It’s a normal day for the champions of Super Earth and its Managed Democracy to be sent out on a mission to crush some bugs. Usually those bugs are alien monstrosities. Sometimes, they’re not bugs at all but rather Automaton Bots.
And sometimes the enemy isn’t even in the game at all. The most recent super-boss the Helldivers community set out to quash was Sony itself, the game’s publisher, which just a few days ago told PC players that they would need to create and link their PlayStation Network accounts on Steam in order to keep playing.
The backlash was as fierce as it was understandable. The game had been out for months and now gamers in 177 countries across the world would no longer have access to it despite having already paid for and sunk countless hours into the game. Other gamers were concerned about creating a new online account with more potential for security breaches.
Close to 300,000 negative reviews flooded Steam, bringing the game’s Very Positive rating down to Overwhelmingly Negative practically overnight.
And then, in an 11th hour decision (almost literally) on May 5th, the evening before the change was going to take place, Sony relented and reversed course. It’s a glorious victory for consumers—and for Super Earth—and shows that gamers do have power if they make their voices heard. It’s also a reminder that developers are usually not the bad guys. Arrowhead Games was pretty good about being on the side of gamers, encouraging them to leave bad reviews and clearly unhappy with Sony’s decision and approach.
The bugs have been smashed. Managed Democracy will live to fight another day. And the Steam reviews are already slowly recovering. The game is now “Mixed” as far as users are concerned. That’s something.