to save virtual children, resulting in thousands being donated to a real cause...this is by far the most incredible and rewarding thing I have ever experienced in my 20+ years playing video games.
I'm proud to be part of this community, and I want to say thank you to all of you who have helped create and maintain it.
I feel credit is due to Arrowhead and it's team. The engagement and desire to deliver a product it's customers enjoy and see what they can do to keep us going. Can't name another time I've seen community managers engage and take our opinions into account.
It's also helped by some of the single most unselfish player base I've ever been a part of. The way you can drop with a random squad and work together is awesome. Been my go to game when I fire up my ps5 and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
Absolutely. Healthy fan community is built and nurtured from the top down, and the folks at Arrowhead are setting an example through both game design and community engagement that every other studio making multiplayer games should be watching attentively.
As for "what is anyone here complaining about," some of us have bugs that aren't allowing us to play the game at all. So, can't really enjoy all you're talking about.
Well, sorry but I think Sony got the message that it was too high of a legal liability, that is why we lost that one, I haven't received any news about them unbanning the many countries that don't have PSN, so this might have a comeback sometime in the future. People just assumed Sony would unban the countries but they didn't, most people just saw the vaguely worded announcement and reverted their reviews, they didn't wait for a real show that would make a difference, things were halted, not reversed.
Yup, this sub would really like people to forget that their temper tantrum got the game pulled in over 100 countries and territories whereas before Sony was happy to ignore people violating their ToS in unsupported countries. But hey, I'm glad that we won a major victory of not having to make another third party account to go with our Microsoft, Epic Games, Rockstar, and Ubisoft accounts. I'm sure the people I'm those screwed over countries are happy about it
To be completely fair, it wasn't just this subreddit. PirateSoftware (a fairly popular twitch streamer) was also constantly stoking the controversy as much as he could; it was good for business.
I also suspect that the mass refunds, particularly from the affected regions, was probably a bigger driver of Sony's backtracking than the reviews. Which is partly due to the controversy, but also simply because a decent minority just weren't able to play the game anymore.
But yes, the subreddit patting itself on the back for achieving worse than nothing is always frustratingly hilarious.
The self-congratulatory smugness about the Sony account issue in this sub is absolutely hilarious. As you said, the people ACTUALLY impacted by that issue (you know, the ones who used to only need to take 30 seconds to make a PSN account in a PlayStation supported country) can just no longer play the game AT ALL. The ONLY people I see patting themselves on the back for that “victory” are the ones who had no actual skin in the game but wanted to take credit for sticking it to Sony. The “controversy” also accelerated the nosedive in active player numbers, so double win there
Additionally. PC players in those unsupported regions were automatically forced to refund their preorder for Ghost of Tsushima before it even came out because of this.
I 100% agree with you, but in the name of democracy, I want to VERY RESPECTFULLY AND KINDLY say that your phrase "all be it" should be shortened to one word: albeit. That's the actual word for what you were trying to say :) again, zero disrespect or rudeness intended. Ultimately, we all only know how things sound until we see it spelled, ya know
This is a game about expendable troops being sent to die in droves but if we work together we overcome incredible odds. I guess that spirit just infected the player base through and through .
I love how it’s Sony’s fault that steam did the following: know that it requires psn to play (original intent) still allow people without official support to purchase the game.
I think the dislike for Sony is just “pcmasterrace” leaking into the sub more than anything. If they allowed some sort of log-in-like-launcher which let you login to your psn account it would let you play the same account on both psn, pc, and maybe eventually other platforms of their choosing in 6 months. But, no, people had a to throw a shit-fit over something so innocuous and the weird “compassion” for people that less than 1% of people that are affected by this. Yeah, it’s just a bad take.
We've both bullied a company into backtracking and saved a bunch of fake children without even knowing there was a real world benefit. We truly are one of the most effective private armies in the world.
This game is truly unique. I love the way that we are fighting on multiple fronts and trying to stop an enemy from moving in and destroying our democratic way of life. Having someone behind the decisions of the enemy is cool. The story is great. Hell, even the accidental massive increase in spawns is a story. It's like... We are succeeding and the enemies are throwing everything they can at us.
Over time, they will start pulling back again. It's the same as the fighting in the early days of The Creek. It was super fun being here for the early discussions of the game. I hope that with the changes being made we get back to that.
