I guess acknowledging the problem is the first step.
If this is about the new PSN requirements, I don’t even think Arrowhead should take the blame. That was obviously something that came down from the publisher.
Arrowhead, as the developers and artists who worked to create the game, deserve little to none of the blame. Arrowhead, as the business entity who voluntarily entered into an agreement with Sony to have this requirement in their game in the first place, definitely deserves the blame. Whatever project lead thought this was an acceptable concession to make in order to secure funding from Sony was definitely not on the same page as the rest of the team who actually made the game.
Seeing a lot of parallels to the Cyberpunk 2077 launch; beautiful game created by a passionate team who loved their craft, massively damaged by short-sighted, greedy decisions by studio execs.
I believe Sony owns the Helldivers IP, so they may not have had much choice in the matter.
Oh, that is a great point. It’s possible their hands were 100% tied on this simply due to who controls the IP.
I just want to make great games!
(And I can’t do that without money from big publishers and without installing anti-cheat on your PCs)
I am probably completely wrong and this is just my opinion but an indie game dev that sells out to any of the shit companies, isn’t really in it for the love of games, they want money.
The love of games doesn’t tend to feed your family and children.
Then don’t act coy about wanting to make games as if that’s the driving force behind you being CEO of a studio.
Be honest and say "yeah, we have contractual obligations and this is one of them, sucks that they are mismanaging it but we have to abide by it because they gave us a bajillion dollars, and we gotta keep the lights on. Hopefully they’ll change their minds.”
The reality is that they mismanaged this severely, they should have either held off the launch or made it abundantly clear that this was temporary and it would have been mandatory in a few months, not whatever the fuck this was.
And it should have never been possible for people in non-psn countries to buy the game in the first place.
Then don’t act coy about wanting to make games as if that’s the driving force behind you being CEO of a studio.
Buddy, you need to grow up; unless you’re a trust fund baby, nobody gets to dedicate a significant amount of their life to doing anything without also finding a way of making money at it. Trying to create a fun game, and running out of money halfway through development, and having to layoff all your friends and cocreators, gets nobody anywhere.
Be honest and say "yeah, we have contractual obligations and this is one of them, sucks that they are mismanaging it but we have to abide by it because they gave us a bajillion dollars, and we gotta keep the lights on. Hopefully they’ll change their minds.”
That is basically verbatim what he has said.
The reality is that they mismanaged this severely, they should have either held off the launch or made it abundantly clear that this was temporary and it would have been mandatory in a few months, not whatever the fuck this was.
The reality is that Sony probably didn’t care until Helldivers was a massive success and they’ve suddenly started caring.
That is basically verbatim what he has said.
Very far from that.
The reality is that Sony probably didn’t care until Helldivers was a massive success and they’ve suddenly started caring.
We need people to not just state something like that, but hate such decisions by default and act whenever possible. Just like with any other issue involving caring about minorities. Every customer who bought your game deserves the same regardless of where they live and how much the paid you.
