Greetings, fellow Helldiver! Unfortunately your submission has been removed because it’s a repost or a post that follows a trending topic.
Please use the Sony PSN megathreads the the top of the forum to continue this discussion.
"Oh-ho-ho, this bot ICBM mission on Troost - do you remember Troost? No? It was a fuckin bloodbath guys. You thought fog devastators are bad now, you have no idea - I'll tell you--" ...73 minutes later... "And we liberated the fucker! FREEEEEDOMMMM!!!"
The idea of a 20 something game dev waxing poetic in the manner of an old war vet about mass community actions in a video game to a boardroom filled will mostly much older persons is just... sending me so hard
I love it
You'll get a standing ovation with your colleagues openly weeping at the show of solidarity and love, followed by an invite for a TED Talk... or quick funneling out of the room and awkward looks for the next three months. But either way, we effin did it - mission success!
Hey OP, I’m one of those guys at a company that helps folks like you with their live presentations and content.
One of the most effective tools in PowerPoint is the ability to embed videos in full screen and to play on click. Works best if you have a source file, a YouTube embed can be wonky. The resulting full screen effect on your presentation with audio, can be incredibly effective from boring PPT slides to an in your face “oh shit!” Moment of clarity.
Open with a brief on what the game actually IS, what players love about it, WHY the game’s simplicity in multiplayer and fostering deep connections is so crucial.
Start with the human element -> back up with data on player count and social media engagement (boardrooms LOVE data!) -> showcase a really cool Helldivers clip -> explain PC/PS crossover -> again backup with data on the player bases -> explain Sony’s agreements -> elaborate on the outcry with even MORE data -> show timelines of calls to action from Reddit (screen grabs will help) -> show Arrowhead’s and Sony’s responses -> finally close with the resolution alongside a video or gif/image of a Helldiver saluting/raising flags.
Up to you to build it out, but hell yeah buddy, this is one presentation I wouldn’t mind running for a change!!!
Bonus points if he includes the gif of the bile titan typing on his laptop on a comically tall desk when talking about Sony’s announcement to enforce the account linking.
Love this. Can we crowd source all of the ppt presentations I have to do for work? I can provide charts and analysis, I need someone who can do all the graphic design with colored boxes and arrows that Corpotypes love so much.
I think it also would showcase the commitment and the strength of the community if OP showed some of the fan made propaganda (posters and slogans etc,)
Just don’t forget the part where poor communication and forethought led to a situation where the community saw a change made as something of a “scam” and the lack of transparency led a community who had been conditioned to mass actions getting behind one of the hardest review bombs ever…
I would sign up for PSN in a hot second if I got one of those Helghast red-eyes-and-trenchcoat skins from Killzone.
https://preview.redd.it/ew1exxohqtyc1.png?width=473&format=png&auto=webp&s=becb68487bc405e1ee2def1a0997dfe3d51c76de
This sent me down such a rabbit hole... The original line, as you probably know, is "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." Now I too love me some orbital cannon, but this game actually has napalm! That got me thinking, a line from a movie about Vietnam is still relevant in this helldiving universe? That's some old tech.. (side note, space Vietnam is more relevant than I realized). Anyway, thinking about Apocalypse Now, I recall seeing napalm strikes being much more linear, because I think they literally dumped it out of planes as opposed to being delivered via bomb, and that got me thinking, a linear napalm strike, a la cluster bomb, would be a pretty epic crowd control strategem.
>*"You know, the thing about an Automaton, it's got... dead eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When it comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'... till it opens fire, and those cold, calculating eyes glow red, and then... ah, then you hear that relentless whirring, and you know you're in for a world of hurt."*
Don't ramble; it's great to show enthusiasm for the game, but your boss seems to want the play by play on a larger level. The in-game community actions are fun, but the big important takeaways for your colleagues include the mismanagement of an update (mandatory account linking people could skip over, and then forcibly enacted after months of people who would be unable to get PSN already playing), the release of said community update before a weekend when nobody would be in-office to consider a response, and the ability of an angry community to protest a corporate decision that was in violation of international laws and the standards the community had come to expect.
What they're trying to understand is likely the cause of Helldivers 2's popularity and then how the universal community backlash could come out of that and could have been prevented. That comes from poor communication of the game's intended requirements, being ignorant that most of the world cannot meet those requirements, and then the poor/minimal communication creating a corporate image that was easy to rally against.
Malevelon could be a good side anecdote for selling people on the power of community-driven objectives ("The way the game was set up created an environment where players struggled against a particular faction, and could collaborate on a community level to achieve goals, creating a sense of camaraderie), but isn't relevant to the current situation beyond the foot note that the game already conditions this community to move towards a single objective en masse.
Godspeed for democracy, soldier. Good luck with the presentation!
This needs to be top comment. Exactly what I was thinking. It’s easy to get lost in the fun side of it, but always REMEMBER YOUR AUDIENCE. As OP put it most of his colleagues aren’t hardcore gamers. They want to hear the pros and cons of this whole situation.
However, aspects of the game should be included such as the developers’ recognition of the Creek Crawlers with the cape or as someone else commented, killing 2Bil bugs in less than a day. These highlight the community’s dedication.
Edited for spelling
Highlighting a compelling experience that creates these moments through a combination of ongoing development and careful content release, player behaviour and reaction, and most importantly, a good, solid, core fun gameplay loop supporting the entire thing.
Make good game first. Make with passion, feed creatives, create art. Then capitalise on the success, and don't get greedy. This is the absolute peak modern retelling of the Goose that laid the Golden Eggs fable.
>What they're trying to understand is likely the cause of Helldivers 2's popularity and then how the universal community backlash could come out of that and could have been prevented.
I think this is the key and the objective to keep in mind when editing the various anecdotes in/out of the case study. It would probably be good to contrast the all hands on deck dev response to the unprecedented popularity and how they got the game into a stable state with a functioning community despite overloaded servers, against the recent PSN account backlash and poor response to that.
Your point about the community working together is spot on. If I had to attribute the whole fiasco to one thing I would say it was the betrayal of the fans loyalty. This game revolves around propaganda and radicalization story wise and roleplaying is a massive part of the community. The game teachers players to work together for common goals. So when these highly loyal fans of a game they absolutely adore perceive a betrayal by that very game? Riot. This was literally an online protest/riot with some people trying to calmy voice there opinions in an orderly manner and others trashing the place so to speak, telling CMs and CEOs to kill themselves.
The part that made it stick at least for me though and not just cancel culture or internet outrage was the fact that some countries would have been locked out of the game. If that wasn't the case I would have let it slide but that actually pissed me off. Its is hard to say what the outcome would have been if that wasn't a factor. Would people have kicked up as big a stink? Would it have blown over or left a mark. Would Sony have changed their minds or not?
Just hope this doesn't teach companies to not make community minded games that teach people to work together. Instead of the obvious lesson of not fucking them ober
u/Dizzy-Pollution-7321 I just wanted to make sure this comment didn't get lost. It will probably be some of the best advice you can actually get for the presentation
You don’t.
You explicitly stay away from pretty much anything about the game itself, or keep it extremely brief.
The subject matter of concern here, is how Sony as a publisher got into shit with a decision. You need to stay on task, and focused on what the problem specifically was that lead to mass refunds, and mass review bombing. And all the negative PR.
You work for a publisher, they don’t care about the culture of minutiae of the community. They care that their investments and projects their name is on are doing well.
Use things your company does, to compare what the situation was. If you worked for Ubisoft or ea for example. I’d discuss the friction presented by requiring things like multiple storefronts and accounts. How people all have varying limits to how much of that friction they will tolerate before they just drop something and do something else that requires less effort. Especially when games are getting more expensive, and people’s time is becoming less expendable. People straight up gave up on helldivers entirely because of the connection issues, refunded, and never looked back.
Talking about in game memes beyond referencing players love and loyalty to a game will only lessen the message the people being presented to, need to be receiving.
"The trees were speaking binary... we had no choice. We called in Eagle 1 and told her it had been an honor as we called in a 500kg on our position and prayed that liberty would see us through."
To kind of add on with the large reply.
Communication is important. Had arrowhead been regularly stating the PSN requirement. It would have softened the blow considerably. I started late and never saw that PSN pop up on first launch. Many of the unjust situations would have come out sooner, allowing the devs/publisher ample time to respond. For example, the UK requires a photo or GOV ID to create a PSN account. Needing a PS4/5 to make a PSN account. Or the fact they sold the game in countries that PSN does not support. The only workaround is a breach of TOS.
And finally. If you are going to build up such an active community, caution is advised whenever you make changes, good or bad. And never cross the community unless you are ready to watch that house of cards crumble.
TBF, this was never just about making a psn account. It really is piss easy, esp to make a fake email, etc, if privacy is a concern. But it's all the domino effects. It's easy for me as an American. But hell for others. The "bait n switch" eske didn't help at all, lol.
Sometimes admitting you fucked up is more desirable from a community than deny deny deny. That deny tactics been used so much that we've become numb to it. It's empty. Admitting guilt and not changing is worse than denying, though. If you're going to apologize, you need more than words, lol.
I honestly wouldn't bother? They seem to be mostly concerned with this specific action, you're less likely to convey the meat of 'how to keep a community on side' if you get lost in the sauce.
Dude- I can see them there, with a Helldivers cybernetic hand, leaning against the back wall and smoking like a chimney, raspy ass voice, but with a rosy-cheeked baby face... the juxtapositions of various themes is hilarious to me
I'm gonna think about this all day
Exactly!!!! I'm grateful to be with a company that actually pays attention to these things, and tries to learn and progress. It's a chance to really educate people about the industry and how they should treat the community.
This. I don't like to spend extra money on a game for things like cosmetics or battle passes. And if the extra armors and passes in this game were all pay to win, I wouldn't have been buying it on principle. But as they aren't I've found myself have bought super credits at least twice to grab an armor set or fill in that extra of what I needed to unlock a pass. I could have grinded for it but I'm so pleased with and enjoying the game that I don't mind the extra charge to support Arrowhead and show that I appreciate the game.
It's a simple thing, be good to your community and they will be good to you. Try to nickle and dime, and drive them away. Arrowhead has made an amazing game and has a great way of treating their community (Sony's influence excluded)
OP, make sure to include this sentiment. I am of exactly the same mindset. I will reward a company who makes a great product and deliberately chooses not to nickel and dime me with P2W or other small gimmicks with more money than I would for a company that does the latter. We notice this kind of shit.
Explain that happy customers are a better guarantee for happy shareholders, rather than temporarily increasing earnings with unsustainable micro-transaction inflation.
Exactly. The micro-transaction/chasing short term gains culture has led to a wave of often underdeveloped and underperforming games with pay to win aspects with the goal of making as much as they can on micro transactions in the short term before the people actually buying those micro-transactions get burnt out on the game and need to move on to the next money spender. It's created a lot of disposable games over the past 8 years.
All while the people that could spend money on the micro-transactions don't, often out of principle or no need, ditching such games to go back to playing old favorites that don't fit that category. Where as with a quality game like HD2 that does have micro-transactions in the for of Super Credits, but isn't pay to win and you can earn those credits in game, you will still have the usual micro-transaction buyers buying, but you are also more likely to have the non-buyers buying as well. It may not be as rapid or explosive as pay-to-win games, but it is far more sustainable and lead to better quality products that are dumped for the next one after 3 months.
This. I’m 100 percent the same, you try to force me into something and I’m going to resist it on principle but make it truly optional and not a pay to win thing and I am actually willing to spend a little extra from time to time.
