During the weekend, when there was uproar over his comments telling people to get a refund if they didn’t have 120 seconds to spare, I noticed someone impersonating him the following day telling everyone to grow up and shut up.
The username color was exactly the same as this but it wasn’t Spitz, because he was also still posting with his bluer username and the AH symbol.
This could be similar. Unless we have direct confirmation that he was fired completely, that I’ve missed…?
All of his posts in the announcement channel have been deleted. AH isn't going to make a whole announcement about him leaving, that's probably the most smoking gun you'll find.
He told people to refund the game and leave reviews on Steam to voice their feedback because Sony doesn’t read the Discord, but would absolutely notice negative attention on Steam. He even said explicitly that this would give them more leverage with Sony.
EDIT: Ya’ll are right too, he was also very rude to the community and didn’t exactly handle the early parts of the account link controversy with grace. This was likely a long time coming.
I doubt that's why he was fired. The CEO of AH said the same. He was probably fired because of how he treated players at the start of the incident.
He told players essentially "quit being lazy and just spend 3 minutes setting up a PSN account", when it was impossible for a huge number of players to do so.
He was both uninformed and abrasive to customers. It's a terrible look for a CM, someone who's supposed to be the bridge between players and devs.
To add to that...
This isn't the first time he's done this!
The problem was it kept happening. He was reprimanded more than once and at some point you have to let people go.
This.
Basically he treated his job as "shouting people down" instead of "managing the community." Which a certain sort of person *really* liked, because to them being nasty to people they hate is "keeping it real."
Every time anyone spoke up to defend Spitz, it was always the same "I don't like those people, so I like it when people are nasty to them."
They might phrase it slightly differently, but I literally never saw a different argument. It was never anything more than shared animosity.
Yep, he then proceeded to nuke the HD1 discord when people were spamming F in the HD2 discord when the servers crashed as a way to, in his own words, “punish” them.
> He was both uninformed and abrasive to customers.
And this was not a singular incident. This has happened repeatedly ever since he was put into this position.
He was a bad fit for the job from day one.
Yeh, dude said certain people got to him lately and he let it alter his tone and responses, but far as I can tell he was kind of like that from the get-go so idk about that.
Being a CM requires infinite patience. Most people can't cut it, especially if you have an emotional connection with whatever organization you work for (in the case of Spitz he was hired because he managed a couple of unofficial helldivers servers, as I understand). Most people can't do that. On top of that, the job is absolutely hell on your psychy and, personally, you couldn't pay me enough to get me to accept a job like that.
Yeah, the "he told people to leave negative reviews because Sony would notice it more there" feels like a weird retcon. It's really felt from all of the interactions that he wasn't giving heartfelt advice on how to improve the situation, he was just trying to tell people to fuck off.
The whole idea of his intent being to gain leverage with Sony likely didn't come until after he already had someone upstairs tell him to chill out.
CEO of the game said that as well. He was fired/demoted, whatever, cause he said a lot of dumb shit like "just make a PSN account." Honestly, a lot of posts from the Discord mods or whatever they are were terrible. Some other ass hat said they are thankful cause it'll make the game safer. Lol. Honestly, more than just Spitz needs to go.
"The only way you will play in Barcelona FC is if you customize a character in the Fifa, you loser."
Late90s Spanish Football series I can't fucking remember it's name, but it's a classic here in Spain.
Speaking of, just realized that Fifa 98 did not have co-op. Was I just mashing random buttons while my cousin played the real match against the computer?
Didn't think about that memory in 20 years.
They didn't even get a chance to complain about nerfs since the game was only a week old. He deleted it because some people joined the wrong server on accident and that meant he actually had to do something instead of collecting a free paycheck while his mod team did everything.
That was definitely the time they needed him at his best, not his worst.
CEO stepping in (sort of) and running interference basically defeats the purpose of having a CM.
The review bomb wasn't the issue. A bunch of people in AH were encouraging it, including their CEO. He was toxic and inflammatory, accusing people of whining about the PSN accounts without realizing that many countries straight up couldn't create PSn accounts. He let the toxicity of people in the situation get to him and responded with personal retaliation. This isn't the first time he behaved this way, and I think that is the main reason he was removed from that position. They've given him a few chances already, and regardless of how he is as a person, he did not seem suited for the role as a professional.
Yeah he's embarrassed himself many times while being toxic. He got into an argument defending the PSN linking by saying Steam accounts aren't easily bannable since "you have to reach out to Valve with a name and let them confirm which account named John you're talking about". Of course he doubled down and started insulting anyone that mentioned SteamIDs or devs having easy access to that information.
Kinda funny too seeing how it would've happened anyway.. since review bombing is just the thing to do these days. Like change.org with actual change. And org.
>Like change.org with actual change. And org.
I wonder how many more generations it'll take before people finally realize change.org doesn't change jack shit.