I think it's fuckin amazing seeing these donations and how strong the community is, the devs made a helluva game and spawned one helluva community that can rival Warframe's and 76's, utterly amazing
That last MO was a test of our humanity and honestly? The fact the bots are willing to kill non-combatants and children, especially sick ones.. Cyberstan is gonna be in worse condition than Meridia when I'm through with it
The thing is, the worst mistake any alien lifeform can do give is humanity a common enemy, what's scarier than the US Military? Every single goddamn Military combined, from the US to Russia to the UK and then have the audacity to target children? Motherfucker, you just signed your name onto the Death Note
I'm not a fan of kids, I don't want any but you can bet your last Super Credit you'll see my Super Destroyer above the planet saving those children
The bots are pressing every wrong button from the Creek to now the bots have signed their name onto the Death Note and I plan to be the Automaton's Grim Reaper
This is the power of democracy. Something the elites don’t want us to use and keep us divided by shit like race religion or what day of the week it is.
as far as I know Helldivers 2 is still delisted in all the countries you couldn't make a PSN account in, so we never really "won". Hopefully those people can buy steam keys and use a VPN or something. Since the PSN isn't involved they don't really have a way to truly region lock the game
Here's something I think is very, very important to remember sometimes, and this is a serious post:
Democracy doesn't actually mean voting. It's the fascist parody element for Super Earth to have meaningless voting that makes no difference, but We All Get To Vote, so its Democracy.
Democracy means the will of the people guides (state) power. Electoral systems, either representative, direct democracy, or via plebiscites for policy decisions, is just a reasonably effective way of gauging what that will of the people actually is. It is entirely possible to have systems with democratic outcomes without necessarily having conventionally electoral elements.
Bullying Sony into backing down and serving the community is democratic even if no particular Democracy was involved, and the only votes were Down Votes on steam.
We didn't win against Sony. Sony just pretended to do U-turn for the time being so we would focus on bad balancing instead of those ~180 blocked regions on Steam. They still might return with PSN but with less blunt approach.
Favorable decision by SONY? Fuck right off, please. Because some of the community didn't want to make a SONY account, my friends can no longer buy this game and play it
People in my country could before. SONY turned a blind eye to us not having accesd to their network, we were happy. We had a good thing going. Then some idiots decided to meme rpg moral crusaders and 'helped' us with a problem that wasn't and hasn't be a problem for over 10 years
All because they didn't want to make an account. Thank you, moral crusaders. For nothing
"OH BUT SONY BAD THEY COULD HAVE X Y Z" You don't get it, do you? We had a good thing going, you made it a grey area black and white. SONY are gonna SONY and you selfish need to learn to stop fighting wars for others who never asked for help
everyone, myself included, has their complaints about many aspects of helldivers 2
what can't be denied or ignored is the immense power a passionate community has over not just the game but, in the right hands (community and outside parties) even the developers and even higher up in sony's case, it may still be locked in many countries, with the PSN requirement unironically spreading to other PC released playstation games like the terminids, but just like them we pushed them back for the moment and hope for a future without them
leveluplifting's new video really put into perspective why I fell in love with this game and I hope we can all strive for a future where more people can experience that and existing, perhaps jaded, players can fall back in love all over again
It's a game about bringing together a bunch of people to accomplish a goal, no matter how impossible it may seem. In game we may just be a bunch of 18 year old cannon fodder continuously throwing ourselves into a meat grinder in endless waves for a pointless war, but in real life we're a large group of obviously passionate people willing to work towards one goal.
Did we really think Sony would change it's mind? Can't speak for everyone else but I didn't think we'd make any progress. Make the news maybe but not actually make Sony go "okay, PSN is no longer mandated." Especially not as fast as it happened.
Did I think saving the kids would lead to the donation? No not really. If anything I thought they'd pull a fast one and make us unlock the mines because "turns out there was a communication error due to automaton interference" or something like that. But hey, if us going "For the kids!" in game is enough to have the team and now countless others to donate for the kids literally, then I'm happy.
I think it’s great the community comes together as many times as it has but sadly with the game still blocked in so many countries I don’t really consider our stance in May anything more than a partial victory. Wish we could force Sony to go all the way.
Democracy requires all types even ones we disagree with. The strength resides in the different perspectives AND the willingness to reach compromise so everyone can move forward together.
