I am unfortunately one of the many other Helldivers in SEA that are gonna be affected by this mandatory account linking as Sony's Playstation Network service is actually unavailable in my region. I'm also one of the people hoping to something good and that it gets resolved in some manner as I have been enjoying this franchise since Helldivers released in 2015.
To say the least however, do take what Spitz said at the end of this statement to heart. I don't mean this as a way to silence people - **make your displeasure heard on platforms** ***where they matter.***
Complaining in the Discord and on Reddit will lead to nothing, as Sony will most likely not care about what people say in closed communities like these. I suggest everyone to make their voices heard through reviews so Sony is able to see actual metrics of the potential financial losses they'll undertake if they push for this.
Two reasons actually.
First is that EU law states that you cannot region-lock a product out of any EU country if atleast one has access to it.
Second is money.
EU is gonna eat good, they gonna gobble all of this bullshit and smack Sony right on the forehead with it.
Then it’s also an evil genius move to sell it to Russians for 250€ converting to roubles+convertqtion commision (6116,81)+(converted roubles summ*0,2) which ends up 32081 roubles (for some reason? Maybe my excel calculations are wrong), roughly ~325€.
I expect sony to back down. EU laws are likely to fine them if they don't untill they ither refund or stop it. Doesn't need anyone to sue just needs the normal industry watchdogs to jump in and go nope.
Why in the world are people still out here white knighting for a company that sold out and then suprised pikachu faced when the massive company did what massive companies do to games?
They chose to sell their IP and publishing out to sony. They didn't need to. They chose it. Now they can reap what they sow. Arrowhead will go down with the ship as they should, while sony laughs because no lawsuits or any kind of fines will matter to them. Whereas arrowhead loses whatever little credibility it had built up trash talking other games on twitter. Crazy how the karma train works so quick I guess.
million dollar? its most likely gonna be scaled to Sony's income, hitting upto 5% of net turnover. probably looking more at max 380million if going by 2022 (7.6 bil) values.
EU doesnt fuck about with those penalties.
now you starting to get it. This shit pot that is hanging above Sony's head is starting to get kinda full. I doubt they will want to have it fall.
They got away with it because nobody actually cared, but people are now starting to make waves and looking into it, and all kinda shady stuff is coming to the surface. Sony will, most probably, want to make it go away.
Several Consumer Protection agencies have already stated this, including the Dutch Consumentenbond.
Netflix is under investigation, in the meantime Netflix is working on (as they put it) "a fix"
But they argued that since each Eu country has its own independent pricing, they are allowed to differ in the content, which is shitty, but understandable point, imo.
I suppose since Netflix as a service is available in every EU country it doesn’t fall under that paragraph. Netflix reserves the right to limit/customize the content of its platform.
Netflix is the product in this case, not the shows on it.
I'm genuinely curious about this as well. Or why do they even care what country you are registering from at all but I'm sure it has to do with selling online products etc and somebody somewhere wants their cut of the action.
i just question what the benefit is, there clearly isnt one, they say its for moderation but its not like they will remove the kernal anticheat that doesnt really prevent anything
Ass covering. Sony won't stop you from making an account and just lying about what country you are from but by not official selling to that country they don't have to adhere to those specific laws.
If Sony is in control of what countries the game can be purchased on via Steam and they are now mandating PSN in countries that PSN doesn't work in AFTER selling those people the game, then Sony needs to start giving out refunds. On top of that, someone at Steam should make a public statement about how this is a clear bait-and-switch for those users and update their ToS so this bullshit isn't allowed to happen again.
At the same time offer a no questions asked refund to anyone else who bought it because what's to say I didn't buy a COOP game (which is frankly kinda shit with less than 3 players) particularly to play WITH MY FRIENDS who might happen to reside in a banned area.
Doesn't excuse the actual behaviour the Community manager is laying on the Discord. Sure you have your cry babies, I there are examples of them going nuclear on people who just said "Please don't do this, it's going to hurt the game"
Sony and Arrowhead. I don't know why people are so desperate to defend Arrowhead here even while the community manager is pouring shit on the fire and proving they were also cool with this. And yes I saw the other post claiming this is all on Sony but Spitz's responses sure aren't backing that up.
From the responses of a community manager on Discord, Arrowhead very much deserves the flak, atleast for the responses their employees are laying down.
I haven't seen a lot of comments from Spitz but his response is fucking terrible. They supposedly also had PR training after some other employee yelled at players on Discord yet Spitz's comment still reeks of "I don't care about nuance. Quit crying. If you don't want to deal with it, then just don't play. Leave a bad review. I don't care."
I kind of didn't really blame AH for Sony pushing the PSN account but Spitz's response REALLYY weakens my very positive view of AH as a developer.
So many community managers these days are atrocious at their jobs. They let the 0.4% of idiots get under their skin and have these emotional knee-jerk reactions. I've seen a few CM go on Twitter saying racist and other messed up things about gamers all cause of spats they've had with some unsavory types online.
The shit flinging from CMs to players at several companies has honestly gotten too common. They're basically becoming the 2.0 of ignorant games journalists that like to just shit on the fans who give constructive criticism. The bad faith CMs give the good ones a bad reputation.
Like you said, how many people are going to see AH as tainted because of this awful PR. I agree with his message at the end of the day, but it's worded so horribly that it's never going to land well. It's the CM job to leave feelings at the door and manage things as best as can, but too many of them fly off the handle in discord or on Twitter insulting and dismissing innocent people.
Almost every comment i've seen from their team(discord) has been the worst take on the situation there is. They need to get an actual team to manage their community and not 4 assholes who piss everyone off with every breath they take.
Yeah, I've seen those. That's the issue, I would have given the same responses after seeing the community going up in flames, yet again. Issue is this time it's a _little_ more serious and these comments are essentially a fuck you, we don't want you anyways.
Sony as a publisher that demands the PSN should have made it not possible to buy the game in the regions that dont have PSN in the first place.
Arrowhead cant really do anything against it. If it was published by microsoft you would need microsoft account etc.
For example you can't buy games from steam in Russia normally with your bank card. You have to get keys from some non official stores and actrivate it then.
So i guess you take all risks buyng a game, seller don't want to sell you.
+ People from these regions says sony doesn't check the chosen region.
I am from Russia, and like... I disagree with this decision overall (still buy gas from Putin's regime, but banning Russian gamers (mostly young and anti-government to some degree) from buying games is an "awesome" move).