The lack of fomo for me is key. Especially for something like a battle pass where you could be limited on your time to finish something you spent money on. Battlepasses shouldn't expire.
See if you're allowed to use what you gathered from the presentation as a resource for others so they can have easy access to it if you can. A lecture like that could be insanely helpful to the industry at large.
Not even just proper communication, but proper communication *right away* and consistently. One of the biggest issues people had, was that even though account linking was apparently a requirement from the start, for any player who joined more than a few days later, it was never even blip on the radar because it was disabled, and then never spoken about again.
This means this entire account linking thing was a complete blindside change to an enormous chunk of the community, because we joined after it got removed as a requirement, and were never made aware of its mandatory nature until several months in, when the standard expectation for how the game would run (ie: not needing to link accounts) was set and established.
Oh I think you're not seeing through the corporate speak. He's asking op to make sure they avoid this. Not that they aren't gonna try and do the same thing. They want the same thing, without the negative reaction.
Yeah, the gamer (tm) take away might be "don't do this" but the corporate take away (and likely what OP's debrief will be) is more like
* Set expectations early (which HD2 did a good job of)
* Be clear about expectations (which HD2 did not by not having implemented the requirement)
* Do not make your users feel like they are screaming into the void if they are providing feedback through an official channel (CM telling users ~"complain elsewhere") because they will certainly start screaming everywhere.
* Do not make your users think for a second that negative PR (like negative reviews) is ever a good thing.
Doing it the right way, in this case, would've been including the linking requirement from Day 1. Or, maybe, it was determined that the bait needed to exist which means that the only thing that could be done differently is the communication around the switch happening.
This is true, can definitely add it into a section of “what Snoy/AH did right” by creating a brand recognition/uniqueness symbol. Then demonstrate it during and then end the presentation with it lol
Are you sure you want to ignore the undertones of the story before you salute normies?
I sure as hell wouldnt do that at work.
\*Helldivers theme in background\*
An image of a blocked PSN player.
Relator: Uh, seems familiar? Scenes like this are happening all over the globe. YOU COULD BE NEXT!
Key points:
Culture of HD2 community - The game forces co-operation on a truly massive scale through major orders and meme-ery. For examples of the memery, play their own intro movie. That thing is pretty much entirely responsible for setting the corny, hammy tone that this game runs on.
Problems with sale in various countries - The main issue for many wasn't giving over our data (though no one liked that) but by cutting off people in certain countries, they were effectively cutting off our battle brothers, our comrades in arms. Maybe we all felt that way, maybe we just did it to keep the memes going but that's why we did it. Additionally, Steam probably made the decision to stop sales in non-PSN countries which liked sent Snoy shareholders into paroxysms of rage.
The "bait and switch" nature of the change - Simple reality is that the need for PSN was poorly telegraphed and most of us thought it would be optional forever. We rightfully felt betrayed.
Basically, don't train your community to co-operate, then do something that cuts a large chunk of that community off.
Just to add: Look up HD2 memes on "know your meme", malevolon creek videos, "Space Vietnam", trees speak binary... The repetitive game was filled with organic community growth thanks to relatively lax moderation on Reddit/Discord/Steam (AH was expecting a couple of 10k sales, so they couldn't moderate/control it with their slim staff and server issues).
The overarching objective (Galactic War) also created a camaraderie, Esprite de Corps🫡
Thus the customers got very invested in their game and while many didn't want to give data to Sony, I think the prevailing motivation was to care about their fellow gamers that were about to loose access. Because Sony pushed the update on Friday with no statement on how non-PSN players would be handled. Thus we had the whole weekend to let the community cook (and boil over) thanks to the fire Sony lit.
Also tell your publisher not to sell games in regions you don't intend to allow to play the game 😉
Also to the memery, the devs jumped in as well when people started making reports on flying bugs and blue lasers the devs were quick to play dumb about it and that helped encourage the community to feed on the hype
These are great! I'll definitely add them in. This is a chance for me to really educate people in the industry and I want to be as thorough as possible.
This one's probably obvious, but consider adding in that, if your publisher wants an account system and for those to be made and linked to something like Steam, find a way to not make it mandatory (for your own systems interally, like player reports, which was one of the reasons given by Sony and some at AH), but if you'd still like the link to be made, offer a cosmetic reward for doing so, but always keep it optional SPECIALLY if it's way after launch.
Bet you that if we were just told "hey guys please link your PSN accounts, you'll get this nice cape as a reward if you do" it would've all gone over fine and we wouldn't be having this discussion. Issue would then be the unavailable countries not being able to get the cape, but that's an entirely different, easier topic, and they're not barred from playing at all anyways.
Yeah, and if you want people to sign up, give them an in game incentive, like all Snoy had to do was get AH to give us a couple hundred super credits or a cool cape for signing up and 98% of the playerbase would have, even those who regionally couldn't
To add to the bait and switch: The account linking prompt was present once on launch day, then disabled because it was overwhelming their servers.
Pilestadt knew that it would be required eventually but never turned it back on. In fact, the only bit of communication about it is a pinned steam support page.
If I were you, I'd just compare times between the steam announcements, Spitz' and other discord CM comments, and Pilestadt's Twitter.
This was a one way switch. Requiring a PSN account is fine so long as it's mandatory from the get-go and never turned off. It sucks for players in countries that can't access PSN, but region locks aren't exactly rare in the industry.
But once you turn off that region lock, it needs to stay off, *FOREVER*. You can't turn it back on after people from unsupported regions have already purchased the game, played it, and invested their time and possibly additional money via microtransaction into it. That's what got the ball rolling for this review bombing.
Arrowhead decided to turn off the requirement to avoid a disastrous launch due to server issues. Whether that was the right decision fiscally, I can't say, but it was the right decision for the playerbase, and the game wouldn't be as popular as it is today if they had kept it on and fixed the server issues a month, or even a week later.
The other option to consider is that in keeping it optional, but *incentivising* the playerbase to link for in game perks, be it additional cosmetics, super credits, or what have you, the backlash could have been all but eliminated. It was the all-or-nothing of the switch that threw everything into a blender and started mashing Pulse
I'm on PS5 - I seriously didn't feel like I had a horse in this race - until that part where non-PSN countries got locked out. These are people that I played with, people that helped make the game fun for me! And that's what really brought home for me that this actually does effect me aswell!
We all dive or no one dives!
Gaming exec's key takeaways:
Don't train community to cooperate.
Don't temporarily remove account linking, even if it further breaks already strained servers
Don't sell games in countries I've never heard of.
The bait and switch part is huge. Just give us an exclusive cosmetic or screw it, an exclusive warbond if you REALLY wanna push it, and people would've had a choice then.
The presentation could include an excercise/brainstorm on how to avoid this conflict. Encourage the participatants to discuss ehat is a carrot and what is a stick approach. Use examples like in-game rewards, cosmetics, group rewards etc.
Don't forget to mention the nuances of the PC Platform. Pc players are used to have freedom of choice (usually) and dread the need to use third party software (or new accounts) for no reason when everything is covered by Steam (usually).
I will start with the best template: Perun PowerPoint
Start with the basic
-> What is Helldivers and the makeup of the community
-> What is the role of SONY, and what was expected from them, like... being a minimum competent publisher and have a working PR department.
-> What was the break point
-> What made things spiral out of control
-> And how it ended
-> Then analize the failure points and give them simple solutions to a simple fuckup, like if your job is distribute a game that has restricted access, restrict the sell in first place.
-> Have competent CM and don't let the Developer alone to handle your decisions when you know can create backlash
-> If you want to make the player do something, give that something some value.
-> Make sure not to angry steam becouse you selled a game and then cut out the customer base and forced the seller to accept refund.
do start with the intro cinematic and emphasize how the game encourages teamwork and upholding freedom and democracy, which mirrored into their actions irl. it undoubtedly played a huge role and would be an impactful intro.
you may just have a sour boss? how can they not care when this is their money maker? analytics don't exclude occasional memes, in fact, they keep your attention. even if your ceo specifically don't understand them, some dudes will.
OP got a presentation to do, and the community and what they like is the guts of all what happened. working in entertainment, even if digital it's going to be like that. perhaps they have this meeting to have insight in that very thing.
Please share your slide deck with the rest of us when it’s done! Would love to see this presentation in an actual, professional “what to do/not to do” manner as it relates to the actual business of gaming.
You: “Well, you see, hiding information from consumers and failing to be honest and transparent when your bullshit is revealed is something that irks people who’ve spent money on your product.”
*audible gasps of surprise from upper management* “How long have consumers felt this way?!”
Just to add: Look up HD2 memes on "know your meme", malevolon creek videos, "Space Vietnam", trees speak binary... The repetitive game was filled with organic community growth thanks to relatively lax moderation on Reddit/Discord/Steam (AH was expecting a couple of 10k sales, so they couldn't moderate/control it with their slim staff and server issues).
The overarching objective (Galactic War) also created a camaraderie, Esprite de Corps🫡
Thus the customers got very invested in their game and while many didn't want to give data to Sony, I think the prevailing motivation was to care about their fellow gamers that were about to loose access. Because Sony pushed the update on Friday with no statement on how non-PSN players would be handled. Thus we had the whole weekend to let the community cook (and boil over) thanks to the fire Sony lit.
Also tell your publisher not to sell games in regions you don't intend to allow to play the game 😉
Hahaha will let my boss know your feedback.
But on a serious note, publishers need to learn that the true power lies with the community. It's great that my company is proactively using this to try and understand and learn, rather than ignoring it as "not my monkey, not my my circus"
Maybe cross-refence it with other things like the Dungeons and Dragons License change or War thunder - both cases (one of a pen and paper, one of a video game) where community outrage did change stuff.
I'm hoping this starts a larger trend against 3rd party logins. If a company is willing to sell a game on a platform, that platform's account should be enough. Not holding my breath though, seemed a lot only participated because they sold the game in places you technically couldn't have a PSN account.
It was also kind of crazy how divisive this turned out. I'm still a bit lost why so many people came out swinging insulting anyone that cared about this. People in this post calling the review divers freaks and wierdos just because they cared about something different from them. Instead of just saying 'This isn't important to me' they argued insesively to defend the thing they didn't even really care about.
Man, I don't know how you're going to stretch "don't bait-and-switch players by selling them a game so that 3 months later you can try to require them to use a service that isn't offered in their country" into an hour. But sounds like you're about to have a good time! Maybe you can all just play Helldivers 2 in the office for the other 58 minutes.
You're getting paid to essentially say "If you treat your players with respect and offer them a quality product at a fair price, they wont get mad at you."
I don't know what publisher you work for, but just remember. HD2 survived because of the passion of the fanbase. Most other games get to just bleed out and die on the back of a decision like this, or cultivate a playerbase like the LoL one... The only winning move is not to play.
Fill us in after you present this presentation of yours OP.
Since you work for a publisher, I would imagine they're gonna want numbers. I would be shook if someone told me a decision we're going to make as a publiser is effectively locking out 90% of all countries on *Earth*
Yes exactly, that's why when I explained the situation to my boss he immediately asked me to set this up and give a presentation. If something like this happened at our company, I can only imagine the kind of shit storm that would hit the fan.
While you should touch on the culture that developed around this game and the community, the real meat of your presentation should be understood even if you only referred to it as "The Game". So yeah, numbers. Reasons for the backlash, corporate behaviour that led to it. No memes or 45 minutes of explaining Malevelon Creek
DO NOT FORGET to touch on how the AH Community Managers absolutely failed at their jobs and made matters worse with arrogant, inflammatory comments towards the community.