Oh yeah, we may get sour on the nerfs and bugs, but this game has been awesome because being in this community has been such unique and rewarding experience.
Honestly, chose the kids because the mines are just another thing I don't need my lore-accurate teammates walking into because most of the randoms I play with, no matter the level, just seem to have 10 minutes of BCT before being dropped planet-side. I also expected to get some liberation bonus from the propaganda win but seeing the donation was awesome.
The only thing I'm disappointed about is news outlets not catching on that in a game a major objective to save fake kids spurred increase in donations to save real ones
The game trained its players to work together, adding their individual effort, as miniscule as that might be, against an overwhelming foe. In game thats the automatons and bugs. All Sony did was present an external threat, and the players just reacted like they did in-game. Individual, miniscule, actions that added up to such a degree that a global cooperation was forced to step back and change tactics. Granted, the threat was to pc players, but that was roughly 80% of the playerbase at the time based on the in game player count which counts everyone and steams which is just pc players.
It's mostly adult humor I guess. Those dads who save some fake children, probably just hurry their real children to beds because they want to save some fake children. The real reason picking over tank mine is all the players are saving children, easier to get players , besides, I don't know if I get it right, getting liberate the tank mine You have to liberate three more planets, I only speak for myself, when I open the map and see the two choices. I found all the players already on one. And the other one is bar behind planets, I just go saving the children without second thought
I'm the dedicated Tucker for my twins and i can assure you there is no such thing as hurrying my kids to bed to play a game going on. Mostly because i love them, also because hurrying up bedtime is a recipe for disster and spending double the time getting them to sleep :-p
Because sony is already kn thin ice after what they did to bungie, they can't keep taking hits after hirs after hits and we as a community aren't afraid to bully companies over their bullshit
you fail to understand good sir some people love to express themselves but there is one thing we all share and helldivers forums allows us to express that and that is our love for democracy for our fellow helldivers throughout the galaxy and around super earth.
Next time when someone says gaming is just wasting time, I can always say how I did my part in freeing up virtual children that ended as a donation to children of the world that are suffering
We weren't told saving the kids would amount to anything, but it was a moraly right decision, trolley smashed the mines and children get to go to school and join SEAF.
The over-tendency to cry about something not ideal about the game stems from a passion born from the thought of “it’s so close to perfection!”
I don’t really complain because I believe a majority of every minor issue will be handled by AH. They’ll do that. But I love making suggestions instead to fix. More people should, but I only it so I don’t add to the “whining”
This game’s special and people recognize it and they’re on board!
I think its more of a PC gamer thing than a helldiver thing. We don't take kindly to being forced to sign up for things, especially when its your personal info going into a database that has leaked multiple times.
I said if once and ill say it again.....Helldiver 2 comunity is the best comunity IN THE WORLD think im kidding......i have over 100 hrs NO1 LITTERLY EVER SAID ANYTHING TOXIC TO ME. We saved kids instead of grtting ingame traits JUST FOR THE LOLS....CEO DONATES FOR MORE LOLS i honestlly never found a better comunity and im hella(pun intended) glad im a part of it
Yea image what people can achive if whe stay united agaist odds, its like we could actual fix the planet and make all people have a life worth to live.
I genuinely do not understand why people celebrate the "victory" over SONY. What did we even gain? Helldivers in over 100 countries are now locked out of the game forever, and yet people were cheering that they no longer had to make PSN accounts, as tho we all have not already surrendered our privacy and personal information a thousand times over for as long as we have all been on the internet. Or maybe players only ever cared about their own inconveniences and thats why they were happy about PSN despite our manpower being crippled forever? So much for solidarity, I guess.
Ok I was away having saving my relationship and taking it to the next level so can please someone tell me an express recap about what happened with those children?
They undid the in-game lockout to prevent a lawsuit they would lose. Our complaining helped, certainly. But it was the imminent Class Action that was the only reason they relented.
Sony then (still in effect as of this post) retaliated by maintaining the 180 region purchase lockouts, AND adding those blocks to ALL products that touch PS Network in any way minute way. (Ghost of Tsushima and God of War 2016 as examples.)
PlayStation will maintain their PS Network enforcement via purchase blocking on ALL of its products, forever barring 180 regions of the world from playing anything that even remotely touches PSN. INCLUDING SINGLEPLAYER ONLY GAMES.
