The creative director of Helldivers 2 has said he's impressed by the "willpower" of fans after their feedback caused Sony to reverse its decision regarding PlayStation Network accounts being required by all players.
In a post on X/Twitter, Helldivers 2 creative director and CEO of developer Arrowhead Game Studios Johan Pilestedt thanked Sony for "quickly and effectively" addressing the community's concern and suggested this sort of feedback loop should be the "new standard" for live service games.
"Firstly, I am impressed by the willpower of the Helldivers 2 community and your ability to collaborate," Pilestedt said.
"Secondly I want to thank our partners and friends at PlayStation for quickly and effectively making the decision to leave PSN linking optional. We together want to set a new standard for what a live game is and how developers and community can support each other to create the best game experiences."
PlayStation announced it had cancelled its plans to force a PSN account on even PC players after the community shared its frustration online in what's essentially been the first piece of bad press for the cooperative sci-fi shooter.
The entire saga barely lasted three days but it was enough to swing Helldivers 2's Steam reviews down to "mixed" after being "mostly positive" for its first three months on the market, with most of its recent reviews being "mostly negative".
The uptick has begun again following the reversed PSN plans, however, with many fans sharing a familiar message of the game online. "Democracy has prevailed," wrote one Steam user. "Major order complete. We dive together or not at all," said another.
A Reddit post revealing Sony's backtrack has more than 72,000 likes too, with over 5,000 comments from players celebrating the change. "Threat eliminated. Congrats for all helldivers," wrote JV_TBZ. "Wait... They really listened?," asked Pixel_Block_2077. "Companies don't usually do that. Guess democracy actually did win this one."
Others encouraged those who left negative reviews to change them back, and to try to see the whole fiasco as a good thing instead of instead of bad. "Reminder that this whole thing was like a two day affair over the weekend and was never implemented in the first place," said ControlWurst. "That's at least a good turnaround to feedback."
Helldivers 2 has otherwise proved a smash hit for Arrowhead and Sony, with it being the latter's biggest ever launch on PC. Its take on live service sees players' actions affect the overall story going forward, all of which is controlled by a Dungeons & Dragons esque game master called Joel.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.