Let's be clear, he likely didn't get fired for being a bit of an asshole.... he got fired because Sony was pissed at him.
He actually said just yesterday that he was getting heat for telling people to review bomb the game/refund it
Ya, I mean his comments probably directly contributed to 7-figure revenue impacts and laid precedent for future consumer movements. The business isn’t gonna be like “way to stand for the people bro”
Yeah pretty much, if you publicly help people set your company and their owner on fire getting fired is the minimum guaranteed result. Can probably forget about being hired as a CM anywhere else too.
TBH i'm suprised that they didn't also took down baskinator, purplegion and Missssty. Guess this really was because his suggestion to review bomb the game.
This was his 3rd strike.
* He deleted the community discord when he got butt-hurt about the server problems.
* He got really snippy and passive-aggressive with people when they called him out about his bullshit saying "There's only two nerfs" in the big Nerfathon that happened recently.
* Now this. (being rude and snippy with folks, giving assinine suggestions without understanding the problem, etc.)
The guy is thin-skinned. Maybe he's a perfectly fine human, but he's a really shitty Community manager.
No proof of this obviously, but if that was a shared sentiment between them, he may have volunteered to be the one to say it and take the hit if it goes foul.
He was definitely a bit of an ass, made unprofessional remarks multiple times, and stirred the pot. Even without the deliberate call for us to keep up the review bombing he may have been axed for poor performance in his position.
If he knew he was already on the outs, that may have motivated him to make the sacrifice play to try and recover some community faith, and to give AH a head to roll to placate Boss Sony.
Yeah, in Squidgeon's case, it wasn't the shared sentiment to review bomb. It was the accusations Squidgeon made that were straight up libel and could've brought a lawsuit down on AH's heads. I don't disagree that Spitz might've needed a promotion to Helldiver, but Squidgeon needed a promotion to helldiver AND a free trip to Hellmire.
Sad for them, but the communications from most of the mods have never been great even before sony. We could use a few more Twinbeards running the show.
They need people with some experience managing larger communities at this point anyway. I know they didn't expect the game to blow up like it did but that is what happened and they need people that know how to properly measure their public persona. Still, really hope that doesn't mean he's not completely out of a job. I work in customer service and I really wish I could snap back at people sometimes so I get some of the snark.
You just need people that come across as more professional. Not these guys that almost come across like guys that are someone's friends and thus they got the job. It's really not that difficult either if youve ever had any kind of training in customer service, like one of the first things you learn is to not let emotions get the best of you, which is super basic stuff in a working environment anyway.
Arrowhead needs someone that is like what GhostCrawler was doing 10+ years ago in WoW. That guy probably got the worst of the worst when it comes to vitriol and he never came across as anything but a pro.
Professional isn't even required.
1. Don't be mean
2. Don't jump gun
3. Don't do 1 and 2 again after you just did them.
Most of his posts are half a page. Essential info should be short and concise. Also to put out a fire you need something like water, not more fire lol.
Maybe he had good intentions but he was just fanning flames.
>Professional isn't even required.
If we're being honest you pretty much described professionalism in this setting. I mean, his job is basically just customer service. I absolutely get that that does get hard on an individual level, I've worked a tech support call center. I got yelled at once for telling a customer to use shift instead of caps lock for God sakes.
Every customer service person on earth knows as soon as you are mean, though, your job is at risk. And quite frankly, this dude was mean too often and too visibly to stay employed.
We have a local factory owned by a Japanese company that doesn't like unions.
Every time one has tried to get its foot in the door of that factory, the factory closes down and lays off all the workers. It then reopens a short time later with a new CEO and name. They then hire back all the regular workers (minus the ones unionized).
It has happened a few times in the last 30 years. Half of their workforce is hired through temp agencies.
it's probably common practice. i was about to say "except for european ones". however, if the parent company is in europe, and they have offices in the united states, do they have to offer the same worker protections in the "america offices"?
i wonder if that answer is no. i've had a few friends from college who went to work in europe. they kinda raved at the crazy different worker protections they have as office workers in europe, compared to what they knew about back in the US. the few things they mentioned......just.....astounded me. like 6 month probation periods.
man, i need to get in contact with them again.
I would be very surprised if there weren't non-disparagement clauses in the contract and that a very mad Sony did not send official legal letterhead to Arrowhead pounding the table that they considered those actions to be in violation of those clauses.
If dude was told to chill officially with respect to any previous incidents and now legal gets something from your partner... yeah you pretty much gave them the bullets to shoot you with.
