The Helldivers 2 community is still celebrating a major win after forcing Sony to pull back its plan to force Steam players into linking a PlayStation Network account, and the devs might immortalize this struggle with a clever in-game item.
Community Efforts Pay Off
The Arrowhead Games Studio CEO and the Helldivers 2 creative director, who supported the community’s efforts toward changing the PSN account linking mandate, posted a community member’s accidental cape design that pays tribute to the wave of negative reviews the game received after Sony’s announcement.
A Symbol of Resistance
The “pretty cool” design features four red bars that reflect the more than 200,000 negative reviews the game received on Steam between the initial Friday announcement and the early Monday morning retraction. The Helldivers 2 review score consensus, which prior to the PSN account linking fiasco was Overwhelmingly Positive, dropped down to Mixed by Sunday, but has already recovered back to Mostly Positive.
Fan Art Takes Over
The use of the Helldivers 2 review bar imagery has taken over the fan art section of the game’s Discord server, with fans using it as a makeshift badge of honor to place on capes, chair backs, pins, player cards, and more. It appears the game’s most dedicated players are adopting the review bars as a symbol of the community’s efforts to resists the poorly received changes Sony wanted to make.
Developer Recognition
While some backlash was directed at Arrowhead when the PSN account linking requirements were first announced, fans quickly realized through the game’s community members that it was a decision the devs weren’t thrilled about, either.
Since the design has caught the eyes of the developer’s CEO, we could very well see this cape in the game soon. Given that Sony has seen the error of its ways once already, hopefully they don’t nix a cape that reminds them of the near disaster of their own making.