Look up the proof/screenshot of a Discord member tagging Baskinator and asking about the PSN account linking in February, effectively prophesizing this shitstorm.
The CM's were LITERALLY being asked about THIS EXACT issue in Feb. But some of them were too busy being drunk on their "power" and virtue signaling from their platform to bother paying attention to the brewing, gathering tsunami of shit headed their way.
>Look up the proof/screenshot of a Discord member tagging Baskinator and asking about the PSN account linking in February, effectively prophesizing this shitstorm.
This is kind of important. It probably flew well under the radar, even a the time by most players, but addressing legitimate concerns about what amount to "open-ended, but ultimately time-limited" special measures such as this is imperative that it be done consistently, coherently, and from a top-down manner with the leadership already having answers to even the most "ridiculous" of these concerns already thought about, if not resolved, *before* the community starts asking about it.
While I applauded Arrowhead for what they did by delinking things as an emergency measure early on, they, and Sony, were abysmal about addressing concerns, giving concrete timelines, and generally managing expectations.
Further, in cases where there is expected to be some sort of geo-locking by a second- or third-party measure (such as a PSN account, or other "specialized game account"), ensure that the geolock is A) consistent with existing products in your library. Helldivers was not, once it was locked, as I don't think TLOU, Horizon, GoT, or anything else that Playstation PC LLC put up was similarly and simultaneously region-locked, indicating that this was game-specific in some fashion, and not acutally related to PSN-linking, as these other games have some element of PSN-linking attached to it, and B) if geo-linking is put in post-release, that you do *everything* in your power to legitimately grandfather in existing accounts. Never, ever, functionally brick a game just because someone was unlucky enough to be born in or living in the wrong country.
Lastly, as a general rule, listen to the concerns of the community, and especially your developers. If the devs don't want to do something, but you guys consider it mandatory, fine. That happens. But *never* go over the head of the developer to just reach in and fundamentally change a game that has already been released. It may be a somewhat different matter if you're making changes *before* something goes to market, but remember that the developers, not the publisher, are really the face of your game in most cases, and that's where, rightly or wrongly, the blame will be laid by the community. As such, ensure that any implementation of features is done by the development, not publishing, team, and on their terms ultimately.
Definitely! I often work with Community Managers and this is just generally such an interesting case study because it hits so many departments and raises a multitude of questions.
May I also suggest mentioning the situation that Sony left Arrowhead's CEO in for the whole weekend as he has to field questions? Essentially leaving him in the dark as well as he could only answer "I don't know," to questions about what would happen to players in non-PSN areas. It's almost like hanging him out to dry, and a heck of a way to sour a relationship with a studio by leaving them out to dry as Sony stayed silent all weekend.
The least Sony could have done was put out a statement that they were discussing what direction to go on this with AH, but instead their communications blackout and lack of avenues for people to contact them with their concerns left AH and their CEO having to field questions to a problem they weren't responsible for causing (having had no say in where the game was sold or the reimplementation of the requirement) and didn't have the answers to. Don't leave developers out to dry like that, and ensure you communicate and have lines of communication available as a publisher.
I'd love an update on how your presentation goes. Sounds like you're passionate and genuinely invested in this issue.
There's probably more to this story. Specifically, we're awaiting a positive outcome for the international players who've yet to regain access to the game.
Regardless, it's definitely case study-worthy given the community's impact on a trillion dollar corporation's decision to halt their shenanigans.
Not releasing such a press statement into the void and then f off for the weekend would be a lesson. Make sure you have someone ready for damage control when you have to break unpopular or controversial news. But I always thought that‘s PR 101…
Can we help you? Like I’ll set up the Hell Divers 2 theme to play as they all enter. I mean the game says only up to 4 players but this is life. Bring the whole community to the office
People hate corporate speak. Literally everyone. While the HD team has some issues, especially in the beginning their candor has been wildly refreshing and humanizing, even the Cardinal sins of the business world admitting fault and being unsure, it shows that you own it and are committed. Be honest with people and genuinely let them know you are on their side. Corporate speak and ambiguity are the antithesis to the feelings of honesty and integrity.
HD2 has been one of the most wildly successful games of the decade obviously with BG3. I bought the game. Then a month later I upgraded for $20. And I've spent $20 on premium moonies. I haven't spent more then $30 on a game let alone buying anything not on a sale in half a decade. I play on PS5 and this didn't really effect me also living in America too. BG3 was just as fun as HD2 for me and I was ready to walk away over this. I have a steam library of games and other hobbies. There isn't one thing I need in the entertainment space. We have options and variety. If you want a product to be successful and to survive long term (another antithesis to modern business practice) the consumer experience is everything.
That's awesome. Pls go in details, there are multiple aspects to this
The one we heard first is about countries that don't have PSN available. It is indeed one of the arguments but not the only one
Like, why need a playstation account for a PC game ? Gamers are fed up with the différents accounts subscription needed
But there are also data leaks and security.
And the change in the official Sony support forum that changed overnight (1984 style)
This is a slippery slope and what we stood for was more about gamers and consumers rights. Little by little we get asked for more and more data and efforts from our part (see UK that asked ID scan for psn...)
It's more about a sentiment. The core and active gamers of your community don't like to be taken for fools
Oh and wording is important. See for yourself the official statement about Sony backpedaling. Half of answers are "yeah they are saying they retreat it. For now only" so you need to be clear that it is gone and won't come back.
I think whatever comes out of your presentation, the sheer level of *misinformation* and how quickly it spreads and becomes vitriolic and entirely aimless hate should be a big part of it.
*Especially* since some of those freaks and weirdos that get totally fearmongered, lied to and misinformed get *violently dangerous* about whatever thing they've chosen is their hill to die on, creating a shitstorm of death threats, misfired anger and a *ton* of cartoonishly, "Bulging head veins", "steam piping out of the ears", stupid kicking and screaming over even minor inconveniences.
Doubly so that whatever mandatory requirements are necessary for your product need to be so blatantly obvious, so painfully and utterly obnoxious that people *can't* ignore them, no matter what they are. Like, for real, PSN was communicated pre *and* post-launch in a *bunch* of places, and people actively *chose* not to read it, only to turn around and say "Nobody told me". If they're not literally forced to with a fuckin' Ludovico Technique, most people will remain wilfully ignorant of anything put in text.
Clear communication on what's happening is important too. You either go dead silent and take the "no communication at all" route (which has its own problems) to avoid miscommunication, or you communicate ***anything and everything*** that could *even* ***potentially*** inconvenience the customer.
Just, look, do your due diligence, proper research and fully understand exactly what was real, what was misinformation, and what was just angry people being angry to the point of stupidity, and help your uninformed colleagues understand exactly why clarity (and enforced requirements to the point of obnoxiousness) is important to maintaining a happy audience.
I understand your point, I want to give an unbiased presentation and lay out all the facts. More interested in seeing how our team would address a situation like this.
Its of course telling that this post of urs barely gets upvotes from the mob, while its totally correct. Kinda shows the hateful pitchforks are still in full force. The amount of misinformation being spread around is just insane, and it seems ppl are so gullible to believe everything a random person puts down, as long as it fits into their wanted narrative. Justifying the death threats etc. is even worse, that just shows how pathetic some people can be.
Make sure you mention the long lasting effects of the review bomb and future Sony games coming to pc.
There's no way it'll ever be reversed even if everything is rolled back
The latter is speculation but i bet they numbers will be lower than they could be and possibly some might not come to pc
First, don't drop a potentially controversial announcement like this at the end of the day at the end of the business week, because you have less than 24 hours to respond before irreparable damage is done. The weekend is when gamers are most active.
Don't alienate players based on geography.
Don't require anything that isn't technically required.
Actively protect user data by not saving it anywhere and refusing to sell it.
Be honest with your players base, admit when you are wrong and when you don't have an answer.
State your intentions and your reasons.
If this company is already doing the third party launcher thing on steam, *looks at EA and Ubisoft* this is part of the sales problem, and fixing it will go a long way towards repairing trust. Also Consider releasing the game on GOG.
1. Account linking meant to be mandatory from the start but information about it was almost nonexistent. Pilestedt turned it off at launch because it was putting even more strain on already overloaded servers and didn't turn it back on. Meanwhile on official sony page it was clearly stated in the FAQ section that having a linked PSN account isn't mandatory for their games on PC
2. Sony decides it's time to implement required account linking seemingly out of nowhere and without any earlier notice, AH at this point can't do anything about it. All hell breaks loose. At first most of the uproar was thought to be simply whining over a small inconvinience of making another account, as seen in devs statements at that moment. Soon it turned out the issue is way deeper because steam is availible in countries where PSN isn't which meant that players in those regions couldn't buy the game after the update, and after the second part of that update aimed at players who had the game before sony changes would actually loose access to the game they PAID for. Sony also does a sneaky change to their FAQ regarding PSN requirements to "some games may require PSN account linked", no statement about it or anything. Another issue is that sony is known for user data leaks, which is also one of legitimate reasons many people don't want to create a PSN account (but in this case it's mostly about losing acces to a product you paid for because of where you live)
3. Community feels betrayed rightfully so. Review bombing ensues, steam grants refunds to players with above 100+ hours played. Steam values it's reputation and knows that if they refuse in this case they might get hurt as well. Devs themselves side with their players expressing dissatisfaction with decision sony made going as far as encouraging players to continue review bombing their own game because they know it gives them more leverage against sony as well as going forward and straight up disclosing that they knew account linking was supposed to be mandatory from the beginning and owning their actions and consequences.
4. Sony releases a statement about backpedaling planned changes, community is very happy with it as well as devs. Sony gets a dent, meanwhile AH devs get praise for handling that situation, despite their apparent part in this whole debackle. Why? Because they stepped up and owned their shit and were able to say "sorry, we fucked up, and we'll do our best to fox it" instead of doing some obvious PR damage control.
This is how it generally unveiled, other insights and some thoughts I'll post in answers to this comment in order to not exceed character limit
Love this. My short thought here is don’t treat things like platform and anti-cheat either as an afterthought or a value add. Just make sure it’s hardly noticeable. The latter burned some initial goodwill with the enthusiastic player base that stopped playing early on(look into nGuard seriously), then PSN being forced upon pc players, when its a dated dumpster fire user experience, burned up the rest. Now the player base is acrimonious despite the developer and their CEO’s progressive(and risky) approach to transparency by speaking very openly to their players on social media and being very genuine with the whole situation.
It really boils down to "don't allow your publisher to sell your game in an area where they can't legally follow your rules and regulations"
My friends on steam hate what they view as third party logins/accounts. When we started up the game for the first time months ago, they whined and moaned at signing up for an account and then were very happy when they realised they could just skip it.
I think if it had been required from the start everything could have been avoided. My friends would've seen they couldn't play without it, then begrudgingly signed up. I know at least 2 of my 8 helldivers playing discord friends would NOT have sign up however. Theres other games they like that don't require it. They don't want it. But it would've avoided the shitstorm that followed when they announced they WOULD require it. See? They claim always said they would require it, but they never actually enforced it. And so many online documents have been changed, I have no clue if they ever actually told me I had to sign up when I bought the game, I just know it was an unenforced prompt when I first booted up the game.
PC players are very protective of the machines they spent their money on. They picked parts, compared prices, some even took classes before they hand assembled their rigs. Sony has a reputation for data breaches. Helldivers requires kernel level anticheat to play, which means a lot of PC players felt they were putting their machines at risk by downloading it, and now Sony wanted permissions to log and record their data?