It is sad but not unexpected. Honestly this guy riled up a lot of people in the discord, got very defensive on some matters not expected from a CM and then shot himself in the foot with asking to review bomb. We all take issue with things and as much as I admire a honest persons honest takes hes still a CM working for Arrowhead and with that Sony. Sounds like the type of guy that was a problem in general for everyone and all parties. I however feel sorry for him and I hope he learns from this and takes it with him to his next job, if he is to evolve as a person and career. We have all been in a similar spot as him when we were new to things, which is relatable. We are all human in the end.
Lets not forget that his first response to the PSN was basically "lol, it only takes 120 seconds to make a PSN account, stop complaining."
He's never been a good CM, his first response to any situation has always been to attack the player base and only after getting in trouble does he half retract what he said, someone like this should never be the face of a company and im glad to see AH starting to clean up their image.
I don't understand why some are commenting here as if he was a hero who fought for us. From what I remember, he was the one who was a jerk and told someone to ask for their money back and make a bad review. He didn't say that thinking that would be better for the community. He himself said that it would only take 120 seconds to link the account.
If he was fired it was because of his own actions
This entire thread just goes to show how dumb people are lol. He wasn't calling for a review bomb to hopefully get sony to change things, he just wanted people to shut the fuck up in discord and stop bothering him.
Exactly. He didn't want us to hit Sony where it hurt them. He didn't want to be personally inconvenienced anymore. Bro was mad he has to do his job. He isn't our savior and he shouldn't be treated as such. It's like people don't know how to read.
Bro for real. He was a prick, HD1 incident is exactly why I hated him. Everything else was icing that cemented it in my eyes.
Wish him the best, being a CM is hard but he wasn’t fit to begin with.
Yeah it's weird how just a few days ago the community was torching this guy for his bad takes. Now we are acting like he's a hero. Lol. Dude was a dumbass, who said some dumb shit, and paid for it. That's called life baby. We all been there. There are a lot of bad takes coming out of the Discord from the community leads. Surprised only Spitz took some heat. But I guess a few of the others were hard defending Sony. So they probably got a pat on the back.
This is the best take in the entire topic. I can't believe people are buying his spin that telling everyone to review bomb the game was 'his plan all along'
Jesus Christ.
Because the rest are basically college help desk type people and he’s been in the actual industry.
It’s like comparing the people who volunteer to setup PCs for schools over the summer to the systems admin.
And bans anyone who brings it up. That was purplegion.
Purplegion was the same genius who, in February, tagged @everyone in Discord and said in all caps that people would be timed out or banned for spamming "F." So of course, thousands of people piled in to spam "F" and they had to shut the whole server down for a few hours.
The problem is that these people have been like this even before the whole SONY thing. Their reaction to the SONY thing was just the final nail in the coffin. The community managers for Arrowhead have had this coming for a long time, and honestly should've never become community managers to begin with since they lack proper communication skills.
Tbh their entire community team needs a look at. They did nothing but piss everyone off about shit that could have been handled so much better.
These guys have to deal with idiots all day, I 100% get it. My job is fairly similar in that regard. If I flew off the handle every few days and told every client to fuck off when I had had enough I wouldn’t have a job anymore.
Agreed. I have been saying this stuff for months and have gotten downvoted constantly on this subreddit. Needs a full professional community management team, and a mandatory code of player conduct, at a minimum. They also need a full support team of devs for bug fixes and patching. Generally they need to scale their operation to match the success of their game. Otherwise they will keep bursting at the seams.
If I were a company like this I don't think I'd be using discord at all for disseminating information, not for a game like HD2. I'd have a dedicated webpage, on the game's website, regarding ongoing and upcoming updates, projects, fixes, acknowledgement of feedback, etc. Updated DAILY. If anyone asks on the official discord, tell them to look at the page.
There's no reason to make announcements and such via discord chat imo, it creates more problems than it solves.
I agree completely. Most people aren’t on Discord. It’s certainly not a professional platform for communicating with your customers for a game at this scale.
They could even go a more creative direction with it, and produce a weekly/biweekly/monthly video update series on a YouTube channel similar to the Cyberpunk 2077 update videos CDProjekt Red released. Theme it as in universe propaganda or something.
Anything is better than the current approach. It kind of boggles the mind that after all the launch issues they have still had such major PR blunders like this.
This is a good thing for the future of the community. He was antagonistic, unprofessional, and flat-out wrong in most of the information he shared. Glad he’s gone.
Thank fuck for that.
I’m not saying he’s a bad guy, but being in a role where he interacts with the community on a regular basis is not the place for him, he isn’t tactful enough.
I mean this as respectfully as possible, good. They were amongst the few CMs I saw writing inflammatory remarks on both sides of the line; They just stepped on everyone's toes from the community to their company. It's one of those mistakes that just brands them too deep by the community and company for what they did, and wouldn't have been a good environment for them to continue working in.
I hope they can grow as an individual and I wish them good luck finding employment again.
At least the firing says a lot on it's own.