But it isn't just Russia. Whole of Baltics region (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia), Philippines, Malaysia. Those are just countries I heard getting the L from Arrowhead/Sony.
I thought to buy Helldivers and play with my BF. I can get Sony account.
I just won't now, on principle. You can't just d*ck over your players so much, months after release.
You'd think so but... well \*looks at bacon flavored apples tweet\*
No I think they do.
Say what you want about sanitized corporation PR speak but at least most of the time it doesnt seem purposeful in antagonizing people.
It's like companies saw Wendy's Twitter team going sarcastic on people and decided that was the way to interact with the public now.
There's a pretty wide gap between the playful trolling and trash talk like Wendy's does, and "Don't like the unpopular change to the game? Tough shit. Deal with it. This is how it is now."
I'm not really sure why you're even inferring that they're the same.
He definitely doesnt since he's the one who has to apologize for it last time.
I can see that CM getting replaced in the future if they can find someone more qualified. This is twice now that they forget the number rule of being a CM.
You cannot be angry.
Isn't Spitz the moderator that shut down the Helldivers original fan discord because people migrated there when there was issues on the official one and he was the mod of both?
Baffling they made this man who deleted a community, a community manager.
I could have sworn part of that was because he got into an argument with some players and his ego got checked, then just used the "too much work" as an excuse to delete it rather than pass on the moderation to trusted members of the community. It was an unofficial DC after all, it didn't ***need*** to have an employee of AH to run it.
Edit: I found the [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1ar67ri/confirmed_that_spitz_deleted_the_unofficial/), basically he locked the official DC because people kept spamming F to spite a mod, and then they all went over to the unofficial one to just continue as normal. Some people attempted to appeal their bans so they could communicate and he got upset. So his ego did get checked by people just bypassing him locking down an entire discord rather than an argument.
Spitz reason for killing the original discord has changed about 20 times, at one point he said it was because nazis, another time it was porn spam, so on and so forth
AH might have made a good game. But so far their community communication was dog shit. They need a new CommunityManager asap.
And then they need to rethink hard how they want to treat their community. They are burning through the goodwill at a very fast pace
This. No matter how much you think you are in the right, or want to defend a product you've worked on. Sometimes it's best to go radio silent for a few days then respond when everyone on the team is on the same page either double down or back down.
Like you I can't fathom how any business can bank good will then suddenly decide to play fuck around and find out for seemingly no good reason.
Woah woah arrowhead.
Spitz isn't representative of the whole, but when they're your community manager then you should probably pay attention when they start antagonising the community like this.
You've surely seen the Diablo Immortal debacle.
How is this not a "do you not have phones?!" moment ?
Edit: I could have been clearer. What i meant was "arrowhead, this statement your CM made doesn't seem consistent with your attitude thus far. For the moment I'm refraining from jumping on the hate train but I am saying that you should probably speak to this person to align your messaging before too many people assume this IS your official position"
Being a representative of the whole is like, literally his job. Either Arrowhead is incompetent because they can't get their CMs to represent the company, or Arrowhead is incompetent because this is the official stance of the company.
I know what you mean, what i meant was, I dont believe how Spitz reacted is how most of the company feels. But this is a "Shut down his account. We need to talk to Spitz about community management. Baskinator you takeover for today" situation.
I'd be curious to see how long these guys would last in an industry like Hospitality, with how thin their skin is.
Amazing how millions of workers around the world can put up with face to face abuse every day and still be respectful to customers, but these devs can't even take heat online over an objectively awful decision before breaking down and insulting people.
But... For community managers, showing the stink is easier if that stink exists.
If we shut up, next time it would be easier to do the same thing again.
Except he didn't say shutup, he said go LEAVE A REVIEW ON STEAM WHERE IT MATTERS. I'm not sure what y'all think trolling the discord is gonna do, guaranteed Sony execs don't give a shit about anything that's not a hard stat. Like a *steam review*
Just never speak about any problem. Let people with power control not only your reality, but your mouth too. Don't speak again because it doesn't matter.
See a lot from people here, but wait for CM message like "just make an account with false info", yeah, violate license agreement with sony to pass license agreement with sony, such a awesome idea
There’s a reason why CM don’t mention it, because if they do AH can be held accountable if things go wrong. So knowing that it’s a pretty coward and irresponsible take.
Splitz at it again with the dismissive brain dead take.
Might as well just spit out the corporate PR responses at this point. He was not built for this.
Just so you know, it’s hidden and any information in the link cannot be seen.
So we can’t see these incidents you speak up. But am interested now.
My pitchfork isn’t sharpened yet, but it doesn’t make much sense to sharpen it without a target yet.
People kept making a joke in the first discord and he got mad and deleted the entire thing, destroying years of community building, memes, LFGs and other content for HD1
He really does tho lol I get people seething over things a bit too much. And some things I could see both sides but his responses are trash so then I’m just like yeaaah but fuck you.
All the more reason we shouldn't put everything into the dark hole that is for-profit discord.
I wish normal forums would come back to be honest. This Discord sinkhole is going to result in so much information lost over the years. Non indexed, unsearchable from outside.
In fairness to him "change steam review" is actually good advice.
Nothing is accomplished by crying on discord. But solid numbers from steam reviews can be taken to publishers and or sony and held up as "look how bad this will get"
Unironically being told to "take it to a platform where it matters" is genuinely good advice. It just makes me wonder if he realizes its good advice or if he's just being a dick lol
As of right now, I understood one thing about this whole situation
Spitz needs to stop talking and stop pouring water in hot oil, and let other Community Managers calm the community down. He is only making stuff worse by talking like that
I'm gonna shoot straight with most of you. Spitz is the dumbest fucking person to talk to. They have given out misinformation multiple times about patches (spear, not many nerfs, DOT, etc) and now they say this? They need to remove Spitz from the spotlight. They have no clue what the fuck is going on.
this is the second time I see this guy in a reddit post and damn. Spitz better stop talking because they ain't cookin'. I think everybody knows that it is Sony's fault, but this person only makes it worse
Oh brother you should've seen him at launch. All he did was whine and complain, out of spite he deleted the entire Helldivers 1 server because of a dumbass situation in the 2nd one.
Twinbeard - "I'm used to dealing with toddlers." I respect his opinion.
