Helldivers 2 it is certainly a great success, both for the developer Arrowhead and for the publisher Sony, given the more than 12 million copies sold between the PC and PS5 versions, but at the same time it is giving some thoughts to the ex-CEO Johan Pilestedt, now president and chief creative officer of the company, due to the increase in toxicity in the community.
“The big difference now, and it’s really terrifying, is the amount of threats and rude behavior that people at the studio are experiencing from some really bad individuals in the community,” Pilestedt said in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz. “It’s something new that we have to deal with.”
There has been no shortage of controversy surrounding Helldivers 2. Since launch there have been problems due to server problems, balancing issues and, above all, the announcement of the obligation to register a PSN account to play, which led to a real popular uprising on the part of the community, much that it forced Sony to take a step back. Arrowhead community managers said the backlash related to the PSN it caused the staff to waste a week just dealing with the aftermath.
Pilestedt he then noted that: even the very way in which Helldivers 2 was designed, i.e. as a very difficult game to encourage cooperation between players, is however a harbinger of behavior that is anything but irreproachable. However, he considers it inevitable that this will happen.
The new CEO also joins in
To his words were added those of the new CEO, Shams Jorjaniwho recalled: “Arrowhead’s philosophy has always been ‘a game for everyone is a game for no one’. That’s the company’s slogan. That’s how our games are designed. You can feel it in every feature. I think is one of the main reasons for the success of Helldivers 2. It feels new because it does a lot of unpopular things.”
“When you get such a big success, much bigger than anyone expected – Sony, us, everyone – what happens is the game finds an audience outside of a certain niche of fans. So you get a real amplification of voices Almost every game has some toxicity in the community, but with these large numbers you just get more of it, so we need to work with the community to make sure there is self-moderation, give people the tools to speak up in a positive way, so we can continue to talk openly with the players. The more voices you add to the chorus, the more complexity increases.”
Jorjani then stated that Arrowhead is currently “learning the hard way” how to create systems to address this level of toxicity, but the work will benefit the studio’s “next project,” whatever that may be.
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