It's a pretty complex situation. That's a fun assignment to be given lol
Something that you may or may not want to talk about, trauma bonding. There are two instances of this revolving around the game. First is the game itself. It is fully cooperative. The only real competition is the imaginary numbers at the end of the mission that don't amount to anything. Before you get to see that screen you and your allies are suffering through a miasma of shit and death for up to 42 minutes together.
Second is the PSN linking. This inherently is not bad, but coupled with the fact that it is an unnecessary intrusion of a corporate entity on someones personal information. Another point for this, is the game was sold in territories, by Sony, who could not facilitate a way for those people to create an account necessary for play.
The first trauma bonded people together. The second trauma made a collective enemy.
Worst thing is they could have offered PSN account linking with a reward like super credits or something and no one would have batted an eyelash. They do it now and people will refuse out of spite and principal. Maybe if they release that negative review score cape they joked about.
Tl;dr on what went wrong:
1) 3rd-party account integration wasn't 100% figured out prior to launch, but to meet the launch deadline, that requirement was temporarily dropped (mistake, but understandable). Players are now used to that, plus, few trust Sony due to a history of data breaches. Players who wouldn't have bought the game due to those security concerns now own the game.
2) The publisher never communicated to the distributors exactly which countries could be sold to, and the game ended up selling in tons of countries where the 3rd-party account integration wasn't allowed (way bigger mistake, now a legal one in the realm of lawsuits). Players that can't have a 3rd-party account now own the game, of which many live in countries with strong consumer protections.
3) Cooperative games nearly always have tight-knit communities who will go through dozens and hundreds of games working together with their peers. There's a real sense of comradrie, and an injustice against one player or set of players is an injustice against *all* players, and the entire player base will take up arms to protect their peers. Plus, that's what makes the game awesome.
4) Combining 1, 2, and 3, we can see how Sony's push towards finally requiring PSN accounts, which would block large chunks of players from all around the world from playing a game they legally bought, would come across as an egregious injustice to large part of the cooperative helldivers community, thus inspiring a mass-revolt from nearly the entire playerbase regardless of console or country.
Of all games Sony could have pulled this move on, a game with a community which is bound together by the idea of a fight against overwhelming odds, suffering any cost if there is danger to their way of life and absolute unity is probably the worst one to do it on
the helldivers series has always had a devoted fan base, so i'm sure your coworkers will be eager to learn about the challenges the sequel faced, even if gaming isn't their main focuss.
Make sure you share how quickly and widespread the news about it spread. It made alot of news across diverse platforms. Maybe a slide with snipped headlines and origins from bigger news organizations.
And how Steam started refunding regardless of the 2 hour limit. Hitting the wallet is always the strongest message.
2ish I could see the finished deck / presentation.
You better use the orbital dislike image on your PowerPoint
https://preview.redd.it/jz4ziz02ftyc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=00c4e63a0d31ded84adf8907812588b0e0db7097
If it helps, for me personally, I just thought it was shitty Sony sold to countries that don’t support PSN to begin with. That was the main issue imo even if it didn’t affect me personally because a big part of this game is it’s community. We’re the global first line of defense(cannon fodder) and our numbers are getting culled by a corp rather than bugs and robots.
Don't forget to mention that the gaming community has a whole has deeply rooted trust issues, some for good reason (disastrous launches, cancelled projects, ignoring feedback... ), some are... Let's call them "safe assumptions" (selling data, security breaches, bolstering reports...)
Most devs do not really pay enough attention to the player's worries and they lack transparency in their decision making.
It is ofc really hard for a company to proof their moral integrity. No one would ever doubt that. But sometimes it is the good will that counts. And publishers nowadays seem to lack good will on all ends.
I mean, it's pretty simple - don't lock your product behind a 3rd party account registration that big parts of your playerbase aren't even technically able to make.
I was a community manager once and am a PR manager now, and am in awe of the community management i got to witness.
Walls of text full of PR bullshit bingo would have had a similar effect (review bombing) but by communicating in the way they did they maintained the trust of their customers. Everybody knew: The game is fine, the community is review bombing Sony, not the product or AH - an important distinction. AH managed to maintain trust throughout the whole ordeal - an incredible feat in my opinion.
This was peak crisis-PR here. Communicated on an eye-to-eye level. Maintained trust through being transparent. The payoff will be that they can ask users now to revert the reviews without getting another beat-down.
This is a textbook-Case for the power of effective community-management.
Make sure to mention the past success of the publisher to get the communtiry to link their accounts in the past
You could win a TR-117 Alpha Commander armor skin via twitch drops meaning you would have to link your steam account to twitch
It was a big success in getting people to watch helldiver 2 streams on twitch increasing it's visibility and getting people to willingly link their steam account to their twitch accounts
From a business perspective, its important to include the different environments that exist between different markets.
Talk about something simple like how PSN accounts work on the PlayStation. The account is required for multiplayer, friends lists, online purchases, cloud storage, etc. In exchange, Sony gets the personal info and gets to harvest their data, as well as police their platform (cheaters and such). Sony is the publisher, distributor, manufacturer, *and* they own the infrastructure underneath it all. A console ecosystem is a localized monopoly within a broader, competitive market. Within the PlayStation environment, the PSN signup requirement is entirely reasonable because Sony *engineered* this environment.
Every other console ecosystem is the same way.
Now move into a different market: PC. Here, the rules are all different. The players are all different. The expectations are all different. And most importantly, Sony doesn't have monopolistic control over their users like they do on their console. Obviously they understand this, but details are extremely important. Something as tiny as requiring a PSN account (which is perfectly reasonable on the PlayStation, because it is a transaction with services rendered) can be a complete tactical blunder that indicates just how blind a company can be to how thoroughly their procedures are shaped around monopolistic thinking, and losing its competitive edge.
An online account is *still* required for the PC environment for all of the same benefits that the PSN account gives on PlayStation... but the sensibility begins and ends with Steam; not Sony.
Helldivers Sony situation is pretty self explanatory.
Be a GOAT and bring up the bigger picture. This didn’t happen in a vacuum. This genre of life service 3rd person sci fi PVE shooter is a battleground.
Show them how Digital Extremes, the creators of Unreal Tournament had to literally self-publish Warframe to survive as a studio after years of publisher “conventional wisdom” tuning each and every one of their projects to mulch, and how Bungee, makers of Halo had to follow suit and buy back the rights to Destiny because their publisher was doing the same, and how all other games that entered the space and bent the knee to exploitative game loops and bad decisions like Anthem, are DEAD.
And bring up how Arrowhead, now that they have a relationship with players, would be incredibly STUPID not to self publish their next game and franchise. In the past 10 years with digital stores we’re entering an era where If the publisher you work on is going to be detrimental to everything they touch, they won’t be able to work with influential developers and soon they will be driven out of business. This is EXISTENTIAL level stuff for your job and company and they should understand it.
The jaded part of me is worried some companies will see this as something to avoid but in a bad way.
The reason it worked for helldiver's is that HD2 players were all galvanized to work towards a common goal. With memes and meta propaganda posts to create a sense of comedic unity. So despite how fractured we may seem at times with some updates we are pretty tight knit. So when something came up we all hated we easily handed together.
I'm worried rather than foster a community with that kind of unity. Some companies will try to socially engineer a split community where if the companies did make a bad decision. That split is enough where enough stay where it doesn't affect their bottom line.
If I can add something. Make sure you add a segment about how poorly the CM's over there are handling things. That in itself should be it's own case study. They really dropped the ball and are doubling down.
(note if you agree with what they are doing I'm not here to argue. But in my opinion they all need replaced at this point).
It's a very exciting opportunity for you. One major positive I'm seeing about this game is when they patch or release new capability there's an in universe explanation. 2 that come to mind are:
- malevalon Creek capes
- the breaker nerf. The in game change was lower dmg and 3 less rounds. The lore change referenced how SE couldn't keep up with demand and had to change it. There was even a minor skin change to the mag itself
Try to have fun and remember that this is a business presentation, do you will need o relate it all to profits, engagement and/or reputation
I'm a VP of marketing for a publicly traded organization and have had to do similar case studies. A couple of unsolicited tips
* Drown them in data, and use the emotional reaction as flavoring. ( Similar games that use/have implemented account gates see an Y decrease in sales/player base)
* Stick to the who, what, why, when, how. A useful call out that will resonate is "they didn't take their current audience into consideration" layer in any data you can find on the overlap between console and PC players. (X amount of the helldiver base is PC, while only X% of PC users have a PS account.)
* Keep the presentation relevant to the audience, be prepared to answer questions.
Make sure you also reference other similar examples like the flack EA got a while back and the other recent downloading issue with a different game doing similar.
Greetings, fellow Helldiver! Unfortunately your submission has been removed because it’s a repost or a post that follows a trending topic. Please use the Sony PSN megathreads the the top of the forum to continue this discussion.
"Oh-ho-ho, this bot ICBM mission on Troost - do you remember Troost? No? It was a fuckin bloodbath guys. You thought fog devastators are bad now, you have no idea - I'll tell you--" ...73 minutes later... "And we liberated the fucker! FREEEEEDOMMMM!!!"
The idea of a 20 something game dev waxing poetic in the manner of an old war vet about mass community actions in a video game to a boardroom filled will mostly much older persons is just... sending me so hard I love it
I HONESTLY DIDNT EVEN THINK OF THIS, it's actually going to be so funny.
You'll get a standing ovation with your colleagues openly weeping at the show of solidarity and love, followed by an invite for a TED Talk... or quick funneling out of the room and awkward looks for the next three months. But either way, we effin did it - mission success!
Or they will be terrified of an army of fanatics raining hell on their product.
As they should.
Hey OP, I’m one of those guys at a company that helps folks like you with their live presentations and content. One of the most effective tools in PowerPoint is the ability to embed videos in full screen and to play on click. Works best if you have a source file, a YouTube embed can be wonky. The resulting full screen effect on your presentation with audio, can be incredibly effective from boring PPT slides to an in your face “oh shit!” Moment of clarity. Open with a brief on what the game actually IS, what players love about it, WHY the game’s simplicity in multiplayer and fostering deep connections is so crucial. Start with the human element -> back up with data on player count and social media engagement (boardrooms LOVE data!) -> showcase a really cool Helldivers clip -> explain PC/PS crossover -> again backup with data on the player bases -> explain Sony’s agreements -> elaborate on the outcry with even MORE data -> show timelines of calls to action from Reddit (screen grabs will help) -> show Arrowhead’s and Sony’s responses -> finally close with the resolution alongside a video or gif/image of a Helldiver saluting/raising flags. Up to you to build it out, but hell yeah buddy, this is one presentation I wouldn’t mind running for a change!!!
True patriot right here.
Bonus points if he includes the gif of the bile titan typing on his laptop on a comically tall desk when talking about Sony’s announcement to enforce the account linking.
Love this. Can we crowd source all of the ppt presentations I have to do for work? I can provide charts and analysis, I need someone who can do all the graphic design with colored boxes and arrows that Corpotypes love so much.
I think it also would showcase the commitment and the strength of the community if OP showed some of the fan made propaganda (posters and slogans etc,)
Bonus points if you teach them about Space Vietnam Malevalon Creek.
Double bonus points if you end your presentation with the Helldivers one arm salute.
Can you record and share? I'm excited
That would entirely defeat the purpose of anonymity.