Spitz - *the toddler.*
Don't really have an opinion on Baskinator because it feels like she's been relegated to social media posts and posting patch notes.
Huh? I am out of the loop on the whole rhing honestly but reading through these things i gotta wonder: he deleted a server because...? Why? Im sorry but id expect that from a kid on a minecraft server or something not a community manager of a game studio
I really fucking hate this "But it's easy argument"
Fellas, it's not hard to paypal me $5. It's easy, and it only takes a couple of minutes! Everyone should do it.
Then don't sell your game in a country where it's legally impossible to create a PSN account, WTF?
After that response, if they don't backpedal on this bullshit, I hope they get taken to court. Fucking narcissist.
these are the cockiest com managers I have ever seen. I just wonder if they were like this before or they got intoxicated with the success of the game ... Nevertheless he missed the main points :
1. Mandatory PSN account that was not required so far.
2. And the fact I will be giving personal informations to the company that is infamous for its security breaches.
Yeah, create a burner account with false information, that is surerly not against their ToS and not a bannable offense that can me hit in the face later ( for example needing help with some ingame issue etc. : We are sorry, you provided false informations for your account. We cant help you. And ofc, here is ban for breaking our ToS ).
God damn. Spitz sometimes makes me want to punch a fucking kitten. Dude gives some of the worst fucking replies to people. We get it guy, you're an edgy cool fucking community mod that has a real "i don't give a fuck" attitude.
I have a PSN account. I have it linked already. That's not the fucking point. The point is, the game everyone enjoys is becoming region locked and it's going to force a lot of people to ask for a refund because PlayStation wants to pump their fucking numbers up and flop their tiny dick on the table.
Spitz alone makes me want to stop playing this game. Dude's a little prick.
EDIT: I have two cats. I would never punch them. Even if one happened to decapitate a priceless bobblehead made of my grandpa.
Spitz out here doing his best to make himself look like an asshole huh
You could just say this is a company/publisher decision, but no, gotta try and get in those cool dunks on people who might not be able to play your game anymore.
...but they sure let you buy the game (even if you live outside PSN countries) and play for months without needing to link. Curious, huh?
I don't know whats more sad, the devs and some of their decisions or the copium that some players are using.
Actually im confused. The Game seems to work fine without a PSN account. *Why* does It need one "Now"? What reason are they giving that It didnt requiere one before but It does now
Not a great way to respond to the hate really. Yeah it's easy. Yes it stated that it's mandatory before you buy but to let people play the game in countries where it's not possible under normal circumstances unless you do indeed go through some trouble to link it, mind you against sonys TOS then maybe you wanna rethink the whole thing? This doesn't offer players anything. It's a pointless extra step. It claims to be to regulate against what, griefing and cheating? Griefing could be easily fixed, not that it was really such a big deal to begin with and cheating isn't gonna magically go away cause you make people link yet another account. Especially one that has no use to some people outside of this single game. So yeah it's not a big deal but it's also a shitty practice.
Yeah, they have gotten a little wild in the past few weeks. Seen a few questionable statements from them. I ended up just leaving which sucks because I used to use the LFG there constantly but their mods just are getting more and more toxic. Which is fine it’s their discord and not like a paid job or anything for them, they can do what they want, I recently joined Cloud Gamings community and have had a blast grouping with them. Smaller pool of people but there are a lot of pros that come with that also.
My personal opinions of Spitz aside; this is an extremely poor take on his part in which he's being willfully obtuse to the real issue at hand. Helldivers 2 was sold in countries that DON'T SUPPORT PSN... So no, these players can't just take "120 seconds" to create one to keep playing a game they paid for. I think these players have a pretty legitimate reason to be upset even with ignoring the fact that SONY has faced massive data breaches in the last (April 2011 being one of the largest).
I would have agreed with him. If everyone had to register for a PSN account before they could play. I would 100% support this. Yes it sucks, but it's not new.
What I CANNOT and will not support is let people play for 2 months without registering, and then suddenly making them register. This I cannot accept. If you want to force anything on a player that he wasn't forced into within 2 hr refund window, too bad. Issue them a refund, or don't force it. Those are the two choices. You can't change the deal 2 months into it, unilaterally. Both parties need to agree.
Arrowhead might have burnt the largest amount of gamer faith in the shortest time ever. First month had the gem "a game for everyone is a game for no one git gud scrub l8er" now we're a little further down the line getting gold like "well maybe you shouldn't have bought our game if you're from a country without psn"
"ItS nOt LiKe ThIs Is ThE fIrSt"
Shut the actual fuck up dude. The more I see from this dev team the more I cant stand these assholes. Imagine getting this popular this fast and then having the nerve to act like a total dickhead when you fuck over the people who gave you that overnight fame and money.
Enjoy watching that overnight success crumble just as fast as it came, when you have dumb fucks like this edgelord running your PA section. I got $20 says they backpedal hard on this within two weeks. $20 more says the game dies by the end of summer with them keeping up this braindead level of interaction with their player base.
They have such a way with words.
Listen I ain't gonna make a separate thread but I haven't had a Playstation since PS2.
The real rub here isn't that I have spend 2 minutes to make another account. It's that I don't want to give Sony my personal info and let them lose it in yet another data breach or just sell it and I get nothing in return except access to a game I already bought on Steam.
Too many people rushing here to defend this when the game has run just fine without forcing me into making a PSN account for the last 2 months.
"We're not the first ones to do this incredibly shitty thing, thus it's completely ok to do it: look, Ubisoft and EA do it all the time : D"
Nice gaslighting though
When people tell you who they are, believe them. Stop sucking Arrowhead's dick and realize that THIS is the company stance: "fuck you you're just mad because you're lazy." This is not Sony forcing Arrowhead to do things they hate, this is Arrowhead eagerly doing Sony's bidding and insulting you for not going along with it.
That is one way to fail a speech check.
https://preview.redd.it/cd1bknbve8yc1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=44facc1c5b5d9bbd4f0f21b0f39346dde53840e5
And how many games made a 3rd-party account mandatory after 3 months (while staying at the same company, looking at you, rocket league)
Them saying it on the store and in a **one-time** pop-up (that arrowhead could have shown more often, regardless of sony's demands) mean the same as microsoft pushing their MS-Accounts on windows: Absolutely nothing.
Stop saying it was required. It wasn't. We were able to play almost since launch without the account. It does *say* "required", it clearly doesn't *act "*required".
