For those of you unaware: relatively early on in HD2’s lifespan, Sony decided it’d be a great idea to force mandatory PSN account links onto Helldivers 2, which had the side effect of locking access for many players in countries that didn’t support Playstation Now.
The player base revolted and, because they’d spent the past few months being trained to perform objectives together like a swarm of slightly less intelligent bees, review bombed HD2 into the ground in protest. This caused the reversion of the PSN requirement, but many countries and players were still left stranded as the ability to buy the game at all was pulled from many countries. (This was recently resolved and now everyone except a few countries under international sanction for unrelated reasons can buy and play the game)
HD2’s developers went with the event and joked about a cape commemorating the review bombing, similar to other capes they’ve created in response to player action.
And now they’ve released it.
Because Arrowhead, unlike Fatshark, understands the community, leans into the memes, and actually listens. They have the chutzpah to openly celebrate their game getting review bombed and to reward the players for doing so because it made a better game.
Contrast this with Fatshark, which constantly engages in player-hostile actions out of greed, never resolves said issues, constantly lies, and engages with the players not at all.
I can’t imagine Fatshark ever releasing commemorative cosmetics or changing the FOMO store in response to feedback, or their executives ever engaging with us directly in the same way Arrowhead’s have. Because they don’t care.
Tbh, I do wonder if rewarding players for review bombing is ever a good idea.
Like some groups of player will review bomb a game over every minor inconvenience, and it would just encourage them even more.
It’s probably why AH took a really long time to decide on this decision(although there’s also some pressure from players to release it I guess)
The shop is a step down from the VT2 shop experience. I couldn’t disagree more with its business model, silly pricing, digital “currencies” bs and FOMO. Just don’t expect a business to take business advise from random online gamers.
It’s their company, and their choices, right or wrong to make.
It isn’t but lets not fool ourselves, its generally a result of a long series of mistakes and failures that get you there and at some point good solutions simply ain’t on the menu.
Organic vs inorganic, if you can tell the company can tell as well.
Which brings an interesting question, if the review bombing is organic is it really that bad?
It is mind-boggling that these studios are walking distance from each other, and with both these titles having been out for some time, Fatshark hasn’t appeared to adapt at all. Whoever is running things at FS appears to be willfully ignorant.
Must be awkward for the teams to run into each other at bars after work, not hard to see how Arrowhead poached Fatsharks combat designer.
It’s true that they changed their ways and did good for the community, credit where is due.
Initially the were the opposite of this.
They started messing up EVERYTHING, things got worse with every patch.
The amount of pressure was unreal, they had to become the good guys to gain the community back, and freebies like the cape acknowledging their mistakes is a fantastic show of goodwill. Props to them again.
(When they nerfed the railgun shortly after launch, there was an arrowhead dev making fun of players on reddit and calling them out for their “crutches”. Come on. Can you imagine fatshark devs openly sh*tting on your build?)
This community is not alienated enough to force a change, I think most people don’t care/are unaware of the of issues with darktide. Even with its flaws the gameplay is good and that’s the real selling point.
Just to be fair, Fatshark is considerably better than Arrowhead when it comes to working with the engine and when it comes to upscaling and DLSS/FSR Arrowhead is kindergarten tier compared to Fatshark.
It is as much their choice to make MTX that’s predatory and sell a game that’s unfinished as it is my choice to openly chastise them and repeatedly mention exactly what happened.
The HD2 review bomb was a special scenario because this was something that both the players and the developers disagreed with, and Sony just wrenched their hand. I’m sure Arrowhead was ecstatic seeing the review bombs and Sony panic, because it meant that more people would be able to play their game - especially the people who rightfully paid for it and who deserve to play it.
Likely the time it took was more to do with the other Sony-restricted countries only recently (past couple weeks) getting access to the game again, not because they were deliberating.
Also, the phrase review bombing has lost a lot of its meaning. Sure sometimes it can be done for very little reason, but at least 80% of the time it is deserved. Company f***ed up, consumers unhappy, bad review follows.
If a game wants to be live service, then the only way players can protest live changes, is with negative reviews. The company already got their money from purchases, so negative reviews that ward off future purchases (and threaten the company’s bottom line) are the only way to enact change. Or the higher ups stick to their guns and the game slowly dies.
cough Monster Hunter Wilds PC version cough
edit - real talk about MH wilds, how insane is it that it has had roughly the same active players as Darktide recently (pre arb), wow.
This. I think you have to sink a massive amount of time into either of the 'tide games before their issues will start to seriously bug you. Neither game is perfect but they’re still pretty frickin awesome for what they are.
Yeah, this is pretty harsh. Fatshark isn’t perfect but they do try and care. As someone who has been playing VT2 since launch it’s been an overall positive trajectory despite the ups and downs along the way.
I see what you’re saying about Arrowhead doing it better though, I got into HD2 a few months ago and have been positively blown away by their quality of service. Those folks are really crushing it and I thank them for making a game that finally pulled me away from VT2 for a time
They used to VT1 / Early VT2 Fatshark had some of if not the best community engagement i’ve ever seen tbh. Darktide onwards its turned hollow or even non-existant save for communication with a few dedicated or impactful players.
With both Arrowhead and FS being in Sweden, you can’t even use work hours as an excuse for slow development time. But imho FS is bogged down by fixing issues that have existed since the game’s launch. How much dev time has been used to make crafting not entierly abhorent, and why the initial resistance to making a change. It felt like they were adamant about wanting to keep it as painful as possible.
Additionally the radio silence on FOMO shop practices and solo play among other things has clearly upset the playerbase, and a lot of goodwill has been shattered.
I play Darktide a fair bit, I like Darktide a fair bit. Im still not changing my negative review of it, because honestly, I think its still deserved.
DLSS/FSR is neat, and I’m entirely willing to grant that Fatshark may be ahead on that count. But my high end hardware (only a few years old) and that of most users doesn’t support the full feature set anyway, and when I’m thinking about spending money on exploding pixels or loading something to play with friends, DLSS/FSR isn’t something I’m really thinking about.
The game itself? Positive development, albeit much of it consisting of what I would call ‘finishing the game’ rather than actual improvement.
The monetization and engagement with the community? Utter garbage overall, with Strawhat’s tenure being one of the sole bright spots, and even she wouldn’t or couldn’t get the company to fix how they screw players over.
