Helldivers 2 Director Comments On Community Debate

Helldivers 2 Community Manager 'Spitz' is seemingly no longer with Arrowhead Game Studios following outings he did over the now-canceled mandatory PSN account linking update.

Fans of Helldivers 2 have started a petition asking developers Arrowhead to reinstate a fired employee in charge of community management. The employee, "Spitz", was let go following the fiasco in which Sony told PC players they would need to link their Steam and PlayStation Network accounts to continue playing the shooter. Sony and Arrowhead changed their mind about that after player backlash in the form of 100,000+ negative reviews on Steam. The kicker? Community manager "Spitz" was low-key encouraging players to continue the review bombing. This doesn't seem to have gone down well internally.

After Sony U-turned on its controversial decision to force Helldivers 2 PC gamers to account link to PlayStation Network, the game’s community has launched an initiative to drag Steam user reviews out from under rock bottom.

The community has issued its own major order to help clean up the mass review bombing that the game has received recently. 's review scores plummeted on Steam following the announcement that players would have to link their accounts to the PlayStation Network to continue, something that some were reluctant to do, and also prevented entire regions from accessing the game.

Helldivers 2 dropped to 'Mostly Negative' this weekend after announcing that players would have to link their PSN and Steam accounts to keep playing, making it so that the game couldn't be accessed in over 150 countries. This was partly spurred on by community manager Spitz, who mysteriously disappeared from the Discord server on Saturday.

Being a Helldivers 2 fan has been an absolute rollercoaster over this past weekend, with the game being the most loved live service game out there, to the most hated, and back again over the course of just a few days. Most of you will know that this was down to Sony's sudden implementation of its PSN account system, requiring Helldivers 2 players on Steam to sign up for the PlayStation Network if they want to continue playing.

Over the weekend, Helldivers 2 announced that players will soon need to sign into the PlayStation Network to keep playing on PC.

Sony has reversed a decision that would have required Helldivers 2 players to link their Steam accounts to PlayStation Network accounts.

Amid the turmoil of the recent Helldivers 2 controversy, its predecessor Helldivers has also been review bombed by disappointed fans. The original's latest negative reviews criticize the account-linking requirement of Helldivers 2, which was eventually retracted by publisher Sony.

Helldivers 2's creative director and CEO of Arrowhead Game Studios, Johan Pilestedt, has revealed that he doesn't know what players affected by the game's removal from Steam can do next.

Johan Pilestedt has responded to review bombing of Helldivers 2. Helldivers 2 is one of the most popular releases of 2024. Fans have enjoyed the way the game iterates on the online multiplayer format with interesting objectives and challenging team-based gameplay. In the opinion of many gamers, Helldivers 2 excels in part because of developer Arrowhead Game Studios' attentiveness to player feedback.

Helldivers 2 has enjoyed nothing but roaring success since its launch in February, though the last 24 hours have seen it on the receiving end of strong backlash. Sony recently announced that Helldivers 2 players on PC would have to link their Steam and PlayStation Network accounts to be able to play the game going forward, provoking strong criticism from the community. The game’s “Recent” user reviews rating on Steam – which takes into accounts user ratings for a game over the last 30 days – has fallen to “Mixed”, having received over 24,000 negative ratings on the platform just today.