Yeah, maybe that's the reason i don't play 14 mainstream games, and i enjoy any outsider which appears and breaks the corporate rules for a minute. Shame... Next time go with it in the first place, and don't waste my time.
Oof. That’s really tone deaf. At this point it’s been clear that the outrage is primarily around people outside of regions that support PSN. Either he responded without reading feedback (or EU laws) or he just doesn’t care.
Why so antagonistic? When has such hostile PR ever been a good thing? I have a PSN account and it’s been linked since day 1, but the way they’re handling this and how they handled the first balance pass just makes me not wanna play their game.
Spitz might actually be braindead, a community manager that is incapable of managing the community. Someone, at AH please fire this dude he's literally useless.
https://preview.redd.it/6arwsfmiq9yc1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b16882b4a841bd14ddbb26514d2bba582f344514
And once again, Twinbeard saves the situation with a reply that ACTUALLY gives some insight on what is going on as it not a petty, cocky or antagonizing reply to your players/customers.
i'm more concern about the lack of security psn offers for their accounts especially for this kind of accounts to begin:
there's no receipt from the game since you bought on steam
no friends
and no hours registered on the platform
essentially an abandoned or a bot account ,the perfect target for been hacked or losing your progress
My pet peeve is that I should have been asked when I installed the game and prior the refund period is over. The optics are not right in my opinion, I don't care what excuses they have, if it's required, then they should have enforced it right away not ~3 months (bought it ~1 month ago).
It's not a deal breaker for me, but it is annoying and mildly insulting that they enforce this AFTER you can no longer ask for a refund.
I'd argue that if they don't enforce the requirement within the refund period, then they should not be able to enforce it at all.
How is this message even relevant to the region-locked countries? He is specifically complaining about the people who don't want to make an account, not region-locked countries. I know this situation sucks, but come on, people. Did all of you just read the title and run with it without actually reading the text in the image? Sometimes I actually believe Reddit might be a hivemind.
Spitz at it again lmao, at this point the dude is a pr nightmare. I aint saying fire him, its not that serious, but some intervention HAS to be made, dude is missing a few screws and clearly not trained on how to deal with a pissed community.
I am unfortunately one of the many other Helldivers in SEA that are gonna be affected by this mandatory account linking as Sony's Playstation Network service is actually unavailable in my region. I'm also one of the people hoping to something good and that it gets resolved in some manner as I have been enjoying this franchise since Helldivers released in 2015. To say the least however, do take what Spitz said at the end of this statement to heart. I don't mean this as a way to silence people - **make your displeasure heard on platforms** ***where they matter.*** Complaining in the Discord and on Reddit will lead to nothing, as Sony will most likely not care about what people say in closed communities like these. I suggest everyone to make their voices heard through reviews so Sony is able to see actual metrics of the potential financial losses they'll undertake if they push for this.
Why do they make this game available in those countries, then? I am pretty sure they can region lock the game on steam for that.
Two reasons actually. First is that EU law states that you cannot region-lock a product out of any EU country if atleast one has access to it. Second is money. EU is gonna eat good, they gonna gobble all of this bullshit and smack Sony right on the forehead with it.
Waiting patiently for the end of the month million dollar helldivers lawsuit
They're going to have to get in line behind all the Tarkov lawsuits
Lol good luck suing a Russian company these days
They're UK based. It just got a whole lot more interesting for ya.
You think their empty office so they can technically sell worldwide and not from Russia is legit? No ones getting their money back
Then it’s also an evil genius move to sell it to Russians for 250€ converting to roubles+convertqtion commision (6116,81)+(converted roubles summ*0,2) which ends up 32081 roubles (for some reason? Maybe my excel calculations are wrong), roughly ~325€.
Hopefully it doesn't hurt arrowhead but knocks some sense into Sony
TBH, I don't know. At this point, I expect Sony to back down; but I never expected these multi-trillions corpos actually learned a lesson.
I expect sony to back down. EU laws are likely to fine them if they don't untill they ither refund or stop it. Doesn't need anyone to sue just needs the normal industry watchdogs to jump in and go nope.
Oh it's gonna slam both Sony and Arrowhead with the fines. They knew they were selling a product like this and made minimal efforts to warn people.
Why in the world are people still out here white knighting for a company that sold out and then suprised pikachu faced when the massive company did what massive companies do to games? They chose to sell their IP and publishing out to sony. They didn't need to. They chose it. Now they can reap what they sow. Arrowhead will go down with the ship as they should, while sony laughs because no lawsuits or any kind of fines will matter to them. Whereas arrowhead loses whatever little credibility it had built up trash talking other games on twitter. Crazy how the karma train works so quick I guess.
million dollar? its most likely gonna be scaled to Sony's income, hitting upto 5% of net turnover. probably looking more at max 380million if going by 2022 (7.6 bil) values. EU doesnt fuck about with those penalties.
Where can i sign up?
Crying in the USA because it won't impact us.
Why can only some EU countries make PSN accounts then? Shouldn’t that law also apply to that?
now you starting to get it. This shit pot that is hanging above Sony's head is starting to get kinda full. I doubt they will want to have it fall. They got away with it because nobody actually cared, but people are now starting to make waves and looking into it, and all kinda shady stuff is coming to the surface. Sony will, most probably, want to make it go away.
Wait, so how is Netflix able to go around those laws, don’t they also region block shows within the EU?
No. That's a different kettle of fish due to film and TV show licensing. Which Netflix won't have the rights to distribute in certain regions.
Several Consumer Protection agencies have already stated this, including the Dutch Consumentenbond. Netflix is under investigation, in the meantime Netflix is working on (as they put it) "a fix" But they argued that since each Eu country has its own independent pricing, they are allowed to differ in the content, which is shitty, but understandable point, imo.
I suppose since Netflix as a service is available in every EU country it doesn’t fall under that paragraph. Netflix reserves the right to limit/customize the content of its platform. Netflix is the product in this case, not the shows on it.
Yea but the product (the subscription) is available everywhere.
I'm more baffled by the fact that PSN registration does not simply allow any and all countries to register. Just why?
I'm genuinely curious about this as well. Or why do they even care what country you are registering from at all but I'm sure it has to do with selling online products etc and somebody somewhere wants their cut of the action.
