What can we learn from the Helldivers 2 PSN Linking Fallout?
23First and foremost, I do not have a dog in this fight. I do not own Helldivers 2, I probably won’t play Helldivers 2 because I have a backlog of video games I want to play and by the time I clear that there will be more games that I want to play. With that said, I think this incident is an amazing opportunity to learn and analyze what is wrong with the video game industry. I also want to make it clear that while I do bring up a lot of the mistakes and missteps that Spitz had, this is by no means a raking him over the coals video. There were a lot of derpy things said, some for emotional reasons, some out of ignorance of the facts, and some out of sheer passion for his company. With that said, when you are a community manager you cannot behave in the fashion that Spitz did, and that is one of the learning lessons.
I did find a new respect for Johan Pilestedt. It is very rare to see a CEO step up and say “I am not blameless.” While this was not quite an apology, and apologies would go a long way in situations like this, it was the right thing to say. His statement did bring up some concerns though. If Sony and Arrowhead knew about this 6 months before launch, that would be September of 2023. Why was the decision to launch without PSN linking made? It also brings up the question of how did nobody at Sony understand that the Playstation Network is only available in 69 countries while they had customers in 177 countries and territories who owned the game on Steam who would no longer be able to play? On top of that, if they knew back in September of 2023 about the future need, why were they suddenly making changes to the online FAQ on 3 May 2024?
To me, it seems someone at Sony saw the opportunity to add several million PSN accounts (which would no doubt lead to a bump in stock price) yet people forgot to work the problem all the way through. Which is another thing developers and publishers need to remember. Make sure you understand the problem before you try to fix the problem.
I am not a game developer, but I do have several that I speak to, and I did find the whole we need you to have a PSN account to control the game odd, when Steam users have a unique Steam ID.
If you like the music from today’s video it is our new Lo-Fi Album Lazy Spring Afternoons available on YouTube
https://youtu.be/3K6paNgT-YE?si=yP3pRNzPRSEPXg-U or on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/4K6VLqcwSoNPrmrfYthg3A?si=Jo9HMCFKQCmxz1wdfV6IZA
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