A Helldivers 2 community manager claims he was fired after encouraging negative Steam reviews in response to Sony’s recently rescinded decision to mandate PlayStation Network account linking.
Following last week’s announcement that Helldivers 2 players on PC would have to link their PSN accounts to continue playing the game, an absolute tsunami of backlash has hit both Sony and Arrowhead. As the noise of protest continues to swell, community manager Spitz has begun actively encouraging players to make their voices heard, as doing so will give Arrowhead “further discussions with Sony” to overturn the decision. Well, more than 200,000 negative comments were posted on Helldivers 2’s Steam page shortly after Sony announced the change, and the decision was eventually reversed, but not without a major casualty.
On the official Helldivers 2 Discord channel, Spitz revealed that they are no longer Arrowhead community managers, and do not work for the studio at all. They also clarified that this “was not” a voluntary exit.
“In general, it’s not a good idea to ask people for refunds and leave negative reviews when you’re a community manager. TIL,” Spitz said. “I appreciate all the support and even more so that everyone can play the game again without restrictions. I knew I was taking a risk with what I said about refunds and changing reviews. I stand by it. My job was to represent the team. The community, and that’s what I did.”
They added: “I wanted to work for Arrowhead because they are my favorite studio ever. I was given this opportunity. I am grateful for this opportunity. I would be happy to continue working for them if I had the choice, but that is not up to me or anyone else here. I can walk away.” “I’m happy and I don’t want anyone to cause trouble on my behalf, especially for people for whom I still have a lot of care and respect.”
Without knowing the full situation (I’ve reached out to Arrowhead for comment), it’s hard to say exactly what led to Spitz’s apparent firing, but if it was based solely on him encouraging players to leave bad reviews, I think it’s safe to say that they came down fighting the good fight .
while, The Helldivers 2 team wants the PSN drama to be immortalized as an in-game cape, and the developers are already working on a “good name for it.”.
“Freelance web ninja. Wannabe communicator. Amateur tv aficionado. Twitter practitioner. Extreme music evangelist. Internet fanatic.”