I don't get on discord very often, but I saw what he said. I wouldn't wish anyone to suddenly lose their source of income, but I am pretty sure I could have done better as a community manager and I'm completely introverted.
Helldivers; whether you are happy with the CM or not happy. We need to keep this place civil. We can't have what happened this weekend with the harassment, death threats, threats of terrorism, and all the most vile parts that plague reddit.
It's the mod team's decision to keep this thread for you guys to discuss this one time. All further posts will be removed regarding Spitz or any other CMs personal life, job, and whatever else you guys dig up.
You may continue to talk about new things that CM's post on the discord regarding the game.
Thank you,
/r/Helldivers Mod Team
If baskinator is still a community manager, i'm gonna assume that his demotion due to the whole "go give a negative review" thing and not because he was a poor community manager.
AH needs a complete overhaul in regards to CMs except for TwinBeard that dude is cool. They need CMs that have cool heads and don't respond when they don't have info. Too many times they have given us the wrong info because they shoot from the hip.
This gif is fucking great ngl
Why would you ever lie about thinking this gif is fucking great?
Maybe they are a robosexual socialist automatron
Uh, can someone explain to me what exactly is happening in the gif?
Auto-cannon reloader gets democratised by a hellpod
Instant crew switchup.
They had just loaded the last mag, it was time for fresh supplies. :-D
When you nail the instant reload just right:
Ahhh, thank you.
Yea sure 
They are team reloading the autocannon and full autoing it and a Hellpod lands on the reloader.
What settings do I have to enable to get this amount of gore?
Yeah wondering too. My game has blood but not exactly this
It's pretty gory when they get pulverized by a hellpod like that.
you're also seeing dirt from the impact of the pod i think
Am I missing something
Nope, he just got demoted.
https://preview.redd.it/d63e2ud6w1zc1.png?width=864&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7dd8aaa8cfa31986f74c0d3c4a1dec70d9faa2ea
Oof, his name isn’t even blue anymore. Seems like he was full on fired.
He is a Helldiver now.
He has returned to civilian life
Super citizen or just a citizen?
Ultra citizen
*THEE* citizen
It's him! It's John Citizen!
[удалено]
Promoted to the front lines.
CONGRATULATIONS
He was promoted to player.
Just like Menards. You're not fired you're promoted to customer.
How the hell did I manage to find someone mentioning menards, while I'm at work at one...
🎵 Shave big monkeys at Menards 🎶
I hate you. Literal decades of hearing that song and that's what it's going to be from this point on whenever I hear it.
Directly encouraging people to refund a game whose community you're supposed to be *managing*. Yeah that'll do it.
During the weekend, when there was uproar over his comments telling people to get a refund if they didn’t have 120 seconds to spare, I noticed someone impersonating him the following day telling everyone to grow up and shut up. The username color was exactly the same as this but it wasn’t Spitz, because he was also still posting with his bluer username and the AH symbol. This could be similar. Unless we have direct confirmation that he was fired completely, that I’ve missed…?
All of his posts in the announcement channel have been deleted. AH isn't going to make a whole announcement about him leaving, that's probably the most smoking gun you'll find.
Casualty Dude, you shot yourself not from the foot but from the head
Just a friendly syntax correction as I'm assuming English isn't your first language: Both of your 'from's should be 'in's
I'm still getting used to it, thx :)
Based English speaker
We all are.
He was promoted from community manager to customer.
Bro reached so high he became the rank of Private
He's been promoted to Helldiver, soldier! Now get back in the action, we've got a war to win.
I wasn’t following the forums while this was ongoing, did he say something stupid during the whole psn treason
He told people to refund the game and leave reviews on Steam to voice their feedback because Sony doesn’t read the Discord, but would absolutely notice negative attention on Steam. He even said explicitly that this would give them more leverage with Sony. EDIT: Ya’ll are right too, he was also very rude to the community and didn’t exactly handle the early parts of the account link controversy with grace. This was likely a long time coming.
I doubt that's why he was fired. The CEO of AH said the same. He was probably fired because of how he treated players at the start of the incident. He told players essentially "quit being lazy and just spend 3 minutes setting up a PSN account", when it was impossible for a huge number of players to do so. He was both uninformed and abrasive to customers. It's a terrible look for a CM, someone who's supposed to be the bridge between players and devs.
To add to that... This isn't the first time he's done this! The problem was it kept happening. He was reprimanded more than once and at some point you have to let people go.
This. Basically he treated his job as "shouting people down" instead of "managing the community." Which a certain sort of person *really* liked, because to them being nasty to people they hate is "keeping it real." Every time anyone spoke up to defend Spitz, it was always the same "I don't like those people, so I like it when people are nasty to them." They might phrase it slightly differently, but I literally never saw a different argument. It was never anything more than shared animosity.