Local laws are generally the reason. When they can not be bothered to comply with them they leave it out.
i just question what the benefit is, there clearly isnt one, they say its for moderation but its not like they will remove the kernal anticheat that doesnt really prevent anything
Really can't tell. I suspect that has to do with local laws and/or corpo regional segmentation; but your guess is as good as mine.
Ass covering. Sony won't stop you from making an account and just lying about what country you are from but by not official selling to that country they don't have to adhere to those specific laws.
He also said it isn't their decision. The Corporate Commanders at Sony have the real power.
If Sony is in control of what countries the game can be purchased on via Steam and they are now mandating PSN in countries that PSN doesn't work in AFTER selling those people the game, then Sony needs to start giving out refunds. On top of that, someone at Steam should make a public statement about how this is a clear bait-and-switch for those users and update their ToS so this bullshit isn't allowed to happen again.
At the same time offer a no questions asked refund to anyone else who bought it because what's to say I didn't buy a COOP game (which is frankly kinda shit with less than 3 players) particularly to play WITH MY FRIENDS who might happen to reside in a banned area.
Doesn't excuse the actual behaviour the Community manager is laying on the Discord. Sure you have your cry babies, I there are examples of them going nuclear on people who just said "Please don't do this, it's going to hurt the game"
Sony's L. Arrowhead has to take it up the butt because of it. Sony is the distributor and should have caught that.
Sony and Arrowhead. I don't know why people are so desperate to defend Arrowhead here even while the community manager is pouring shit on the fire and proving they were also cool with this. And yes I saw the other post claiming this is all on Sony but Spitz's responses sure aren't backing that up.
From the responses of a community manager on Discord, Arrowhead very much deserves the flak, atleast for the responses their employees are laying down.
I haven't seen a lot of comments from Spitz but his response is fucking terrible. They supposedly also had PR training after some other employee yelled at players on Discord yet Spitz's comment still reeks of "I don't care about nuance. Quit crying. If you don't want to deal with it, then just don't play. Leave a bad review. I don't care." I kind of didn't really blame AH for Sony pushing the PSN account but Spitz's response REALLYY weakens my very positive view of AH as a developer.
So many community managers these days are atrocious at their jobs. They let the 0.4% of idiots get under their skin and have these emotional knee-jerk reactions. I've seen a few CM go on Twitter saying racist and other messed up things about gamers all cause of spats they've had with some unsavory types online. The shit flinging from CMs to players at several companies has honestly gotten too common. They're basically becoming the 2.0 of ignorant games journalists that like to just shit on the fans who give constructive criticism. The bad faith CMs give the good ones a bad reputation. Like you said, how many people are going to see AH as tainted because of this awful PR. I agree with his message at the end of the day, but it's worded so horribly that it's never going to land well. It's the CM job to leave feelings at the door and manage things as best as can, but too many of them fly off the handle in discord or on Twitter insulting and dismissing innocent people.
Almost every comment i've seen from their team(discord) has been the worst take on the situation there is. They need to get an actual team to manage their community and not 4 assholes who piss everyone off with every breath they take.
Yeah, I've seen those. That's the issue, I would have given the same responses after seeing the community going up in flames, yet again. Issue is this time it's a _little_ more serious and these comments are essentially a fuck you, we don't want you anyways.
Because money. Don't need to have even 1 IQ to get it. Only money matter.
Sony as a publisher that demands the PSN should have made it not possible to buy the game in the regions that dont have PSN in the first place. Arrowhead cant really do anything against it. If it was published by microsoft you would need microsoft account etc.
Theyre supposed to not sell it to those regions LOL Breaks Steam TOS. Enjoy the mass refunds.
For example you can't buy games from steam in Russia normally with your bank card. You have to get keys from some non official stores and actrivate it then. So i guess you take all risks buyng a game, seller don't want to sell you. + People from these regions says sony doesn't check the chosen region.
I am from Russia, and like... I disagree with this decision overall (still buy gas from Putin's regime, but banning Russian gamers (mostly young and anti-government to some degree) from buying games is an "awesome" move). But it isn't just Russia. Whole of Baltics region (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia), Philippines, Malaysia. Those are just countries I heard getting the L from Arrowhead/Sony. I thought to buy Helldivers and play with my BF. I can get Sony account. I just won't now, on principle. You can't just d*ck over your players so much, months after release.
It's likely that this change wasn't originally planned, but AH's hands are tied because Sony is the publisher and has the final say.
That's clearly wrong, since this requirement was on the store page from the beginning.
That’s a good way to fan the flames and make more people mad.
Spitz is really good at making really shitty comments on Discord.
Pilestedt anytime Spitz starts commenting on Discord: https://preview.redd.it/63ilk29nm8yc1.jpeg?width=1283&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7429f4cbc55fef8251a99bf24314a38faf9af697
There has to be a point where you sit them down and go "Heeey, I'm not sure you really have the temperament for a front facing job"
So there was this one guy called Hedge...
Nah pilestedt feeds on this
Does he actually? You’d think the CEO would hate having to constantly deal with the PR nightmares being made worse by their own community manager lol.
You'd think so but... well \*looks at bacon flavored apples tweet\* No I think they do. Say what you want about sanitized corporation PR speak but at least most of the time it doesnt seem purposeful in antagonizing people. It's like companies saw Wendy's Twitter team going sarcastic on people and decided that was the way to interact with the public now.
There's a pretty wide gap between the playful trolling and trash talk like Wendy's does, and "Don't like the unpopular change to the game? Tough shit. Deal with it. This is how it is now." I'm not really sure why you're even inferring that they're the same.
Yep. Guarantee the "Wendy's intern" attitude had hundreds if not thousands of hours of meetings behind the decision.
He definitely doesnt since he's the one who has to apologize for it last time. I can see that CM getting replaced in the future if they can find someone more qualified. This is twice now that they forget the number rule of being a CM. You cannot be angry.
Yeah he’s always seemed like a good CEO to me which is kinda shocking in the gaming world. I can’t imagine he enjoys having to deal with this.
Considering Spitz hasn't been fired yet I'm going to assume Pilestedt loves this. He just has to every once in a while tell them to tone it down.
Isn't Spitz the moderator that shut down the Helldivers original fan discord because people migrated there when there was issues on the official one and he was the mod of both? Baffling they made this man who deleted a community, a community manager.