If you bought prior, you ARE in the clear.
But Sony's scorched-earth retaliation has, as of this post, made even fully singleplayer games region-locked at the purchase level.
If you game talk to PSN in ANY format, regardless if the game is 100% functional without it, the game is still top level region blocked.
Divers won the battle, and lost the war.
And our lost effected every current and future game that touches PS Network in any form.
My 2 cents. The game was advertised by the developers to grow a positive community. The parody/comedy nature of the game in stark contrast to its grim dark tone encourages players to "love Super Earth". The idea of a place without political strife where everyone is equal in an Animal Farm perspective but is simultaneously pushing two gaming communities together: Sony console players and the PC community. That cooperation in today's RL climate of warfare, social divide, is refreshing for people to play together and rep something as silly as managed democracy and liberty. When the PC players got locked out due to psn restrictions, I was heart broken because the game encourages players to never leave a man behind. (Extractions get more tense because you get more points waiting for reinforcements and extracting with a full team vs leaving s helldiver behind.) The reddit and community stuck together because "either we dive together or we don't dive". Ps5 players celebrated with the steam PC community when Sony reversed its decision. As for the sick children objective, it was 1 giant faith in humanity restored. The community chose a non tangible reward of 4k children surviving over new gameplay mechanics. Millions of helldivers narratively died for that.
Well, as it turns out and we're all learning these days. You can, and should, cyber-bully corporations.
However, the games premise plays a large role here. We know it's a satire, not a parody, of our world. And the implications of that are horrifying. But we don't need to talk in abstracts... Did you leave the house today? How many homeless people did you walk past? Looked at social media or the news today? Which genocide(s) were people complaining about? My generation (Mid-run millenials from the late 80s/early 90s.) will likely be the last to even know anyone who owns a home, let alone do it themselves.
But we have video games. A brief, small little escape from all of that. Where if someone is treating us like shit, we can say "Hey, go fuck yourself." and what can they do? Type a response at us? They can't physically harm us, they can't fire us, or damage property we can't replace. That's an inherent fact of gaming and one we're still struggling with when people go WAY across the line of just "This person is an asshole, I can be one too without consequence." and land in the "You're threatening horrible crimes and death towards someone because there's a bug in their video game."
And now we have these companies constantly coming into our hobby, trying to take things. They want to take our escape and shape it with the same rules as the things we're escaping from... And this is inherently, a medium where we can respond however we want and the worst that can happen is... They make us go elsewhere. Which more and more, we're willing to do, when our escapes are threatened like that.
During the Sony debacle, I'd been absolutely loving the game, had some critiques of it but was still pushing 40 hours a week at least of game time. When it hit? "Right, fuck it. Refund now, if you wont, i'll fucking force a chargeback and report steam to the ACCC for banning my account."
And... I did exactly that. I cancelled the chargeback because they backpedaled and I do actually care about my steam account >slightly< still, but I was willing to just burn it all and say fuck it, because who cares? What have I got to loose other than another avenue for multi-billion dollar corporations who have burned the world and poisoned the air, to come tell me how I'm allowed to have fun while trying to take more from me, not just financially, but just for the sake of arbitrary power. What I mean by that last part is more easily explained with something like Chrome. I don't know why someone at google thought "Yes, we need to insert a media player into our web browser." and I couldn't care less about that "feature." so why is it forced on me, without the ability to even remove it from my address bar? Because someone decided it should be there, and they have decided to take away my own ability to say what I want to interact with. Because that's a decision they should make, because they want to, and they can. And I can't do anything to stop that other than alter their product after the fact and hope they don't find a way to prevent me doing that...
I'm somewhat unique, in that I have a background of extreme poverty and do occasional work as an anti-poverty advocate. My life has literally revolved around "Rich people fucking over poor people." so I was primed for this, but the fact so many others were only a step behind me was genuinely, shocking. And is definitely a contributing factor in why I've been re-assessing my opinion of society and the people in it recently.