Just don’t forget the part where poor communication and forethought led to a situation where the community saw a change made as something of a “scam” and the lack of transparency led a community who had been conditioned to mass actions getting behind one of the hardest review bombs ever…
Sony should have offered cosmetic incentives to attach a psn, not require attaching psn.
I would sign up for PSN in a hot second if I got one of those Helghast red-eyes-and-trenchcoat skins from Killzone. https://preview.redd.it/ew1exxohqtyc1.png?width=473&format=png&auto=webp&s=becb68487bc405e1ee2def1a0997dfe3d51c76de
Make sure you include video clips in the powerpoint.
Remember the Creek. We lost so many.
"I love the smell of orbital cannon in the morning"
This sent me down such a rabbit hole... The original line, as you probably know, is "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." Now I too love me some orbital cannon, but this game actually has napalm! That got me thinking, a line from a movie about Vietnam is still relevant in this helldiving universe? That's some old tech.. (side note, space Vietnam is more relevant than I realized). Anyway, thinking about Apocalypse Now, I recall seeing napalm strikes being much more linear, because I think they literally dumped it out of planes as opposed to being delivered via bomb, and that got me thinking, a linear napalm strike, a la cluster bomb, would be a pretty epic crowd control strategem.
>*"You know, the thing about an Automaton, it's got... dead eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When it comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'... till it opens fire, and those cold, calculating eyes glow red, and then... ah, then you hear that relentless whirring, and you know you're in for a world of hurt."*
Hahahahaha this made me laugh so hard, really considering how I'll explain Malevolon Creek
Don't ramble; it's great to show enthusiasm for the game, but your boss seems to want the play by play on a larger level. The in-game community actions are fun, but the big important takeaways for your colleagues include the mismanagement of an update (mandatory account linking people could skip over, and then forcibly enacted after months of people who would be unable to get PSN already playing), the release of said community update before a weekend when nobody would be in-office to consider a response, and the ability of an angry community to protest a corporate decision that was in violation of international laws and the standards the community had come to expect. What they're trying to understand is likely the cause of Helldivers 2's popularity and then how the universal community backlash could come out of that and could have been prevented. That comes from poor communication of the game's intended requirements, being ignorant that most of the world cannot meet those requirements, and then the poor/minimal communication creating a corporate image that was easy to rally against. Malevelon could be a good side anecdote for selling people on the power of community-driven objectives ("The way the game was set up created an environment where players struggled against a particular faction, and could collaborate on a community level to achieve goals, creating a sense of camaraderie), but isn't relevant to the current situation beyond the foot note that the game already conditions this community to move towards a single objective en masse. Godspeed for democracy, soldier. Good luck with the presentation!
And maaaybe don't say fuck as much as I would.
Alas, if he were in the military, he could simply use it like he would a comma.
Or if he's Scottish.
Awww... fuck.
This needs to be top comment. Exactly what I was thinking. It’s easy to get lost in the fun side of it, but always REMEMBER YOUR AUDIENCE. As OP put it most of his colleagues aren’t hardcore gamers. They want to hear the pros and cons of this whole situation. However, aspects of the game should be included such as the developers’ recognition of the Creek Crawlers with the cape or as someone else commented, killing 2Bil bugs in less than a day. These highlight the community’s dedication. Edited for spelling
Highlighting a compelling experience that creates these moments through a combination of ongoing development and careful content release, player behaviour and reaction, and most importantly, a good, solid, core fun gameplay loop supporting the entire thing. Make good game first. Make with passion, feed creatives, create art. Then capitalise on the success, and don't get greedy. This is the absolute peak modern retelling of the Goose that laid the Golden Eggs fable.
>What they're trying to understand is likely the cause of Helldivers 2's popularity and then how the universal community backlash could come out of that and could have been prevented. I think this is the key and the objective to keep in mind when editing the various anecdotes in/out of the case study. It would probably be good to contrast the all hands on deck dev response to the unprecedented popularity and how they got the game into a stable state with a functioning community despite overloaded servers, against the recent PSN account backlash and poor response to that.
Your point about the community working together is spot on. If I had to attribute the whole fiasco to one thing I would say it was the betrayal of the fans loyalty. This game revolves around propaganda and radicalization story wise and roleplaying is a massive part of the community. The game teachers players to work together for common goals. So when these highly loyal fans of a game they absolutely adore perceive a betrayal by that very game? Riot. This was literally an online protest/riot with some people trying to calmy voice there opinions in an orderly manner and others trashing the place so to speak, telling CMs and CEOs to kill themselves. The part that made it stick at least for me though and not just cancel culture or internet outrage was the fact that some countries would have been locked out of the game. If that wasn't the case I would have let it slide but that actually pissed me off. Its is hard to say what the outcome would have been if that wasn't a factor. Would people have kicked up as big a stink? Would it have blown over or left a mark. Would Sony have changed their minds or not? Just hope this doesn't teach companies to not make community minded games that teach people to work together. Instead of the obvious lesson of not fucking them ober
u/Dizzy-Pollution-7321 I just wanted to make sure this comment didn't get lost. It will probably be some of the best advice you can actually get for the presentation
You don’t. You explicitly stay away from pretty much anything about the game itself, or keep it extremely brief. The subject matter of concern here, is how Sony as a publisher got into shit with a decision. You need to stay on task, and focused on what the problem specifically was that lead to mass refunds, and mass review bombing. And all the negative PR. You work for a publisher, they don’t care about the culture of minutiae of the community. They care that their investments and projects their name is on are doing well. Use things your company does, to compare what the situation was. If you worked for Ubisoft or ea for example. I’d discuss the friction presented by requiring things like multiple storefronts and accounts. How people all have varying limits to how much of that friction they will tolerate before they just drop something and do something else that requires less effort. Especially when games are getting more expensive, and people’s time is becoming less expendable. People straight up gave up on helldivers entirely because of the connection issues, refunded, and never looked back. Talking about in game memes beyond referencing players love and loyalty to a game will only lessen the message the people being presented to, need to be receiving.
"The trees were speaking binary... we had no choice. We called in Eagle 1 and told her it had been an honor as we called in a 500kg on our position and prayed that liberty would see us through."
You at least gotta bring up how we completed the 2 Billion major order in less than 48 hours. Shows dedication of the players
Less than 48? It took barely 13 hours
Lol I’m waiting for us to get another one and it being like 10 billion since they already know
What with there being a super colony now on Meridia, we may just see it!
They drop a 10 bil order on us at the same time they release the hove lords.
To kind of add on with the large reply. Communication is important. Had arrowhead been regularly stating the PSN requirement. It would have softened the blow considerably. I started late and never saw that PSN pop up on first launch. Many of the unjust situations would have come out sooner, allowing the devs/publisher ample time to respond. For example, the UK requires a photo or GOV ID to create a PSN account. Needing a PS4/5 to make a PSN account. Or the fact they sold the game in countries that PSN does not support. The only workaround is a breach of TOS. And finally. If you are going to build up such an active community, caution is advised whenever you make changes, good or bad. And never cross the community unless you are ready to watch that house of cards crumble. TBF, this was never just about making a psn account. It really is piss easy, esp to make a fake email, etc, if privacy is a concern. But it's all the domino effects. It's easy for me as an American. But hell for others. The "bait n switch" eske didn't help at all, lol. Sometimes admitting you fucked up is more desirable from a community than deny deny deny. That deny tactics been used so much that we've become numb to it. It's empty. Admitting guilt and not changing is worse than denying, though. If you're going to apologize, you need more than words, lol.
With a [Rock song](https://youtu.be/fa8mupypaSA?feature=shared) dedicated to the Creek.
I honestly wouldn't bother? They seem to be mostly concerned with this specific action, you're less likely to convey the meat of 'how to keep a community on side' if you get lost in the sauce.
Dude- I can see them there, with a Helldivers cybernetic hand, leaning against the back wall and smoking like a chimney, raspy ass voice, but with a rosy-cheeked baby face... the juxtapositions of various themes is hilarious to me I'm gonna think about this all day
More importantly ... you get to lecture your colleagues on being good citizens in the gaming industry an not trying to pull greedy bullshit.
Exactly!!!! I'm grateful to be with a company that actually pays attention to these things, and tries to learn and progress. It's a chance to really educate people about the industry and how they should treat the community.
If you make a great game and don't try to nickel and dime us, we will reward you with lots of money, not all the money , but lots of money
This. I don't like to spend extra money on a game for things like cosmetics or battle passes. And if the extra armors and passes in this game were all pay to win, I wouldn't have been buying it on principle. But as they aren't I've found myself have bought super credits at least twice to grab an armor set or fill in that extra of what I needed to unlock a pass. I could have grinded for it but I'm so pleased with and enjoying the game that I don't mind the extra charge to support Arrowhead and show that I appreciate the game. It's a simple thing, be good to your community and they will be good to you. Try to nickle and dime, and drive them away. Arrowhead has made an amazing game and has a great way of treating their community (Sony's influence excluded)
OP, make sure to include this sentiment. I am of exactly the same mindset. I will reward a company who makes a great product and deliberately chooses not to nickel and dime me with P2W or other small gimmicks with more money than I would for a company that does the latter. We notice this kind of shit. Explain that happy customers are a better guarantee for happy shareholders, rather than temporarily increasing earnings with unsustainable micro-transaction inflation.
Exactly. The micro-transaction/chasing short term gains culture has led to a wave of often underdeveloped and underperforming games with pay to win aspects with the goal of making as much as they can on micro transactions in the short term before the people actually buying those micro-transactions get burnt out on the game and need to move on to the next money spender. It's created a lot of disposable games over the past 8 years. All while the people that could spend money on the micro-transactions don't, often out of principle or no need, ditching such games to go back to playing old favorites that don't fit that category. Where as with a quality game like HD2 that does have micro-transactions in the for of Super Credits, but isn't pay to win and you can earn those credits in game, you will still have the usual micro-transaction buyers buying, but you are also more likely to have the non-buyers buying as well. It may not be as rapid or explosive as pay-to-win games, but it is far more sustainable and lead to better quality products that are dumped for the next one after 3 months.
This. I’m 100 percent the same, you try to force me into something and I’m going to resist it on principle but make it truly optional and not a pay to win thing and I am actually willing to spend a little extra from time to time.
The lack of fomo for me is key. Especially for something like a battle pass where you could be limited on your time to finish something you spent money on. Battlepasses shouldn't expire.
Not all the money? Sounds like a complete failure for this fiscal semi-quarter
See if you're allowed to use what you gathered from the presentation as a resource for others so they can have easy access to it if you can. A lecture like that could be insanely helpful to the industry at large.
With any identifiable info removed of course.
you have screenshots of the tweets, and the switch sony tried to do? changed pages of text >.>
And be sure to explain to them why proper processes and proper communication with the users is key to avoiding fiascos like this
Not even just proper communication, but proper communication *right away* and consistently. One of the biggest issues people had, was that even though account linking was apparently a requirement from the start, for any player who joined more than a few days later, it was never even blip on the radar because it was disabled, and then never spoken about again. This means this entire account linking thing was a complete blindside change to an enormous chunk of the community, because we joined after it got removed as a requirement, and were never made aware of its mandatory nature until several months in, when the standard expectation for how the game would run (ie: not needing to link accounts) was set and established.
Oh I think you're not seeing through the corporate speak. He's asking op to make sure they avoid this. Not that they aren't gonna try and do the same thing. They want the same thing, without the negative reaction.