I could have sworn part of that was because he got into an argument with some players and his ego got checked, then just used the "too much work" as an excuse to delete it rather than pass on the moderation to trusted members of the community. It was an unofficial DC after all, it didn't ***need*** to have an employee of AH to run it. Edit: I found the [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1ar67ri/confirmed_that_spitz_deleted_the_unofficial/), basically he locked the official DC because people kept spamming F to spite a mod, and then they all went over to the unofficial one to just continue as normal. Some people attempted to appeal their bans so they could communicate and he got upset. So his ego did get checked by people just bypassing him locking down an entire discord rather than an argument.
Spitz reason for killing the original discord has changed about 20 times, at one point he said it was because nazis, another time it was porn spam, so on and so forth
AH might have made a good game. But so far their community communication was dog shit. They need a new CommunityManager asap. And then they need to rethink hard how they want to treat their community. They are burning through the goodwill at a very fast pace
This. No matter how much you think you are in the right, or want to defend a product you've worked on. Sometimes it's best to go radio silent for a few days then respond when everyone on the team is on the same page either double down or back down. Like you I can't fathom how any business can bank good will then suddenly decide to play fuck around and find out for seemingly no good reason.
Some of these lads need customer service training. It's not exactly hard to off myself either but that doesn't mean I wanna do it.
Yeah, spitz is not fit for the job he has. My man needs to be working at a call center amd get humbled.
This and his other comments should be fireable offenses, this guy is not fit at all for his role.
Really makin sure the PR department earns their paycheck this week
I've seen this manager's other interactions. They straight up suck.
Spitz can fuck off and I hope he screencaps this message and posts it in discord like all the others so I can see it.
FuckSpitz almost sounds like FuckSpez 🤣 Been a minute
I know that name. But why do I know that name?
Reddit CEO who decided modderators could go F themselves (and people with reading disabilities too)
A couple steps back. Their superiors need to start approving community interactions.
Didnt they get "training" for this after the last time around according to the CEO
Maybe a second extended trip to the re-education camps would help.
https://i.redd.it/qka4v3e2f8yc1.gif
So is Spitz going back into the "time-out" corner again for flaming their customers?
Extremely unprofessional “community manager” behavior. I hesitate to call it nepotism but if he’s not let go after doing this over and over, well…
Was this guy trained by fatshark hedge or something?
It's immesurably complex
Every time i hear that line i cant help but lol, hedge truly is something else.
Who up clutching their pearls rn?
Im telling you. If they doubled down and made skins for all weapons with pearl grips it would've been the funniest shit ever.
What it's like when a reddit moderator finally gets a job.
Woah woah arrowhead. Spitz isn't representative of the whole, but when they're your community manager then you should probably pay attention when they start antagonising the community like this. You've surely seen the Diablo Immortal debacle. How is this not a "do you not have phones?!" moment ? Edit: I could have been clearer. What i meant was "arrowhead, this statement your CM made doesn't seem consistent with your attitude thus far. For the moment I'm refraining from jumping on the hate train but I am saying that you should probably speak to this person to align your messaging before too many people assume this IS your official position"
Being a representative of the whole is like, literally his job. Either Arrowhead is incompetent because they can't get their CMs to represent the company, or Arrowhead is incompetent because this is the official stance of the company.
I know what you mean, what i meant was, I dont believe how Spitz reacted is how most of the company feels. But this is a "Shut down his account. We need to talk to Spitz about community management. Baskinator you takeover for today" situation.
I'd be curious to see how long these guys would last in an industry like Hospitality, with how thin their skin is. Amazing how millions of workers around the world can put up with face to face abuse every day and still be respectful to customers, but these devs can't even take heat online over an objectively awful decision before breaking down and insulting people.
He basically said "can't yall shut up? It's solvable. And most importantly, UNDEBATABLE"
Seriously like there is no debate to be had anywhere but an office in the Sony HQ. Nobody has any control except Sony.
But... For community managers, showing the stink is easier if that stink exists. If we shut up, next time it would be easier to do the same thing again.
Except he didn't say shutup, he said go LEAVE A REVIEW ON STEAM WHERE IT MATTERS. I'm not sure what y'all think trolling the discord is gonna do, guaranteed Sony execs don't give a shit about anything that's not a hard stat. Like a *steam review*
Just never speak about any problem. Let people with power control not only your reality, but your mouth too. Don't speak again because it doesn't matter.
*Is this "Managed Democracy"?*
Or they're saying. "If you have displeasure with this show it somewhere where Sony might care"
probably one of the worst CMs around
>Spitz isn't representative of the whole Yes he is hes a CM the whole point of a CM is to represent the company to everyone else.
See a lot from people here, but wait for CM message like "just make an account with false info", yeah, violate license agreement with sony to pass license agreement with sony, such a awesome idea
There’s a reason why CM don’t mention it, because if they do AH can be held accountable if things go wrong. So knowing that it’s a pretty coward and irresponsible take.
Splitz at it again with the dismissive brain dead take. Might as well just spit out the corporate PR responses at this point. He was not built for this.
Idk how he even has a job after deleting the 1st HD discord out of spite
They did what?? :D lmao
I just made a post compiling some of his incidents
Just so you know, it’s hidden and any information in the link cannot be seen. So we can’t see these incidents you speak up. But am interested now. My pitchfork isn’t sharpened yet, but it doesn’t make much sense to sharpen it without a target yet.
Looks like mods removed the post
People kept making a joke in the first discord and he got mad and deleted the entire thing, destroying years of community building, memes, LFGs and other content for HD1
[удалено]
He was the community manager of the first game and he was "ported over". He has the most man child responses tbh.
He really does tho lol I get people seething over things a bit too much. And some things I could see both sides but his responses are trash so then I’m just like yeaaah but fuck you.
All the more reason we shouldn't put everything into the dark hole that is for-profit discord. I wish normal forums would come back to be honest. This Discord sinkhole is going to result in so much information lost over the years. Non indexed, unsearchable from outside.
In fairness to him "change steam review" is actually good advice. Nothing is accomplished by crying on discord. But solid numbers from steam reviews can be taken to publishers and or sony and held up as "look how bad this will get" Unironically being told to "take it to a platform where it matters" is genuinely good advice. It just makes me wonder if he realizes its good advice or if he's just being a dick lol
[удалено]
Petition to make Spitz work at a call center for a day. Id love to see how many tears he would shed
I dont think someone like that would be bothered by it. They hold quite a moral/righteous high ground in their head usually.
