Something I’ve noticed from working in a big company is that people consistently fail to predict the backlash that their policy changes will cause.
They often don’t even care all that much about the change, and if you point out that people will be upset, they agree that it’s not worth it. They just can’t relate to the people they are impacting.
Not every big company does this.
I work for a fortune 500. We had a “the customers are not going to be pleased” change get pushed to us, and a lot of internal backlash/pushback prevented it from happening.
A competitor then did the thing we stopped, and got reamed by the public hard enough to set the standard of “your a dumbass if you even think about this”.
That’s what I’m talking about though. The stupid changes usually get caught, but you still have someone there who thought it was a good idea.
And more importantly, while the stupid change itself might have been caught it usually doesn’t translate into a lesson not to listen to the person with the stupid idea next time.
That’s the nature of collaborative problem solving though. I’ve proposed some dumb ideas before. I’m sure you have too. There’s nothing wrong with stupid ideas being proposed. The issues arise when you either are surrounded by yes-men or are too forceful and ignore the advice of everyone else.
So… when it stops being collaboration?
edit: original post was in response to another comment. My bad.
Yeah, once it stops being collaborative, it becomes a problem. The original act of just proposing a stupid idea is fine, because it’s collaborative, but as soon as one person (company,entity…) becomes too imposing to say no to, it’s just bad times.
The problem with this in the games industry is that usually those decisionmakers are the ones with the power, but aren’t (or are barely into) games themselves.
The ones warning of backlash are often QA, and often don’t get listened to. Then when the backlash inevitably happens it’s all “we are sorry, we couldn’t have known, all the feedback was positive”.
The ones warning of backlash are often QA, and often don’t get listened to. Then when the backlash inevitably happens it’s all “we are sorry, we couldn’t have known, all the feedback was positive”.
I wouldn’t say that it is a problem with the games industry but managers, sales & marketing people everywhere when they make bad decisions. Those kinds of jobs just attract very egocentric and self-serving people who don’t know how to listen and try to shed blame whenever possible.
Oh for sure, I agree entirely.
I didn’t say it is a problem with the games industry itself (actually there are probably more people in game dev invested in a game being good than say, those working in app development), but was just pointing out how it often manifests in the industry and makes it such a common occurrence.
To be fair, you only hear about a company failing to predict the backlash if there actually is big backlash. Who knows how many times have correctly predicted a lack of backlash when doing something shitty.
How to ‘solve’ this if Sony had half a braincell:
psn account no longer required but if you link a psn account you get [insert skins/battlepass discount/any sort of benefit here]. 90% of people will do it cause ‘shiny thing’! The rest wouldn’t do it anyway.The better solution is to just reverse the decision and not require PSN accounts. The situation since launch was perfectly fine.
The scuttlebutt is that they don’t get to make that decision because the PSN mandate is a part of the contract they signed with Sony.
Well, yeah. It’s Sony that needs to backtrack. They were doing a really good job courting the PC scene and building a great reputation for themselves… and now, in one fell swoop, they have destroyed it all.
Even if they backtrack, they’ve done irreversible damage to Halldivers 2 and extremely severe damage to their entire brand.
Tbf the social aspect was barely functional, I can’t add friends from steam ingame since day one and we had trouble joining each other games if it was set to private.
So I wouldn’t say perfectly fine but then again, no clue if them basing everything on a psn username would fix it either.
That sounds like the kind of thing that would happen if you don’t integrate with Steam properly because you expect to use PSN instead.
Kool, and yet plenty of people didn’t have that problem at all. Maybe they should fix the bugs preventing you from doing that, instead of introducing a new system nobody wants.
Next step, hire a seasoned and reputable community manager. Step 3, either shut down, or HEAVILY limit employee talk back on your discord going forward because it has ONLY caused bad things during each drama session.
Yes, the situation would be much much better if Arrowhead just said:
We understand and empathise with the frustration many of our valued players have expressed over the recent policy changes regarding PSN accounts. We strive to make sure our game provides the best experience possible for our players and this policy change is an important part of that. Rest assured we are working hard to ensure that the transition will be as smooth as possible for all our players and have a world class support team standing by to help in the unlikely case of any issues. Lastly I want to thank players for their continued support as we enter this new and exciting chapter for Helldivers 2.
See? Much better than actually interacting with your player base as though they are human and you actually care about them.
/s
“We have received further reports and questions concerning the changes made to our Helldivers 2 product on PC, and we would like to clear the air on these matters. Please refer to our knowledgebase article for Helldivers 2 for more details.”
The article:
"Why is a PlayStation Network™ account required for Helldivers 2? In order to deliver the best matchmaking and gameplay experience, a PlayStation Network™ account must be used when playing Helldivers 2 on PC.
I bought Helldivers 2, but the PlayStation Network™ is not available in my region. Will I be refunded? We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused, and we are working hard to bring PlayStation Network™ services to new regions around the globe.
Will my personal data be safe if I link my Steam account to the PlayStation Network™? Rest assured, your data will only be used in accordance with the Sony PlayStation Network™ Privacy Policy.
I didn’t need to use a PlayStation Network™ account before May 2024, why do I need to now? Prior to May 2024, a technical issue was preventing the PlayStation Network™ sign-in applet from correctly functioning in PC releases of Helldivers 2. This has since been fixed, and you should now be able to play with other consumers who purchased the PlayStation™ 5 release of Helldivers 2."
They should be paying me for these top-notch PR non-answers.
I see you haven’t seen some of the “fanning the flames” comments some of their community people have said, in this incident and in past issues…
That’s fair, I haven’t followed everything the devs have said on Discord but the stuff that’s been posted here seems fairly reasonable. Still in general I vastly prefer game companies that have the actual developers interacting with fans over the hyper sanitised corpo speak we typically get.
Is this about that community manager who dared to have an opinion about more women’s representation in games (on her personal Twitter)?
I don’t think Spitz or the CM position in general should be the focus of the discussion at all. He’s a human, and he’s got a tough job right now and a lot of people venting their frustrations at him, directly. Him having a snotty attitude after having this fiasco dropped on him is a bad look to be sure, but hardly the issue. He’s not in charge of making decisions for Arrowhead or Sony, he’s just the mouthpiece.