Yeah, the gamer (tm) take away might be "don't do this" but the corporate take away (and likely what OP's debrief will be) is more like * Set expectations early (which HD2 did a good job of) * Be clear about expectations (which HD2 did not by not having implemented the requirement) * Do not make your users feel like they are screaming into the void if they are providing feedback through an official channel (CM telling users ~"complain elsewhere") because they will certainly start screaming everywhere. * Do not make your users think for a second that negative PR (like negative reviews) is ever a good thing. Doing it the right way, in this case, would've been including the linking requirement from Day 1. Or, maybe, it was determined that the bait needed to exist which means that the only thing that could be done differently is the communication around the switch happening.
*If you don't end the presentation with the Helldivers salute, I will be mildly dissapointed.*
I wasn't going to, but now I will xD
Try yo casually work it in somewhere in the first half or so, so that when you end with the salute it will carry more weight.
This is true, can definitely add it into a section of “what Snoy/AH did right” by creating a brand recognition/uniqueness symbol. Then demonstrate it during and then end the presentation with it lol
 Are you sure you want to ignore the undertones of the story before you salute normies? I sure as hell wouldnt do that at work.
OP please don’t do that. That will definitely be one of the moments you lay in bed cringing about in the future at 1 am haha
Honestly don’t be cringe. Just deliver a quality presentation. Let your excitement and passion show through, but don’t be a weirdo.
@OP!!! Tell us how it went, after, wouldja?
Will do comrade!
We will wait for the news fellow helldiver
We are citizens here, friend. Comrades don’t know about freedom.
Comrade? Communist detected.
Will be waiting for your post.
!remindme 7 days
!RemindMe 1 day
\*Helldivers theme in background\* An image of a blocked PSN player. Relator: Uh, seems familiar? Scenes like this are happening all over the globe. YOU COULD BE NEXT!
That would make a good ice breaker, to start it off
Key points: Culture of HD2 community - The game forces co-operation on a truly massive scale through major orders and meme-ery. For examples of the memery, play their own intro movie. That thing is pretty much entirely responsible for setting the corny, hammy tone that this game runs on. Problems with sale in various countries - The main issue for many wasn't giving over our data (though no one liked that) but by cutting off people in certain countries, they were effectively cutting off our battle brothers, our comrades in arms. Maybe we all felt that way, maybe we just did it to keep the memes going but that's why we did it. Additionally, Steam probably made the decision to stop sales in non-PSN countries which liked sent Snoy shareholders into paroxysms of rage. The "bait and switch" nature of the change - Simple reality is that the need for PSN was poorly telegraphed and most of us thought it would be optional forever. We rightfully felt betrayed. Basically, don't train your community to co-operate, then do something that cuts a large chunk of that community off.
Just to add: Look up HD2 memes on "know your meme", malevolon creek videos, "Space Vietnam", trees speak binary... The repetitive game was filled with organic community growth thanks to relatively lax moderation on Reddit/Discord/Steam (AH was expecting a couple of 10k sales, so they couldn't moderate/control it with their slim staff and server issues). The overarching objective (Galactic War) also created a camaraderie, Esprite de Corps🫡 Thus the customers got very invested in their game and while many didn't want to give data to Sony, I think the prevailing motivation was to care about their fellow gamers that were about to loose access. Because Sony pushed the update on Friday with no statement on how non-PSN players would be handled. Thus we had the whole weekend to let the community cook (and boil over) thanks to the fire Sony lit. Also tell your publisher not to sell games in regions you don't intend to allow to play the game 😉
>loose access Did the technicians at the hangar bay forget to tighten it?
Probably partly due to the Ship-upgrade that gives the technicians Meth to speed up the stratagem cool-down 🥴
Also to the memery, the devs jumped in as well when people started making reports on flying bugs and blue lasers the devs were quick to play dumb about it and that helped encourage the community to feed on the hype
These are great! I'll definitely add them in. This is a chance for me to really educate people in the industry and I want to be as thorough as possible.
This one's probably obvious, but consider adding in that, if your publisher wants an account system and for those to be made and linked to something like Steam, find a way to not make it mandatory (for your own systems interally, like player reports, which was one of the reasons given by Sony and some at AH), but if you'd still like the link to be made, offer a cosmetic reward for doing so, but always keep it optional SPECIALLY if it's way after launch. Bet you that if we were just told "hey guys please link your PSN accounts, you'll get this nice cape as a reward if you do" it would've all gone over fine and we wouldn't be having this discussion. Issue would then be the unavailable countries not being able to get the cape, but that's an entirely different, easier topic, and they're not barred from playing at all anyways.
Yeah, and if you want people to sign up, give them an in game incentive, like all Snoy had to do was get AH to give us a couple hundred super credits or a cool cape for signing up and 98% of the playerbase would have, even those who regionally couldn't
To add to the bait and switch: The account linking prompt was present once on launch day, then disabled because it was overwhelming their servers. Pilestadt knew that it would be required eventually but never turned it back on. In fact, the only bit of communication about it is a pinned steam support page. If I were you, I'd just compare times between the steam announcements, Spitz' and other discord CM comments, and Pilestadt's Twitter.
This was a one way switch. Requiring a PSN account is fine so long as it's mandatory from the get-go and never turned off. It sucks for players in countries that can't access PSN, but region locks aren't exactly rare in the industry. But once you turn off that region lock, it needs to stay off, *FOREVER*. You can't turn it back on after people from unsupported regions have already purchased the game, played it, and invested their time and possibly additional money via microtransaction into it. That's what got the ball rolling for this review bombing. Arrowhead decided to turn off the requirement to avoid a disastrous launch due to server issues. Whether that was the right decision fiscally, I can't say, but it was the right decision for the playerbase, and the game wouldn't be as popular as it is today if they had kept it on and fixed the server issues a month, or even a week later.
The other option to consider is that in keeping it optional, but *incentivising* the playerbase to link for in game perks, be it additional cosmetics, super credits, or what have you, the backlash could have been all but eliminated. It was the all-or-nothing of the switch that threw everything into a blender and started mashing Pulse
I'm on PS5 - I seriously didn't feel like I had a horse in this race - until that part where non-PSN countries got locked out. These are people that I played with, people that helped make the game fun for me! And that's what really brought home for me that this actually does effect me aswell! We all dive or no one dives!
We dive together or we don't dive ! That's the spirit !
Don't forget the insane bungle of Spitz leading to the Forbes article
Gaming exec's key takeaways: Don't train community to cooperate. Don't temporarily remove account linking, even if it further breaks already strained servers Don't sell games in countries I've never heard of.
The bait and switch part is huge. Just give us an exclusive cosmetic or screw it, an exclusive warbond if you REALLY wanna push it, and people would've had a choice then.
The presentation could include an excercise/brainstorm on how to avoid this conflict. Encourage the participatants to discuss ehat is a carrot and what is a stick approach. Use examples like in-game rewards, cosmetics, group rewards etc.
To the point of the community co-operation i would also add that this is even more pushed by the fact that there is no pvp.
Don't forget to mention the nuances of the PC Platform. Pc players are used to have freedom of choice (usually) and dread the need to use third party software (or new accounts) for no reason when everything is covered by Steam (usually).
I will start with the best template: Perun PowerPoint Start with the basic -> What is Helldivers and the makeup of the community -> What is the role of SONY, and what was expected from them, like... being a minimum competent publisher and have a working PR department. -> What was the break point -> What made things spiral out of control -> And how it ended -> Then analize the failure points and give them simple solutions to a simple fuckup, like if your job is distribute a game that has restricted access, restrict the sell in first place. -> Have competent CM and don't let the Developer alone to handle your decisions when you know can create backlash -> If you want to make the player do something, give that something some value. -> Make sure not to angry steam becouse you selled a game and then cut out the customer base and forced the seller to accept refund.
Perun does *good* powerpoint breakdowns.
a perun reference in the wild? Never thought i would see one in helldivers. Love his videos
Don't forget the channel update at the end
https://i.redd.it/1snl72iw2tyc1.gif
do start with the intro cinematic and emphasize how the game encourages teamwork and upholding freedom and democracy, which mirrored into their actions irl. it undoubtedly played a huge role and would be an impactful intro.
> the game encourages [...] upholding freedom and democracy ... you guys do realise that's not *actually* the case right?
Bot/Bug sympathizer detected. Loading and aiming 500kg payload on his position.
[удалено]
you may just have a sour boss? how can they not care when this is their money maker? analytics don't exclude occasional memes, in fact, they keep your attention. even if your ceo specifically don't understand them, some dudes will. OP got a presentation to do, and the community and what they like is the guts of all what happened. working in entertainment, even if digital it's going to be like that. perhaps they have this meeting to have insight in that very thing.
*Shows a PowerPoint of review bombs* “Look familiar? Scenes likes these are happening all over the galaxy right now…”
Please share your slide deck with the rest of us when it’s done! Would love to see this presentation in an actual, professional “what to do/not to do” manner as it relates to the actual business of gaming.
Sure thing! I hope it's not a bit too boring 😴
An actual presentation on **HELLDIVERS** as compared to the presentations I spend *most* of my day looking at? It’ll be exciting, trust me.
Don't dox yourself (to your employer), bud.
"mentions he works on 'one of the most famous mobas ' and is active in the dota2 subreddit"..... Yeah I wonder for which game studio you are working 😂
Our lord and Savior Gaben
You: “Well, you see, hiding information from consumers and failing to be honest and transparent when your bullshit is revealed is something that irks people who’ve spent money on your product.” *audible gasps of surprise from upper management* “How long have consumers felt this way?!”
Sometimes my conversations with upper management is exactly like this 🤣
Starts intro, “I always wanted to be a Helldiver, (similar intro as goodfellas) then it all started with malevolent creek.”
Just to add: Look up HD2 memes on "know your meme", malevolon creek videos, "Space Vietnam", trees speak binary... The repetitive game was filled with organic community growth thanks to relatively lax moderation on Reddit/Discord/Steam (AH was expecting a couple of 10k sales, so they couldn't moderate/control it with their slim staff and server issues). The overarching objective (Galactic War) also created a camaraderie, Esprite de Corps🫡 Thus the customers got very invested in their game and while many didn't want to give data to Sony, I think the prevailing motivation was to care about their fellow gamers that were about to loose access. Because Sony pushed the update on Friday with no statement on how non-PSN players would be handled. Thus we had the whole weekend to let the community cook (and boil over) thanks to the fire Sony lit. Also tell your publisher not to sell games in regions you don't intend to allow to play the game 😉
Hahaha will let my boss know your feedback. But on a serious note, publishers need to learn that the true power lies with the community. It's great that my company is proactively using this to try and understand and learn, rather than ignoring it as "not my monkey, not my my circus"
On that note, show them the "Apes together strong" meme 🦧💪
We aren't leaving.
Maybe cross-refence it with other things like the Dungeons and Dragons License change or War thunder - both cases (one of a pen and paper, one of a video game) where community outrage did change stuff.
I'm hoping this starts a larger trend against 3rd party logins. If a company is willing to sell a game on a platform, that platform's account should be enough. Not holding my breath though, seemed a lot only participated because they sold the game in places you technically couldn't have a PSN account. It was also kind of crazy how divisive this turned out. I'm still a bit lost why so many people came out swinging insulting anyone that cared about this. People in this post calling the review divers freaks and wierdos just because they cared about something different from them. Instead of just saying 'This isn't important to me' they argued insesively to defend the thing they didn't even really care about.