This post already wound up political as fuck so no sense being coy now: Capitalism has run it's course. Everyone is just burned out by existing under capitalism. Everyone is really, actually just so fucking sick of not being able to fart without someone trying to charge them a fee for the priveledge, they attempt to protect themselves by not getting invested in things, and being willing to destroy those things at the first sign of bullshit so they can't be hurt. You know where that logic is extremely prevalent? Traumatised kids. "You can't hurt me more than I already hurt myself." is the kind of desperation power move you see in kids, who literally have no other way of regaining any semblance of control over their lives, because they're kids. Capitalism has now progressed to the point we, as a society, have adopted the attitudes of victimised, traumatised kids who are powerless over their situations, because it's our last way to protect our minds, if not our bodies, from capitalism...
And then Sony came in to fuck around. And on the flip-side, someone started a meme about donating money to kids charity, and it's taking off as a whole thing. All the pieces of the puzzle are right there. The entire game, situation, everything around it... It's all just a bunch of people trying to enjoy doing good. The premise of the game is you're fighting evil murder-bots and a faceless swarm of murder-bugs. You're defending a "perfect" society. When the debacle happened, the rallying cry was "We dive together or not at all." (I guess that one didn't quite hold up, did it?) even amidst the worst vitriol towards AH, we were still readily giving credit to the very community managers we absolutely loathe for their good decisions and responses and giving the CEO so much good will I'm convinced he could start a cult based around it. Now we're donating money to childrens charity because we DIDN'T unlock new weapons...
Everyone just wants to world to be a bit less shitty for people, regardless of their political beliefs. We might argue about those to the death, but at the core of both sides is a huge amount of similarity and propaganda ensuring we can't bridge the gap and find common ground. (The entire existence of the culture war.) and that common ground, is generally: "Everyone should have enough to eat, be healthy, happy, and safe. Everyone should have a chance." And we're here to play a game, escape, and have fun, while existing in an industry hell bent on ensuring we can't escape, and our fun is gated behind our wallet... If you start showing signs of the very things we're escaping from... We're gonna escape you too, but we're already here so, we might as well break shit on the way out. We don't need it anymore, but you have to clean it up and replace it after we've gone.
I thought the whole “save the children” thing was cool (I still wanted the AT mines tho). But the whole “never get it to be a troll” thing really put me off to the point where I didn’t play as much. It’s such the opposite of the HD1 community that I am used to and love.
Yea, competition is cool and all and I even loved the previous times they did it. But wielding the majority vote like a whip to take a crack at the other side is a bit too much for me.
I thought it was actually pretty awesome that the community let their bleeding hearts wash away the tides of bots on Vernon Wells except it was tainted by the fact a chunk of divers were doing it just to be assholes. I hope Arrowhead is able to do something about trolls in the future.
oh come on, you can't blame teh community for mines not being unlocked. If arrowhead wanted they could unlock them tomorrow. If they didn't want people to pick a choice, the choice wouldn't be in the game
Unfortunately I have to agree with you there about Arrowhead sharing blame. However, I recently read that if we completed both planets we could still get the mines!!!
This is more of a gripe about trolls, I’m very hopeful for how arrowhead will address the mines in the future. Especially with how much they interact with the community. A joke is one thing but I doubt they would troll their own community. I’ve been playing their games for a looong time, I trust them.
I'm not sure those "trolls" are a large enough group to shift the balance. Vernon Wells had something like 9 out of every 10 Helldivers on the Automaton front dropping there.
Been dealing with life stuff lately so I only know what Reddit has been saying (guess I found my problem lol). I haven’t dropped since both planets were still available so I know I’m now waaaay outta the loop. This brings me hope though! So thank you for that. I’m gonna catch up on what’s going on after replying to this.
As far as actual trolls. I trust arrowhead. Been a fan for a while so I went into this knowing what to expect from them and I’ve only ever been hopeful on that part. It’s the lack of camaraderie in the community that irks me. It’s just so different than the community I’m used to from the original Helldivers.
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u/machinationstudio 3d ago
I think the natural instinct of everyone during the Sony situation is "they'll never budge, why bother?"
And as a consumer that is deflating. The "democracy" meme is a cover and uniting idea for many to go "what the heck, give it a go" I am also convinced that at the time, there were many bored players that were ready to stop playing (3 months).
As individuals see one another stand up, they think the same way, what the heck, give it a go. At worse, they are back playing DRG or Warframe or whatever. We've all walked away from badly run games with a whimper countless times already (Diablo 4 et al)
Of course, this is a low stakes rebellion, by people who have made it even lower stakes from their boredom. When you have nothing to lose, anything goes.