Unbelievable from what I’ve read about just now. This is games-related because it is targeting a gaming community, one that has seemingly taken things too far than they needed to go.
Summary: A user, who I will not name, issued a challenge to the developers of Helldivers 2 to play their game on the hardest difficulty on a mission mode that is known for being difficult, poorly designed and glitchy. Should the developers complete it, he will donate $1,000 to charity of his choosing.
The fanbase? They didn’t take this kindly and have now been making it a campaign to make that user’s life a living hell. Even up to making said user lose their IRL jobs. I’m surprised the user hasn’t killed themselves yet and I hope it never gets to that point.
If you’ve been on the Helldivers 2 subreddit and Steam community, you will know what is going on. I am talking of this because, I hope to never ever see this kind of behavior happen within the Fediverse, because we are supposed to be better than this. I’m not surprised that the rapid dogpiling in rabid irrationality, happened from Reddit because that’s where a lot of it comes from.
There is way more to this drama than I am speaking of, but all it has been doing, is making me disgusted over game-based communities who allow this to happen. I’m disgusted at the people who could’ve nipped it in the bud before it got out of control but didn’t. I’m disgusted at Reddit for predictably allowing it to happen.
I have not felt this disgusted towards something since the Night in the Woods incident. Absolutely disgraceful.
It’s why I stopped playing all multiplayer games tbh. People are fucking feral.
Warframe recently changed pugs to automatically and instantly disband upon mission completion. It’s kind of awesome. I actually don’t only play solo now.
Yea but like its the best way to avoid the feral people in the real world so kinda sucks.
I dropped like 250 hours when it first released. The community was pretty good then. Helpful and I was also helpful. But the game got old and of course other games to play. So I moved on. Came back when that 3rd race released and it just didn’t grab me again.
Sad day for a good game, but it’ll survive
This is games-related because it is targeting a gaming community, one that has seemingly taken things too far than they needed to go.
That’s not games related
they came for gamers…
it’s subreddit drama, helldivers 2 gamers were unaffected
Well thats really pathetic. All user did was challenge rhe devs to play the game they made. Absolutely insane to try to ruin someone’s life over it. Can’t they use that energy towards something good?
When you fail to moderate toxicity, it gets worse. Both Reddit and the Steam forums are among the most vile, toxic, hateful social cesspits on the internet. Spez is a greedy piece of shit, but Valve should be ashamed of what they enable and tolerate.
Steam is toxic yea but to compare with reddit? Thats wild. At least in steam discussions everybody just hates you while Reddit has some true degens
Okay, I know a lot about this issue, and it was one guy that doxxed him and a handful of users berating him. Its not “the community.” Its not acceptable. But neither is Arrowheads response, TBH. They should get Sony to get private investigators to catch the doxxer and make an example out of him, otherwise the doxxer wins. He gets what he wanted. This incident reflects on Arrowhead whether they want it or not, so they need to respond to it swiftly, not their “doxxing bad” public announcement.
As long as it isn’t Boeing’s private investigators.
Remember, half the community doesn’t realise the plot is parody of them and not actually glorifying their ideals.
Helldivers is no parody. What are you talking about. :)
We seriously need to give up on the sarcastic, parodic pro-capitalist games, and go back to ripping heads off of virtual fascists.
Duke nukem and castle wolfenstiens love baby will save gaming.
That’s honestly why I’m torn on Warhammer 40k movies and series, some idiots really do not get it that EVERYONE is horrible in that universe and that the racist, fascist, xenocidal, fanatic, militarist theocracy that has the skull as their main item of decor is evil and a parody on thatcherite conservatism cranked up to 12 (because 11 wasn’t enough).
It is so hard to depict the factions of the empire in a light where you can somewhat identify with the individuals, stuck in the machine to be able to tell a story while at the same time making it look cool AND showing that “this is bad, this is really bad and stupid”. And keeping simpleminded fools from being taken in by that aura of power, toxic masculinity and fascism that oozes through every faction like a purulent infection designed by papa Nurgle himself.
Whaaaaaat but not my tech communism fascists! Surely they are ok!
That is a great summary of the Warhammer 40k universe and I say that as a fan of it.
Teach why Fascism is bad and doomed to failure instead of telling people they can’t tell one kind of joke.
The Boys worst fans lol
Unfortunately even as parody/satire they don’t really show us a better faction.
Game is fun.
Game supports upto 4 people.
Game does not require a community.
The reddit community around the game has been toxic as long as the game has existed. They bitch and moan and complain about every little aspect of the game, that barely impacts the game. I’ve enjoyed the game a lot more since I left the community.
Game is fun. It’s a damn co-op. It rarely goes sideways in game. This is pure community drama, I’ve never participated in reddit and steam forums and glad I haven’t.