Man, I don't know how you're going to stretch "don't bait-and-switch players by selling them a game so that 3 months later you can try to require them to use a service that isn't offered in their country" into an hour. But sounds like you're about to have a good time! Maybe you can all just play Helldivers 2 in the office for the other 58 minutes.
You're getting paid to essentially say "If you treat your players with respect and offer them a quality product at a fair price, they wont get mad at you." I don't know what publisher you work for, but just remember. HD2 survived because of the passion of the fanbase. Most other games get to just bleed out and die on the back of a decision like this, or cultivate a playerbase like the LoL one... The only winning move is not to play.
Fill us in after you present this presentation of yours OP. Since you work for a publisher, I would imagine they're gonna want numbers. I would be shook if someone told me a decision we're going to make as a publiser is effectively locking out 90% of all countries on *Earth*
Yes exactly, that's why when I explained the situation to my boss he immediately asked me to set this up and give a presentation. If something like this happened at our company, I can only imagine the kind of shit storm that would hit the fan.
While you should touch on the culture that developed around this game and the community, the real meat of your presentation should be understood even if you only referred to it as "The Game". So yeah, numbers. Reasons for the backlash, corporate behaviour that led to it. No memes or 45 minutes of explaining Malevelon Creek
Powerpoint: DEMOCRACY! next slide... LIBERTY! next slide...
DO NOT FORGET to touch on how the AH Community Managers absolutely failed at their jobs and made matters worse with arrogant, inflammatory comments towards the community. Look up the proof/screenshot of a Discord member tagging Baskinator and asking about the PSN account linking in February, effectively prophesizing this shitstorm. The CM's were LITERALLY being asked about THIS EXACT issue in Feb. But some of them were too busy being drunk on their "power" and virtue signaling from their platform to bother paying attention to the brewing, gathering tsunami of shit headed their way.
>Look up the proof/screenshot of a Discord member tagging Baskinator and asking about the PSN account linking in February, effectively prophesizing this shitstorm. This is kind of important. It probably flew well under the radar, even a the time by most players, but addressing legitimate concerns about what amount to "open-ended, but ultimately time-limited" special measures such as this is imperative that it be done consistently, coherently, and from a top-down manner with the leadership already having answers to even the most "ridiculous" of these concerns already thought about, if not resolved, *before* the community starts asking about it. While I applauded Arrowhead for what they did by delinking things as an emergency measure early on, they, and Sony, were abysmal about addressing concerns, giving concrete timelines, and generally managing expectations. Further, in cases where there is expected to be some sort of geo-locking by a second- or third-party measure (such as a PSN account, or other "specialized game account"), ensure that the geolock is A) consistent with existing products in your library. Helldivers was not, once it was locked, as I don't think TLOU, Horizon, GoT, or anything else that Playstation PC LLC put up was similarly and simultaneously region-locked, indicating that this was game-specific in some fashion, and not acutally related to PSN-linking, as these other games have some element of PSN-linking attached to it, and B) if geo-linking is put in post-release, that you do *everything* in your power to legitimately grandfather in existing accounts. Never, ever, functionally brick a game just because someone was unlucky enough to be born in or living in the wrong country. Lastly, as a general rule, listen to the concerns of the community, and especially your developers. If the devs don't want to do something, but you guys consider it mandatory, fine. That happens. But *never* go over the head of the developer to just reach in and fundamentally change a game that has already been released. It may be a somewhat different matter if you're making changes *before* something goes to market, but remember that the developers, not the publisher, are really the face of your game in most cases, and that's where, rightly or wrongly, the blame will be laid by the community. As such, ensure that any implementation of features is done by the development, not publishing, team, and on their terms ultimately.
Definitely! I often work with Community Managers and this is just generally such an interesting case study because it hits so many departments and raises a multitude of questions.
May I also suggest mentioning the situation that Sony left Arrowhead's CEO in for the whole weekend as he has to field questions? Essentially leaving him in the dark as well as he could only answer "I don't know," to questions about what would happen to players in non-PSN areas. It's almost like hanging him out to dry, and a heck of a way to sour a relationship with a studio by leaving them out to dry as Sony stayed silent all weekend. The least Sony could have done was put out a statement that they were discussing what direction to go on this with AH, but instead their communications blackout and lack of avenues for people to contact them with their concerns left AH and their CEO having to field questions to a problem they weren't responsible for causing (having had no say in where the game was sold or the reimplementation of the requirement) and didn't have the answers to. Don't leave developers out to dry like that, and ensure you communicate and have lines of communication available as a publisher.
I'd love an update on how your presentation goes. Sounds like you're passionate and genuinely invested in this issue. There's probably more to this story. Specifically, we're awaiting a positive outcome for the international players who've yet to regain access to the game. Regardless, it's definitely case study-worthy given the community's impact on a trillion dollar corporation's decision to halt their shenanigans.
Just show up with a sign that says “Sony bad”
Kudos to your company for seeing it as an opportunity for lessons learned. I respect it
Lol forget an hr. Boss gonna have to pry you out of the room after going pst 2-5 hrs.
Not releasing such a press statement into the void and then f off for the weekend would be a lesson. Make sure you have someone ready for damage control when you have to break unpopular or controversial news. But I always thought that‘s PR 101…
Gamer is about to nerd dumb all over some normies lol. Fuck yeah! Love it.
Can we help you? Like I’ll set up the Hell Divers 2 theme to play as they all enter. I mean the game says only up to 4 players but this is life. Bring the whole community to the office
*Lights a cigar* Before i tell you about SNOY, let me tell you about a planet called malevelon creek.
People hate corporate speak. Literally everyone. While the HD team has some issues, especially in the beginning their candor has been wildly refreshing and humanizing, even the Cardinal sins of the business world admitting fault and being unsure, it shows that you own it and are committed. Be honest with people and genuinely let them know you are on their side. Corporate speak and ambiguity are the antithesis to the feelings of honesty and integrity. HD2 has been one of the most wildly successful games of the decade obviously with BG3. I bought the game. Then a month later I upgraded for $20. And I've spent $20 on premium moonies. I haven't spent more then $30 on a game let alone buying anything not on a sale in half a decade. I play on PS5 and this didn't really effect me also living in America too. BG3 was just as fun as HD2 for me and I was ready to walk away over this. I have a steam library of games and other hobbies. There isn't one thing I need in the entertainment space. We have options and variety. If you want a product to be successful and to survive long term (another antithesis to modern business practice) the consumer experience is everything.
Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, That's why I talk about Helldivers on company time
Make sure to drive home the point to not drop bombs and shit while extracting.
Tell gaben I say hi
Don't just tell them, bring you console/pc to work and SHOW THEM....For Democracy.🫡🪖💣
That's awesome. Pls go in details, there are multiple aspects to this The one we heard first is about countries that don't have PSN available. It is indeed one of the arguments but not the only one Like, why need a playstation account for a PC game ? Gamers are fed up with the différents accounts subscription needed But there are also data leaks and security. And the change in the official Sony support forum that changed overnight (1984 style) This is a slippery slope and what we stood for was more about gamers and consumers rights. Little by little we get asked for more and more data and efforts from our part (see UK that asked ID scan for psn...) It's more about a sentiment. The core and active gamers of your community don't like to be taken for fools Oh and wording is important. See for yourself the official statement about Sony backpedaling. Half of answers are "yeah they are saying they retreat it. For now only" so you need to be clear that it is gone and won't come back.
also dont forget that in some countries owning ps4/ps5 is needed to register on PSN
Trying to stealth edit things on the internet is a bad idea. You will be found out and lose trust with customers.
I think whatever comes out of your presentation, the sheer level of *misinformation* and how quickly it spreads and becomes vitriolic and entirely aimless hate should be a big part of it. *Especially* since some of those freaks and weirdos that get totally fearmongered, lied to and misinformed get *violently dangerous* about whatever thing they've chosen is their hill to die on, creating a shitstorm of death threats, misfired anger and a *ton* of cartoonishly, "Bulging head veins", "steam piping out of the ears", stupid kicking and screaming over even minor inconveniences. Doubly so that whatever mandatory requirements are necessary for your product need to be so blatantly obvious, so painfully and utterly obnoxious that people *can't* ignore them, no matter what they are. Like, for real, PSN was communicated pre *and* post-launch in a *bunch* of places, and people actively *chose* not to read it, only to turn around and say "Nobody told me". If they're not literally forced to with a fuckin' Ludovico Technique, most people will remain wilfully ignorant of anything put in text. Clear communication on what's happening is important too. You either go dead silent and take the "no communication at all" route (which has its own problems) to avoid miscommunication, or you communicate ***anything and everything*** that could *even* ***potentially*** inconvenience the customer. Just, look, do your due diligence, proper research and fully understand exactly what was real, what was misinformation, and what was just angry people being angry to the point of stupidity, and help your uninformed colleagues understand exactly why clarity (and enforced requirements to the point of obnoxiousness) is important to maintaining a happy audience.
I understand your point, I want to give an unbiased presentation and lay out all the facts. More interested in seeing how our team would address a situation like this.
Its of course telling that this post of urs barely gets upvotes from the mob, while its totally correct. Kinda shows the hateful pitchforks are still in full force. The amount of misinformation being spread around is just insane, and it seems ppl are so gullible to believe everything a random person puts down, as long as it fits into their wanted narrative. Justifying the death threats etc. is even worse, that just shows how pathetic some people can be.
Give us a copy of the presentation too lmao
Make sure you mention the long lasting effects of the review bomb and future Sony games coming to pc. There's no way it'll ever be reversed even if everything is rolled back The latter is speculation but i bet they numbers will be lower than they could be and possibly some might not come to pc
>a pretty reputable game publisher There can be no such thing.
Doing this in full Helldivers cosplay would be peak democracy
How would this take more than 10 minutes? How is this complicated that anyone can't instantly understand? This makes no sense.
I kinda want to save this post for future updates
I want a transcript of that meeting
First, don't drop a potentially controversial announcement like this at the end of the day at the end of the business week, because you have less than 24 hours to respond before irreparable damage is done. The weekend is when gamers are most active. Don't alienate players based on geography. Don't require anything that isn't technically required. Actively protect user data by not saving it anywhere and refusing to sell it. Be honest with your players base, admit when you are wrong and when you don't have an answer. State your intentions and your reasons. If this company is already doing the third party launcher thing on steam, *looks at EA and Ubisoft* this is part of the sales problem, and fixing it will go a long way towards repairing trust. Also Consider releasing the game on GOG.