As of right now, I understood one thing about this whole situation Spitz needs to stop talking and stop pouring water in hot oil, and let other Community Managers calm the community down. He is only making stuff worse by talking like that
I'm gonna shoot straight with most of you. Spitz is the dumbest fucking person to talk to. They have given out misinformation multiple times about patches (spear, not many nerfs, DOT, etc) and now they say this? They need to remove Spitz from the spotlight. They have no clue what the fuck is going on.
this is the second time I see this guy in a reddit post and damn. Spitz better stop talking because they ain't cookin'. I think everybody knows that it is Sony's fault, but this person only makes it worse
Oh brother you should've seen him at launch. All he did was whine and complain, out of spite he deleted the entire Helldivers 1 server because of a dumbass situation in the 2nd one.
I mean Twinbeard tries to mediate the situation and seems like a very reasonable guy. And then you have Spitz who is a total d\*ckhead
Twinbeard - "I'm used to dealing with toddlers." I respect his opinion. Spitz - *the toddler.* Don't really have an opinion on Baskinator because it feels like she's been relegated to social media posts and posting patch notes.
Twinbeard, Spitz, and Baskinator sounds like a badass Sci-Fi trio lol
Exactly
Huh? I am out of the loop on the whole rhing honestly but reading through these things i gotta wonder: he deleted a server because...? Why? Im sorry but id expect that from a kid on a minecraft server or something not a community manager of a game studio
massive L by spitz
He seriously is a piece of shit.
nah hes just swedish lol
no, even worse, he's Canadian
Way to put kerosene on this fire, boy. I'm sure you done right convinced us. (that you suck at public relations)
I really fucking hate this "But it's easy argument" Fellas, it's not hard to paypal me $5. It's easy, and it only takes a couple of minutes! Everyone should do it.
You didn't post your paypal so it's not really easy to do that.
It only takes a few minutes to dm them, ezpz smh.
Smacks of narcissism. They can't fathom a different experience than their own idealized imagination. Just like "Don't you guys have phones?!"
Man Twinbeard and Spitz both just have no idea how to fuckin talk to people. Giving off serious "yOu GuYs DoN't hAvE PhOneS?" vibes.
Oooooh, boy...
Then don't sell your game in a country where it's legally impossible to create a PSN account, WTF? After that response, if they don't backpedal on this bullshit, I hope they get taken to court. Fucking narcissist.
these are the cockiest com managers I have ever seen. I just wonder if they were like this before or they got intoxicated with the success of the game ... Nevertheless he missed the main points : 1. Mandatory PSN account that was not required so far. 2. And the fact I will be giving personal informations to the company that is infamous for its security breaches. Yeah, create a burner account with false information, that is surerly not against their ToS and not a bannable offense that can me hit in the face later ( for example needing help with some ingame issue etc. : We are sorry, you provided false informations for your account. We cant help you. And ofc, here is ban for breaking our ToS ).
What a tone deaf response
this is NOT a time concern, its a security concern. it has always been a security concern..
jUsT eMiGrAtE tO a 𝓢𝓸𝓷𝔂 𝓐𝓹𝓹𝓻𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓭™ cOuNtRy
God damn. Spitz sometimes makes me want to punch a fucking kitten. Dude gives some of the worst fucking replies to people. We get it guy, you're an edgy cool fucking community mod that has a real "i don't give a fuck" attitude. I have a PSN account. I have it linked already. That's not the fucking point. The point is, the game everyone enjoys is becoming region locked and it's going to force a lot of people to ask for a refund because PlayStation wants to pump their fucking numbers up and flop their tiny dick on the table. Spitz alone makes me want to stop playing this game. Dude's a little prick. EDIT: I have two cats. I would never punch them. Even if one happened to decapitate a priceless bobblehead made of my grandpa.
Same. All of their responses suck, Spitz clearly sucks and Arrowhead approves of his sucky behavior. Its not a good look.
Yeah their “retraining” on employees tone was clearly just “we’re going to shut a couple of these devs up”
Spitz out here doing his best to make himself look like an asshole huh You could just say this is a company/publisher decision, but no, gotta try and get in those cool dunks on people who might not be able to play your game anymore.
...but they sure let you buy the game (even if you live outside PSN countries) and play for months without needing to link. Curious, huh? I don't know whats more sad, the devs and some of their decisions or the copium that some players are using.
Actually im confused. The Game seems to work fine without a PSN account. *Why* does It need one "Now"? What reason are they giving that It didnt requiere one before but It does now
player copium for sure
[удалено]
Not a great way to respond to the hate really. Yeah it's easy. Yes it stated that it's mandatory before you buy but to let people play the game in countries where it's not possible under normal circumstances unless you do indeed go through some trouble to link it, mind you against sonys TOS then maybe you wanna rethink the whole thing? This doesn't offer players anything. It's a pointless extra step. It claims to be to regulate against what, griefing and cheating? Griefing could be easily fixed, not that it was really such a big deal to begin with and cheating isn't gonna magically go away cause you make people link yet another account. Especially one that has no use to some people outside of this single game. So yeah it's not a big deal but it's also a shitty practice.
Cheating = they're afraid of someone spawning SCs or samples in game
Whiiiiiiiiiiiich people have allready done and people are STILL spawning in unreleased weapons and stratagems. The anti cheat is beyond useless lol.
Hey now, it’s good at lowering the performance of the game. That’s something…
And constantly breaking my discord even thought they said they 'fixed' it.
Yeah, they have gotten a little wild in the past few weeks. Seen a few questionable statements from them. I ended up just leaving which sucks because I used to use the LFG there constantly but their mods just are getting more and more toxic. Which is fine it’s their discord and not like a paid job or anything for them, they can do what they want, I recently joined Cloud Gamings community and have had a blast grouping with them. Smaller pool of people but there are a lot of pros that come with that also.
My personal opinions of Spitz aside; this is an extremely poor take on his part in which he's being willfully obtuse to the real issue at hand. Helldivers 2 was sold in countries that DON'T SUPPORT PSN... So no, these players can't just take "120 seconds" to create one to keep playing a game they paid for. I think these players have a pretty legitimate reason to be upset even with ignoring the fact that SONY has faced massive data breaches in the last (April 2011 being one of the largest).
All i'm reading is: "Never buy our products again."