Ironically I gave up on the community for the complete opposite reason, you can’t criticize the game because criticism is always met with “you’re an enemy of super earth”. I get it, Super earth is a fascist civilization and Helldivers are the extension of that fascism and a lot of it is on the nose and it’s okay to joke about dissenters, sometimes. But you don’t need to scream “enemies of democracy” every single time someone criticizes the game. The game is fun but it’s not perfect. There are real problems with the game, one of which has lead to this complete embarrassment of the community.
In short, the Helldivers 2 community is toxic in every aspect and anyone interested in Helldivers is better off ignoring the subreddit, the steam community and probably also the official discord. Instead join !helldivers2@lemmy.ca where this drama isn’t even mentioned.
The same people who would be susceptible to fascist thought are the same people who think Starship Troopers is about the good guys
Now you understand why media like HellDivers always ends up with the fan base that it does.
Reddit communities around games in general are awful. I swear no one in those subreddits actually enjoys the game they supposedly dump thousands of hours into.
When I was on Reddit I remember there having to be specifically “no salt” versions of game subreddits because the main sub for the game got taken over by people shitting on it.
Hey now that’s not entirely true. The crusader kings community at least used to enjoy it, IDK been off reddit for several years so I don’t know if they’ve changed. Regardless the inbred ugly eugenics programs were always amusing.
Reddit is a cesspit of crap like this. It’s really a shame people do this because if the shoe was on the other foot, each and every one of the people dogpiling would cry foul if it happened to them. So glad I left that place but I am extra critical of Fediverse because of my experience with Reddit in the past.
There are people on the Fediverse who are trying desperately to shit in it enough to where it is comparable to Reddit.
People are clamoring for more people to be on the Fediverse? I don’t know anymore if more people available would be the answer. We could use more microcommunities, but I don’t know about people.
Yeah, I’m glad to find actual coversations here, but it’s so much easier for someone to make a low effort toxic comment and I guess a lot of people are like me and taking long breaks between commenting. Hopefully this stays smaller due to Reddit still exsisting. Similar to how League of Legends is a pit that some of the most toxic gamers keep themselves in.
I’ve run into a few of the people that brought over their “Redditness” in how they act in the comments. Never a pleasure.
Wild, I don’t play the game nor do I know anything about it really. (besides a few streams worth) To go to such extremes is wild. Although to donate $1.000 to a charity is also wild for something known to be difficult. Still, I love charity. So hope they take him up on it. But I much rather sit next to a fellow gamer then on a guilty conscience of doxing some one and forcing them into self harm or otherwise.
The loudest are often the weakest. I’m averagely sure there was a (biased) study made back when it was popular which suggested many of the most intense participants of an online community barely participate in the activity itself and are instead more interested in projecting themselves as leaders or a person of influence in order to dictate or direct actions and narratives.
Unfortunately many gaming communities are very toxic and it is easy to get sucked into that vibe so its a downward spiral.
Is there a good summary thread? I wonder how exactly this user lost their job as a result of this.
Edit: found this.
This part was particularly interesting…
Shortly after that the original Challenger post a video with his face and his voice clarifying all the rules talking about his love for the community, and the game, how he plans on donating the money regardless if they complete the mission or even attempt it…The only stipulation is they get to choose to charity if they win.
I can give some; A player started a charity event (proposed to) involving the dev team playing the game at its highest possible difficulty, difficulty 10, in a game where the highest achievement is obtained at difficulty 7, after which there are no achivements, so to play dif 10 you gotta love the game and be insanely good at it. Said challenge happens on the hardest scenario of the game, a difficult planet with a weird name that i forgot.
Cool, I guess.
Another player added to the challenge that he would pay the dev 1000 dollars, but not for charity, no no, but to prove that dif10 is fucking impossible. Which triggered a ’ discussion ’ that brought some ‘git gud’ players to be overzealous. They doxxed the first guy, sent death threats and other things too.
in short, he got his life ruined because he attempted a fun charity event.
I don’t engage with these communities…but it ended up in an article so i happen to know about it.
To add a bit more clarity:
Difficulty 10 isn’t that hard. I regularly play on 10 and I’m not great at the game.
The truly challenging part of the challenge was that the devs were supposed to use specifically chosen niche, underutilized, and poorly balanced weapons and gear to prove the point that the devs are out of touch in regards to the gameplay and balance of the vast majority of the equipment available to players.
A big aspect of this whole situation is that it arose because a huge chunk of the playerbase is fed up with the developer’s decisions.