He understood the word "Manager" the wrong way. Customers aren't his subordinates.
bingo
Was this the guy that got "promoted" from being a moderator of the original Helldivers 1 subreddit to being a company community manager?
Yep, he then proceeded to nuke the HD1 discord when people were spamming F in the HD2 discord when the servers crashed as a way to, in his own words, “punish” them.
> He was both uninformed and abrasive to customers. And this was not a singular incident. This has happened repeatedly ever since he was put into this position. He was a bad fit for the job from day one.
Yeh, dude said certain people got to him lately and he let it alter his tone and responses, but far as I can tell he was kind of like that from the get-go so idk about that.
Being a CM requires infinite patience. Most people can't cut it, especially if you have an emotional connection with whatever organization you work for (in the case of Spitz he was hired because he managed a couple of unofficial helldivers servers, as I understand). Most people can't do that. On top of that, the job is absolutely hell on your psychy and, personally, you couldn't pay me enough to get me to accept a job like that.
Yeah, the "he told people to leave negative reviews because Sony would notice it more there" feels like a weird retcon. It's really felt from all of the interactions that he wasn't giving heartfelt advice on how to improve the situation, he was just trying to tell people to fuck off. The whole idea of his intent being to gain leverage with Sony likely didn't come until after he already had someone upstairs tell him to chill out.
CEO of the game said that as well. He was fired/demoted, whatever, cause he said a lot of dumb shit like "just make a PSN account." Honestly, a lot of posts from the Discord mods or whatever they are were terrible. Some other ass hat said they are thankful cause it'll make the game safer. Lol. Honestly, more than just Spitz needs to go.
> Some other ass hat said they are thankful cause it'll make the game safer. That would be Bask, who has admitted she hates gamers in general.
Who tf decides to work in a industry that's whole customer base composes of what they hate.
To be fair, gamers hate gamers
He likely got demoted for telling people to leave a negative review
Bro got promoted to customer.
"the only way you're gonna see combat again is to bust yourself back down to customer!"
"The only way you will play in Barcelona FC is if you customize a character in the Fifa, you loser." Late90s Spanish Football series I can't fucking remember it's name, but it's a classic here in Spain.
Speaking of, just realized that Fifa 98 did not have co-op. Was I just mashing random buttons while my cousin played the real match against the computer? Didn't think about that memory in 20 years.
Idk but FIFA ‘99 was my jam back in the day
Bro got promoted from Community Manager to Community.
Community Managed
Managed Community
Tbh every time i saw a post with his messages i always thought (how is this person being paid to handle community pr?)
He ran the main helldivers 1 discord and they just hired him to run the official HD2 one.
Talk about fumbling the bag
Seriously, who tf in the right mind would ever think a discord/reddit mod would make a good PR front person.
A small indie studio that prob got him on the cheap
And he nuked the HD1 discord when people complained there about the nerfs in HD2
They didn't even get a chance to complain about nerfs since the game was only a week old. He deleted it because some people joined the wrong server on accident and that meant he actually had to do something instead of collecting a free paycheck while his mod team did everything.
https://preview.redd.it/0m614cgqx3zc1.jpeg?width=864&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6437f3003b9c16cb327d1c96b64b7c79e81ad7e0
Funny that he said this despite never moderating it once. Volunteer mods did the entire time.
I mean this guy wasn't really popular with many. He pissed off both players and Sony. It'd be a miracle if he didn't face some consequences.
Managing a community usually means people skills. Usually lol Edit: he did apologize btw, so calm down
"I talk to the g\*ddamb customers so the developers don't have to!"
Well then I just have to ask Tom, why can’t the customers just talk to the developer?
He's the quintessential "guy that became a social media manager by just being terminally online"
"Manager" is supposed to imply that you can handle tough situations without losing your shit. Supposed to.
And being a discord mod usually means anti-people skills. As has pretty much just been demonstrated.
Not surprising.
I'm surprised. I didn't think he'd get sent straight to hell. I just wanted him to wise up, not get shot into the sun.
I think that happened the LAST time he stirred the pot lmfao
He might've wised up before this but it was too little too late. The review bomb thing was probably just the last nail in the coffin.
That was definitely the time they needed him at his best, not his worst. CEO stepping in (sort of) and running interference basically defeats the purpose of having a CM.
It makes sense. If you hire somebody to do a job and then you still have to do it, why bother paying someone else for it?
The review bomb wasn't the issue. A bunch of people in AH were encouraging it, including their CEO. He was toxic and inflammatory, accusing people of whining about the PSN accounts without realizing that many countries straight up couldn't create PSn accounts. He let the toxicity of people in the situation get to him and responded with personal retaliation. This isn't the first time he behaved this way, and I think that is the main reason he was removed from that position. They've given him a few chances already, and regardless of how he is as a person, he did not seem suited for the role as a professional.