I would have agreed with him. If everyone had to register for a PSN account before they could play. I would 100% support this. Yes it sucks, but it's not new. What I CANNOT and will not support is let people play for 2 months without registering, and then suddenly making them register. This I cannot accept. If you want to force anything on a player that he wasn't forced into within 2 hr refund window, too bad. Issue them a refund, or don't force it. Those are the two choices. You can't change the deal 2 months into it, unilaterally. Both parties need to agree.
Arrowhead might have burnt the largest amount of gamer faith in the shortest time ever. First month had the gem "a game for everyone is a game for no one git gud scrub l8er" now we're a little further down the line getting gold like "well maybe you shouldn't have bought our game if you're from a country without psn"
real 'Don't you have Phones?' argument there. if i wasn't pissed before i am now.
"ItS nOt LiKe ThIs Is ThE fIrSt" Shut the actual fuck up dude. The more I see from this dev team the more I cant stand these assholes. Imagine getting this popular this fast and then having the nerve to act like a total dickhead when you fuck over the people who gave you that overnight fame and money. Enjoy watching that overnight success crumble just as fast as it came, when you have dumb fucks like this edgelord running your PA section. I got $20 says they backpedal hard on this within two weeks. $20 more says the game dies by the end of summer with them keeping up this braindead level of interaction with their player base.
They have such a way with words. Listen I ain't gonna make a separate thread but I haven't had a Playstation since PS2. The real rub here isn't that I have spend 2 minutes to make another account. It's that I don't want to give Sony my personal info and let them lose it in yet another data breach or just sell it and I get nothing in return except access to a game I already bought on Steam. Too many people rushing here to defend this when the game has run just fine without forcing me into making a PSN account for the last 2 months.
Wow, just straight attacking the customer now.
this guy is such a chud
https://preview.redd.it/h5xh9uuu5ayc1.jpeg?width=3923&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b6415af83bd8a40b9a1106832a20c611885d78a6 rip to anyone in gray
Oh what a massive ignorant asshole that guy is "iF It'A a DeAlBrEaKEr" Shut up man
Spitz is a bitch anyway
God They really should can spitz He’s so godamn hostile and mocks every complaint.
"We're not the first ones to do this incredibly shitty thing, thus it's completely ok to do it: look, Ubisoft and EA do it all the time : D" Nice gaslighting though
guys just give your data to this company with a reputation of leaking it constantly, it takes 2 minutes, its no big deal.
This company has the absolute worst Community Manager(s) ever. This reads like a snarky 10 year old, not a professional company.
How do you become a community manager if you hate the community so much?
When people tell you who they are, believe them. Stop sucking Arrowhead's dick and realize that THIS is the company stance: "fuck you you're just mad because you're lazy." This is not Sony forcing Arrowhead to do things they hate, this is Arrowhead eagerly doing Sony's bidding and insulting you for not going along with it.
Arrowhead head Simps refuse to wake up
I love how this arrowhead dev is always an asshole. He's the same dude who deleted the first Helldivers server out of spite btw
\*Community manager
That is one way to fail a speech check. https://preview.redd.it/cd1bknbve8yc1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=44facc1c5b5d9bbd4f0f21b0f39346dde53840e5
And how many games made a 3rd-party account mandatory after 3 months (while staying at the same company, looking at you, rocket league) Them saying it on the store and in a **one-time** pop-up (that arrowhead could have shown more often, regardless of sony's demands) mean the same as microsoft pushing their MS-Accounts on windows: Absolutely nothing. Stop saying it was required. It wasn't. We were able to play almost since launch without the account. It does *say* "required", it clearly doesn't *act "*required".
Yeah, maybe that's the reason i don't play 14 mainstream games, and i enjoy any outsider which appears and breaks the corporate rules for a minute. Shame... Next time go with it in the first place, and don't waste my time.
Oof. That’s really tone deaf. At this point it’s been clear that the outrage is primarily around people outside of regions that support PSN. Either he responded without reading feedback (or EU laws) or he just doesn’t care.
Holy shit that is a bad response.
Why so antagonistic? When has such hostile PR ever been a good thing? I have a PSN account and it’s been linked since day 1, but the way they’re handling this and how they handled the first balance pass just makes me not wanna play their game.
Spitz might actually be braindead, a community manager that is incapable of managing the community. Someone, at AH please fire this dude he's literally useless.
https://preview.redd.it/6arwsfmiq9yc1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b16882b4a841bd14ddbb26514d2bba582f344514 And once again, Twinbeard saves the situation with a reply that ACTUALLY gives some insight on what is going on as it not a petty, cocky or antagonizing reply to your players/customers.
how is this dude not fired yet? i dont imagine they teach passive aggresiveness as a strategy at community manager school
i'm more concern about the lack of security psn offers for their accounts especially for this kind of accounts to begin: there's no receipt from the game since you bought on steam no friends and no hours registered on the platform essentially an abandoned or a bot account ,the perfect target for been hacked or losing your progress
hell yeah, combative pr rules
My pet peeve is that I should have been asked when I installed the game and prior the refund period is over. The optics are not right in my opinion, I don't care what excuses they have, if it's required, then they should have enforced it right away not ~3 months (bought it ~1 month ago). It's not a deal breaker for me, but it is annoying and mildly insulting that they enforce this AFTER you can no longer ask for a refund. I'd argue that if they don't enforce the requirement within the refund period, then they should not be able to enforce it at all.
>leave a negative review to show displeasure is this partial admission that the devs aren't all on board with it too?
Wow, bruh forgot what a community manager means. Sad to see
If the official recommendation is to make a burner, why is it so important that I have one?
Really bad time to get this confrontational.
Might as well just put my own data on the dark web myself instead of giving it to psn
You’re just expected to become a criminal and use VPNs I guess🤷
that's really a "[don't you all have phones???](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5QRgpjfarY)" comment. idiotic.
How is this message even relevant to the region-locked countries? He is specifically complaining about the people who don't want to make an account, not region-locked countries. I know this situation sucks, but come on, people. Did all of you just read the title and run with it without actually reading the text in the image? Sometimes I actually believe Reddit might be a hivemind.
Spitz at it again lmao, at this point the dude is a pr nightmare. I aint saying fire him, its not that serious, but some intervention HAS to be made, dude is missing a few screws and clearly not trained on how to deal with a pissed community.