I thought the challenge was because it was a hive world which is a difficulty multiplier due to the alien’s home turf advantage including underground areas, special abilities like burrowing, and hive lords (sand worms). I missed the weapon choice restrictions.
which is true (and i played difficult games in the past) but does it deserve the kind of response they had? My feelings about online gaming is that it was either the most fun (not relevant to the difficulty) or weirdly miserable. In the end, I think it’s the overly online crowd that does this, usually active players can be far more chill—
Surely the only reply to the ‘get gud’ mob is to tell them to post a video of them doing it or gtfo. If they can’t do it, they pay $1000 to charity.
Nice idea, decent rebuttal, unfortunately superdoxxed and SWAT have been deployed to your house. That’ll learn ya for trying to have fun on the internet.
AFAIK the person was doxxed and the employer was getting threats so it boiled down to security risk. But I just skimmed over some posts in reddit+steam so this might be total nonsense…
Theres a pretty good one by youtuber dolan darkest, cant link it now but its only 2 minutesish long
deleted by creator
Wow this is is bad. This game’s community has been always a shithole - in reddit, discord, and also in the game itself.
I remember when a guy was mad that my mortar blasted him. He waited until we completed the map and the shuttle touched down, then messaged me and kicked me before the mission was completed.
I only play with my friends now, and avoid public servers. It’s a fun, but often messy and buggy game.
I have REALLY gotten sick of the “git gud” crowd.
I’ve recently been playing Tormented Souls 2. It has a good number of weapons to it, but some contention about ammo scarcity. I pointed out that while using your melee weapon on enemies, and using iframes, is technically viable, even if you’re really good at it, it becomes really samey and boring.
Someone immediately jumped on me as having a “skill issue”, and copy-pasting the generic “developer shouldn’t be forced to make the game your way” argument from every Dark Souls discussion.
Somehow, difficulty has become so entwined with masculine ego that people cannot seem to judge criticism of a game that has anything to do with its specific level of challenge.
I have REALLY gotten sick of the “git gud” crowd.
I’ve always been sick of it. It’s impacted how developers create games.
Once upon a time, hard and difficult games on 8-bit and 16-bit platforms were created accidentally, either because of design bugs, or developers not having time to run through proper play-test cycles, or only doing the play testing themselves. We put up with it because we were kids and had a limited budget for games, so we played what we had. It was never intentional, since they wanted to make sure it was balanced enough to appeal to the general audience, but still have difficulty levels for people who wanted to try out a second harder playthrough.
Then, games like Dark Souls came along, which pretended that hard games were a From Software invention, and propped up a community of egoists and digital sadomasochists. All they did was make the designs more deliberate, to the point of developer trolling. (I know this started earlier on in the indie scene, especially roguelikes, but Dark Souls popularized it.)
The “git gud” crowd pushes this narrative of “if it’s possible to do, then it’s the player’s fault for not having the skill to do so”, to the point of personifying a game with statements like “the game is punishing me with bad RNG” or “the game is actively trying to kill me”. This completely ignores the developers’ responsibility of instituting balanced difficulty levels, since it’s the developers’ fault that “the game” does these things.
Again, it has really impacted how developers create games nowadays. First, the “git gud” crowd is loud enough that developers now think they deserve a voice, as if difficult games weren’t absolutely everywhere, even before Dark Souls. The popularity of speed running makes them think that have to cater to that crowd, and streamers streaming impossible challenges skews that difficulty Overton window even more. Developers think they have to make some impossibly difficult game, so that streamers, who famously play video games for a living for thousands of hours a year, will advertise their game and push it to the top.
I encountered these people while playing Divinity Original Sin too. They basically exploited the mechanism, stole everything, abused the chest/telekineses method, then felt good about themselves, look down on everyone who don’t play that way.
I’m tired of those crowds and the hardcore gamer crowds. They believe that they are the best of the best and should therefore, be the ones dictating how games should go. I’ve seen this in real-time with games like Rocket League, where the elitists controlled the asylum and their input was more valuable to Psyonix than compromising so as to make everyone happy.
You can’t even play a casual match anymore without getting penalized when you leave it, since it’s casual and the game places an AI bot in your place to remedy this. All because the elitists, who primarily play Competitive, felt that you should be penalized anyways even in modes where Competitive isn’t the primary focus. Imagine if you were playing single player games and whenever you died or your run ends, you decide to quit the game in frustration.
So you come back to the game later and you’re locked out from playing a single-player game because the people over in the multiplayer side of the spectrum, complained too much about how people quit games that wouldn’t otherwise affect them and the developer taking their side. That’s how ridiculous it got with Rocket League.
This is why I don’t play multiplayer with random people anymore, I am reluctant to gripe about frustrations I have with already hard games when I question the difficulty factor. Because all that it is going to turn into, is just dogpiling with people stabbing at me and screaming I should ‘git gud’ or ‘stop playing games because games are reserved for real gamers’ or ‘go back to playing your shitty 3-match game’.