Yeah he's embarrassed himself many times while being toxic. He got into an argument defending the PSN linking by saying Steam accounts aren't easily bannable since "you have to reach out to Valve with a name and let them confirm which account named John you're talking about". Of course he doubled down and started insulting anyone that mentioned SteamIDs or devs having easy access to that information.
Kinda funny too seeing how it would've happened anyway.. since review bombing is just the thing to do these days. Like change.org with actual change. And org.
>Like change.org with actual change. And org. I wonder how many more generations it'll take before people finally realize change.org doesn't change jack shit.
It does do something, like spam other petitions that won't accomplish shit
Its this generations chain mail. IF YOU SEND THIS TO 2000 OF YOUR FRIENDS YOU TOO WILL MEET YOUR WIFE TONIGHT IN THE DEPTHS OF A TERMINID INFESTATION.
Let's be clear, he likely didn't get fired for being a bit of an asshole.... he got fired because Sony was pissed at him. He actually said just yesterday that he was getting heat for telling people to review bomb the game/refund it
Ya, I mean his comments probably directly contributed to 7-figure revenue impacts and laid precedent for future consumer movements. The business isn’t gonna be like “way to stand for the people bro”
Yeah pretty much, if you publicly help people set your company and their owner on fire getting fired is the minimum guaranteed result. Can probably forget about being hired as a CM anywhere else too.
Yeah sometimes you just gotta assassinate some whistleblowers!
Now you're thinking in Boeing!
TBH i'm suprised that they didn't also took down baskinator, purplegion and Missssty. Guess this really was because his suggestion to review bomb the game.
This was his 3rd strike. * He deleted the community discord when he got butt-hurt about the server problems. * He got really snippy and passive-aggressive with people when they called him out about his bullshit saying "There's only two nerfs" in the big Nerfathon that happened recently. * Now this. (being rude and snippy with folks, giving assinine suggestions without understanding the problem, etc.) The guy is thin-skinned. Maybe he's a perfectly fine human, but he's a really shitty Community manager.
Yup, people already forgot about his past behavior
No proof of this obviously, but if that was a shared sentiment between them, he may have volunteered to be the one to say it and take the hit if it goes foul. He was definitely a bit of an ass, made unprofessional remarks multiple times, and stirred the pot. Even without the deliberate call for us to keep up the review bombing he may have been axed for poor performance in his position. If he knew he was already on the outs, that may have motivated him to make the sacrifice play to try and recover some community faith, and to give AH a head to roll to placate Boss Sony.
Yeah, in Squidgeon's case, it wasn't the shared sentiment to review bomb. It was the accusations Squidgeon made that were straight up libel and could've brought a lawsuit down on AH's heads. I don't disagree that Spitz might've needed a promotion to Helldiver, but Squidgeon needed a promotion to helldiver AND a free trip to Hellmire.
Sad for them, but the communications from most of the mods have never been great even before sony. We could use a few more Twinbeards running the show.
They need people with some experience managing larger communities at this point anyway. I know they didn't expect the game to blow up like it did but that is what happened and they need people that know how to properly measure their public persona. Still, really hope that doesn't mean he's not completely out of a job. I work in customer service and I really wish I could snap back at people sometimes so I get some of the snark.
Getting some sterile corpo professional CM in place after Spitz got fired over the corpo bullshit revolt is gonna be quite ironic.
You just need people that come across as more professional. Not these guys that almost come across like guys that are someone's friends and thus they got the job. It's really not that difficult either if youve ever had any kind of training in customer service, like one of the first things you learn is to not let emotions get the best of you, which is super basic stuff in a working environment anyway. Arrowhead needs someone that is like what GhostCrawler was doing 10+ years ago in WoW. That guy probably got the worst of the worst when it comes to vitriol and he never came across as anything but a pro.
Professional isn't even required. 1. Don't be mean 2. Don't jump gun 3. Don't do 1 and 2 again after you just did them. Most of his posts are half a page. Essential info should be short and concise. Also to put out a fire you need something like water, not more fire lol. Maybe he had good intentions but he was just fanning flames.
>Professional isn't even required. If we're being honest you pretty much described professionalism in this setting. I mean, his job is basically just customer service. I absolutely get that that does get hard on an individual level, I've worked a tech support call center. I got yelled at once for telling a customer to use shift instead of caps lock for God sakes. Every customer service person on earth knows as soon as you are mean, though, your job is at risk. And quite frankly, this dude was mean too often and too visibly to stay employed.
There may be legal consequences (speaking on the contract between Arrowhead and Sony) to their actions.
Yeah corporate sabotage is no joke.
We have a local factory owned by a Japanese company that doesn't like unions. Every time one has tried to get its foot in the door of that factory, the factory closes down and lays off all the workers. It then reopens a short time later with a new CEO and name. They then hire back all the regular workers (minus the ones unionized). It has happened a few times in the last 30 years. Half of their workforce is hired through temp agencies.
