Refund Requests and Review Bombing Put Helldivers 2 Community Manager's Career at Risk
Helldivers 2 regained positive opinions on Steam, but the behavior of community managers continues to stir controversy.
The new campaign of Democracy defenders ended with a victory over the "Tyranny of Sony." As a result, Helldivers 2 quickly regained positive reviews on Steam, although the ratings from the last 30 days (or rather from the last few days) remain "mixed."
The mood of fans has clearly improved, as evidenced by the gift received by Arrowhead studio from a fan (via Discord / X).
Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that last weekend was stressful for the entire Helldivers community, including fans of the first installment and the devs of the brand. One of the community managers had difficulties and seems to have fallen out of favor with the publisher, but has managed to keep his job for the time being.
Dev "almost" fired for supporting players
In fact, probably no one was surprised by this. Spitz was encouraging players not to complain in random messages on social media, but "where it will actually make a difference." He even specified that it involves requesting game refunds (which Steam allowed as an exception) and so-called review bombing.
After this news, Spitz practically didn't write anything on Discord since Saturday. Only yesterday he returned to the Helldivers channel and was quickly flooded with messages from fans. They clearly breathed a sigh of relief and thanked the developer for supporting the community protest.
The dev replied to the players' warm words. He mentioned that he has been in his position for "3 months" and has been a fan of the series for 10 years. He would prefer to lose his job if it meant allowing "millions of players" to have access to Helldivers 2.
He also mentioned that he was actually "almost" fired. As he put it, "turns out that telling people to review-bomb and refund a game isn't a popular decision with the publisher" (via the Discord channel). However, he added that the active efforts of players provide the studio with an argument in discussions with Sony, hence his earlier posts.
The story of two managers
Another person in charge of contact with fans was expected to receive fewer kind words. Katherine "Baskinator" Baskin claims that she received a lot of toxic messages from internet users.
There is no need to look far for the reasons for this aversion. Unlike Spitz, Baskinator by no means encouraged players to "protest" but expressed "pleasure" that once a PlayStation Network account is enforced, the studio will be able to take action against player reports to make the game "safer around the world." Players' reaction to such an announcement was as "enthusiastic" as could be expected (via Reddit).
It's also fair to add that despite the concern of many fans for Spitz, some players are by no means happy with the behavior of community managers (except Thomas "Twinbeard" Petersson). It's not just about the PSN issue. Fans have been criticizing the "lack of professionalism" of Spitz and Baskinator for some time.
Even people defending "CMs" believe that changes are needed. For instance, by increasing the size of the team responsible for contacts with the huge Helldivers 2 fan base.