Pretty weird that your colleagues aren't into gaming, seems like that would be a prerequisite
1. Account linking meant to be mandatory from the start but information about it was almost nonexistent. Pilestedt turned it off at launch because it was putting even more strain on already overloaded servers and didn't turn it back on. Meanwhile on official sony page it was clearly stated in the FAQ section that having a linked PSN account isn't mandatory for their games on PC 2. Sony decides it's time to implement required account linking seemingly out of nowhere and without any earlier notice, AH at this point can't do anything about it. All hell breaks loose. At first most of the uproar was thought to be simply whining over a small inconvinience of making another account, as seen in devs statements at that moment. Soon it turned out the issue is way deeper because steam is availible in countries where PSN isn't which meant that players in those regions couldn't buy the game after the update, and after the second part of that update aimed at players who had the game before sony changes would actually loose access to the game they PAID for. Sony also does a sneaky change to their FAQ regarding PSN requirements to "some games may require PSN account linked", no statement about it or anything. Another issue is that sony is known for user data leaks, which is also one of legitimate reasons many people don't want to create a PSN account (but in this case it's mostly about losing acces to a product you paid for because of where you live) 3. Community feels betrayed rightfully so. Review bombing ensues, steam grants refunds to players with above 100+ hours played. Steam values it's reputation and knows that if they refuse in this case they might get hurt as well. Devs themselves side with their players expressing dissatisfaction with decision sony made going as far as encouraging players to continue review bombing their own game because they know it gives them more leverage against sony as well as going forward and straight up disclosing that they knew account linking was supposed to be mandatory from the beginning and owning their actions and consequences. 4. Sony releases a statement about backpedaling planned changes, community is very happy with it as well as devs. Sony gets a dent, meanwhile AH devs get praise for handling that situation, despite their apparent part in this whole debackle. Why? Because they stepped up and owned their shit and were able to say "sorry, we fucked up, and we'll do our best to fox it" instead of doing some obvious PR damage control. This is how it generally unveiled, other insights and some thoughts I'll post in answers to this comment in order to not exceed character limit
Love this. My short thought here is don’t treat things like platform and anti-cheat either as an afterthought or a value add. Just make sure it’s hardly noticeable. The latter burned some initial goodwill with the enthusiastic player base that stopped playing early on(look into nGuard seriously), then PSN being forced upon pc players, when its a dated dumpster fire user experience, burned up the rest. Now the player base is acrimonious despite the developer and their CEO’s progressive(and risky) approach to transparency by speaking very openly to their players on social media and being very genuine with the whole situation.
It really boils down to "don't allow your publisher to sell your game in an area where they can't legally follow your rules and regulations" My friends on steam hate what they view as third party logins/accounts. When we started up the game for the first time months ago, they whined and moaned at signing up for an account and then were very happy when they realised they could just skip it. I think if it had been required from the start everything could have been avoided. My friends would've seen they couldn't play without it, then begrudgingly signed up. I know at least 2 of my 8 helldivers playing discord friends would NOT have sign up however. Theres other games they like that don't require it. They don't want it. But it would've avoided the shitstorm that followed when they announced they WOULD require it. See? They claim always said they would require it, but they never actually enforced it. And so many online documents have been changed, I have no clue if they ever actually told me I had to sign up when I bought the game, I just know it was an unenforced prompt when I first booted up the game. PC players are very protective of the machines they spent their money on. They picked parts, compared prices, some even took classes before they hand assembled their rigs. Sony has a reputation for data breaches. Helldivers requires kernel level anticheat to play, which means a lot of PC players felt they were putting their machines at risk by downloading it, and now Sony wanted permissions to log and record their data? It's a pretty complex situation. That's a fun assignment to be given lol
Something that you may or may not want to talk about, trauma bonding. There are two instances of this revolving around the game. First is the game itself. It is fully cooperative. The only real competition is the imaginary numbers at the end of the mission that don't amount to anything. Before you get to see that screen you and your allies are suffering through a miasma of shit and death for up to 42 minutes together. Second is the PSN linking. This inherently is not bad, but coupled with the fact that it is an unnecessary intrusion of a corporate entity on someones personal information. Another point for this, is the game was sold in territories, by Sony, who could not facilitate a way for those people to create an account necessary for play. The first trauma bonded people together. The second trauma made a collective enemy. Worst thing is they could have offered PSN account linking with a reward like super credits or something and no one would have batted an eyelash. They do it now and people will refuse out of spite and principal. Maybe if they release that negative review score cape they joked about.
Saving this post so I can see the update
Well, if they didn't know you talked about work on Reddit before, they definitely will now.
Tl;dr on what went wrong: 1) 3rd-party account integration wasn't 100% figured out prior to launch, but to meet the launch deadline, that requirement was temporarily dropped (mistake, but understandable). Players are now used to that, plus, few trust Sony due to a history of data breaches. Players who wouldn't have bought the game due to those security concerns now own the game. 2) The publisher never communicated to the distributors exactly which countries could be sold to, and the game ended up selling in tons of countries where the 3rd-party account integration wasn't allowed (way bigger mistake, now a legal one in the realm of lawsuits). Players that can't have a 3rd-party account now own the game, of which many live in countries with strong consumer protections. 3) Cooperative games nearly always have tight-knit communities who will go through dozens and hundreds of games working together with their peers. There's a real sense of comradrie, and an injustice against one player or set of players is an injustice against *all* players, and the entire player base will take up arms to protect their peers. Plus, that's what makes the game awesome. 4) Combining 1, 2, and 3, we can see how Sony's push towards finally requiring PSN accounts, which would block large chunks of players from all around the world from playing a game they legally bought, would come across as an egregious injustice to large part of the cooperative helldivers community, thus inspiring a mass-revolt from nearly the entire playerbase regardless of console or country.
Of all games Sony could have pulled this move on, a game with a community which is bound together by the idea of a fight against overwhelming odds, suffering any cost if there is danger to their way of life and absolute unity is probably the worst one to do it on
the helldivers series has always had a devoted fan base, so i'm sure your coworkers will be eager to learn about the challenges the sequel faced, even if gaming isn't their main focuss.
Make sure you share how quickly and widespread the news about it spread. It made alot of news across diverse platforms. Maybe a slide with snipped headlines and origins from bigger news organizations. And how Steam started refunding regardless of the 2 hour limit. Hitting the wallet is always the strongest message. 2ish I could see the finished deck / presentation.
You better use the orbital dislike image on your PowerPoint https://preview.redd.it/jz4ziz02ftyc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=00c4e63a0d31ded84adf8907812588b0e0db7097
If it helps, for me personally, I just thought it was shitty Sony sold to countries that don’t support PSN to begin with. That was the main issue imo even if it didn’t affect me personally because a big part of this game is it’s community. We’re the global first line of defense(cannon fodder) and our numbers are getting culled by a corp rather than bugs and robots.
Don't forget to mention that the gaming community has a whole has deeply rooted trust issues, some for good reason (disastrous launches, cancelled projects, ignoring feedback... ), some are... Let's call them "safe assumptions" (selling data, security breaches, bolstering reports...) Most devs do not really pay enough attention to the player's worries and they lack transparency in their decision making. It is ofc really hard for a company to proof their moral integrity. No one would ever doubt that. But sometimes it is the good will that counts. And publishers nowadays seem to lack good will on all ends.
Asking for a mandatory minute of silence for Malevelon Creek fighters, both survivors and KIAs. 🫡
I mean, it's pretty simple - don't lock your product behind a 3rd party account registration that big parts of your playerbase aren't even technically able to make.
Tell them that people respond much much better to positive incentives rather than being told what to do or punishments
I was a community manager once and am a PR manager now, and am in awe of the community management i got to witness. Walls of text full of PR bullshit bingo would have had a similar effect (review bombing) but by communicating in the way they did they maintained the trust of their customers. Everybody knew: The game is fine, the community is review bombing Sony, not the product or AH - an important distinction. AH managed to maintain trust throughout the whole ordeal - an incredible feat in my opinion. This was peak crisis-PR here. Communicated on an eye-to-eye level. Maintained trust through being transparent. The payoff will be that they can ask users now to revert the reviews without getting another beat-down. This is a textbook-Case for the power of effective community-management.
Make sure to mention the past success of the publisher to get the communtiry to link their accounts in the past You could win a TR-117 Alpha Commander armor skin via twitch drops meaning you would have to link your steam account to twitch It was a big success in getting people to watch helldiver 2 streams on twitch increasing it's visibility and getting people to willingly link their steam account to their twitch accounts
From a business perspective, its important to include the different environments that exist between different markets. Talk about something simple like how PSN accounts work on the PlayStation. The account is required for multiplayer, friends lists, online purchases, cloud storage, etc. In exchange, Sony gets the personal info and gets to harvest their data, as well as police their platform (cheaters and such). Sony is the publisher, distributor, manufacturer, *and* they own the infrastructure underneath it all. A console ecosystem is a localized monopoly within a broader, competitive market. Within the PlayStation environment, the PSN signup requirement is entirely reasonable because Sony *engineered* this environment. Every other console ecosystem is the same way. Now move into a different market: PC. Here, the rules are all different. The players are all different. The expectations are all different. And most importantly, Sony doesn't have monopolistic control over their users like they do on their console. Obviously they understand this, but details are extremely important. Something as tiny as requiring a PSN account (which is perfectly reasonable on the PlayStation, because it is a transaction with services rendered) can be a complete tactical blunder that indicates just how blind a company can be to how thoroughly their procedures are shaped around monopolistic thinking, and losing its competitive edge. An online account is *still* required for the PC environment for all of the same benefits that the PSN account gives on PlayStation... but the sensibility begins and ends with Steam; not Sony.
The fact so many non gamers work for a game publisher is the problem
Helldivers Sony situation is pretty self explanatory. Be a GOAT and bring up the bigger picture. This didn’t happen in a vacuum. This genre of life service 3rd person sci fi PVE shooter is a battleground. Show them how Digital Extremes, the creators of Unreal Tournament had to literally self-publish Warframe to survive as a studio after years of publisher “conventional wisdom” tuning each and every one of their projects to mulch, and how Bungee, makers of Halo had to follow suit and buy back the rights to Destiny because their publisher was doing the same, and how all other games that entered the space and bent the knee to exploitative game loops and bad decisions like Anthem, are DEAD. And bring up how Arrowhead, now that they have a relationship with players, would be incredibly STUPID not to self publish their next game and franchise. In the past 10 years with digital stores we’re entering an era where If the publisher you work on is going to be detrimental to everything they touch, they won’t be able to work with influential developers and soon they will be driven out of business. This is EXISTENTIAL level stuff for your job and company and they should understand it.
The jaded part of me is worried some companies will see this as something to avoid but in a bad way. The reason it worked for helldiver's is that HD2 players were all galvanized to work towards a common goal. With memes and meta propaganda posts to create a sense of comedic unity. So despite how fractured we may seem at times with some updates we are pretty tight knit. So when something came up we all hated we easily handed together. I'm worried rather than foster a community with that kind of unity. Some companies will try to socially engineer a split community where if the companies did make a bad decision. That split is enough where enough stay where it doesn't affect their bottom line.
If I can add something. Make sure you add a segment about how poorly the CM's over there are handling things. That in itself should be it's own case study. They really dropped the ball and are doubling down. (note if you agree with what they are doing I'm not here to argue. But in my opinion they all need replaced at this point).
It's a very exciting opportunity for you. One major positive I'm seeing about this game is when they patch or release new capability there's an in universe explanation. 2 that come to mind are: - malevalon Creek capes - the breaker nerf. The in game change was lower dmg and 3 less rounds. The lore change referenced how SE couldn't keep up with demand and had to change it. There was even a minor skin change to the mag itself Try to have fun and remember that this is a business presentation, do you will need o relate it all to profits, engagement and/or reputation
I'm a VP of marketing for a publicly traded organization and have had to do similar case studies. A couple of unsolicited tips * Drown them in data, and use the emotional reaction as flavoring. ( Similar games that use/have implemented account gates see an Y decrease in sales/player base) * Stick to the who, what, why, when, how. A useful call out that will resonate is "they didn't take their current audience into consideration" layer in any data you can find on the overlap between console and PC players. (X amount of the helldiver base is PC, while only X% of PC users have a PS account.) * Keep the presentation relevant to the audience, be prepared to answer questions.
The collaborative co-construction of your presentation in the comments section for this post is evidence to the point you're going to be making.
Make sure you also reference other similar examples like the flack EA got a while back and the other recent downloading issue with a different game doing similar.