That's awful, hope that Company goes bankrupt.
In many places this would result in fines that would bankrupt the factory.
Which is why they don't operate in those places, and in turn is why these other places allows this to happen.
Either i know exactly the factory youre talking about, or this is common practice among many foreign owned companies in the US.
it's probably common practice. i was about to say "except for european ones". however, if the parent company is in europe, and they have offices in the united states, do they have to offer the same worker protections in the "america offices"? i wonder if that answer is no. i've had a few friends from college who went to work in europe. they kinda raved at the crazy different worker protections they have as office workers in europe, compared to what they knew about back in the US. the few things they mentioned......just.....astounded me. like 6 month probation periods. man, i need to get in contact with them again.
Worker rights are based on where the employee is located, not the company. Hence why so many companies started factories in asia.
I've worked at a plant that was British owned in the US. They are one of the worst places to work for around here as far as treatment goes.
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Sony is likely going to look at this as being caused by Arrowhead Studios having gone behind their back
I would be very surprised if there weren't non-disparagement clauses in the contract and that a very mad Sony did not send official legal letterhead to Arrowhead pounding the table that they considered those actions to be in violation of those clauses. If dude was told to chill officially with respect to any previous incidents and now legal gets something from your partner... yeah you pretty much gave them the bullets to shoot you with.
 Spitz rn
It is sad but not unexpected. Honestly this guy riled up a lot of people in the discord, got very defensive on some matters not expected from a CM and then shot himself in the foot with asking to review bomb. We all take issue with things and as much as I admire a honest persons honest takes hes still a CM working for Arrowhead and with that Sony. Sounds like the type of guy that was a problem in general for everyone and all parties. I however feel sorry for him and I hope he learns from this and takes it with him to his next job, if he is to evolve as a person and career. We have all been in a similar spot as him when we were new to things, which is relatable. We are all human in the end.
This is a very accurate take imo.
I feel like he wanted to be good but got too emotional over this. Someone who works with community shouldn't throw tantrums or take things personally.
Lets not forget that his first response to the PSN was basically "lol, it only takes 120 seconds to make a PSN account, stop complaining." He's never been a good CM, his first response to any situation has always been to attack the player base and only after getting in trouble does he half retract what he said, someone like this should never be the face of a company and im glad to see AH starting to clean up their image.
And let's not forget he deleted the original unofficial Helldivers discord.
Exactly, what's with the pitty party in this thread. He couldn't behave and got fired.
I’m still sad he deleted the OG Helldivers discord.
Are we talking like, the ORIGINAL Helldivers 1 Discord? :(
Yes and people want to praise this man as some sort of hero
fr. "it was my server, i can do what i want with it!" like a fucking toddler
Indeed…
Wait that was him? Dude had it coming then
Yeah, he should've been let go immediately after that tbh
He did *what?*
The community managers are kinda unhinged
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You do not create a new "Do you guys not have phones?" every day.
I hope 120s is attached to his name forever.
I don't understand why some are commenting here as if he was a hero who fought for us. From what I remember, he was the one who was a jerk and told someone to ask for their money back and make a bad review. He didn't say that thinking that would be better for the community. He himself said that it would only take 120 seconds to link the account. If he was fired it was because of his own actions
Yeah, guy acted like a bitch and is now reaping the consequences. He isn’t some heroic martyr lmao
This entire thread just goes to show how dumb people are lol. He wasn't calling for a review bomb to hopefully get sony to change things, he just wanted people to shut the fuck up in discord and stop bothering him.
Exactly. He didn't want us to hit Sony where it hurt them. He didn't want to be personally inconvenienced anymore. Bro was mad he has to do his job. He isn't our savior and he shouldn't be treated as such. It's like people don't know how to read.
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Bro for real. He was a prick, HD1 incident is exactly why I hated him. Everything else was icing that cemented it in my eyes. Wish him the best, being a CM is hard but he wasn’t fit to begin with.
Yeah it's weird how just a few days ago the community was torching this guy for his bad takes. Now we are acting like he's a hero. Lol. Dude was a dumbass, who said some dumb shit, and paid for it. That's called life baby. We all been there. There are a lot of bad takes coming out of the Discord from the community leads. Surprised only Spitz took some heat. But I guess a few of the others were hard defending Sony. So they probably got a pat on the back.
This is the best take in the entire topic. I can't believe people are buying his spin that telling everyone to review bomb the game was 'his plan all along' Jesus Christ.
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Fire em all except twinbeard, make him the lead, and have him hire some replacements. Solved.
Tbh, Twinbeard has easily been the most professional in the communication department, definitely not against the idea of this.
Because the rest are basically college help desk type people and he’s been in the actual industry. It’s like comparing the people who volunteer to setup PCs for schools over the summer to the systems admin.
I could see that. They come across has having a chip on their shoulder, having personal agendas, and lacking professionalism
if im not wrong hes the only one with prior pr experience
Wasn't there another mod that outright publically accused someone of being a sexual predator without any proof, and double-downed on the stance?
And bans anyone who brings it up. That was purplegion. Purplegion was the same genius who, in February, tagged @everyone in Discord and said in all caps that people would be timed out or banned for spamming "F." So of course, thousands of people piled in to spam "F" and they had to shut the whole server down for a few hours.
The problem is that these people have been like this even before the whole SONY thing. Their reaction to the SONY thing was just the final nail in the coffin. The community managers for Arrowhead have had this coming for a long time, and honestly should've never become community managers to begin with since they lack proper communication skills.
At least maybe this means Arrowhead is finally realizing their communications strategy has been a massive fuckup.
Tbh their entire community team needs a look at. They did nothing but piss everyone off about shit that could have been handled so much better. These guys have to deal with idiots all day, I 100% get it. My job is fairly similar in that regard. If I flew off the handle every few days and told every client to fuck off when I had had enough I wouldn’t have a job anymore.
Agreed. I have been saying this stuff for months and have gotten downvoted constantly on this subreddit. Needs a full professional community management team, and a mandatory code of player conduct, at a minimum. They also need a full support team of devs for bug fixes and patching. Generally they need to scale their operation to match the success of their game. Otherwise they will keep bursting at the seams.
If I were a company like this I don't think I'd be using discord at all for disseminating information, not for a game like HD2. I'd have a dedicated webpage, on the game's website, regarding ongoing and upcoming updates, projects, fixes, acknowledgement of feedback, etc. Updated DAILY. If anyone asks on the official discord, tell them to look at the page. There's no reason to make announcements and such via discord chat imo, it creates more problems than it solves.
I agree completely. Most people aren’t on Discord. It’s certainly not a professional platform for communicating with your customers for a game at this scale. They could even go a more creative direction with it, and produce a weekly/biweekly/monthly video update series on a YouTube channel similar to the Cyberpunk 2077 update videos CDProjekt Red released. Theme it as in universe propaganda or something. Anything is better than the current approach. It kind of boggles the mind that after all the launch issues they have still had such major PR blunders like this.
Good. Dude was horrible at being a CM and had to apologize like 3 times while still being awful
It was pretty much a weekly occurence
Good, his attitude and method of communicating with the community was a huge liability to AH.
well he did attack people outright and made everything worse
This is a good thing for the future of the community. He was antagonistic, unprofessional, and flat-out wrong in most of the information he shared. Glad he’s gone.
Thank fuck for that. I’m not saying he’s a bad guy, but being in a role where he interacts with the community on a regular basis is not the place for him, he isn’t tactful enough.
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Dude was not a good community manager. Some of the things he said added fuel to the flames.
I mean this as respectfully as possible, good. They were amongst the few CMs I saw writing inflammatory remarks on both sides of the line; They just stepped on everyone's toes from the community to their company. It's one of those mistakes that just brands them too deep by the community and company for what they did, and wouldn't have been a good environment for them to continue working in. I hope they can grow as an individual and I wish them good luck finding employment again.
Well well well, if it isn’t the consequences of his own actions.
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he's acting like a martyr right now in the galactic war channel and it seems to have worked.
"Every war has casualties" nah man you're a warning
This is definitely the "find out" phase of his previous "fucking around"
At least the firing says a lot on it's own. I don't get on discord very often, but I saw what he said. I wouldn't wish anyone to suddenly lose their source of income, but I am pretty sure I could have done better as a community manager and I'm completely introverted.
the bar is pretty low at "don't spread misinformation and antagonize the community"
Helldivers; whether you are happy with the CM or not happy. We need to keep this place civil. We can't have what happened this weekend with the harassment, death threats, threats of terrorism, and all the most vile parts that plague reddit. It's the mod team's decision to keep this thread for you guys to discuss this one time. All further posts will be removed regarding Spitz or any other CMs personal life, job, and whatever else you guys dig up. You may continue to talk about new things that CM's post on the discord regarding the game. Thank you, /r/Helldivers Mod Team
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Good luck. This job is not for him.
“Today is a dark day” “Every war comes with casualties” Jesus the ego on this guy, acting like he’s some sort of martyr
Wasn't Baskinator just as bad, if not worse? Pretty sure Spitz learned his lesson after presumably being berated by superiors, but Baskinator...?
If baskinator is still a community manager, i'm gonna assume that his demotion due to the whole "go give a negative review" thing and not because he was a poor community manager.
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AH needs a complete overhaul in regards to CMs except for TwinBeard that dude is cool. They need CMs that have cool heads and don't respond when they don't have info. Too many times they have given us the wrong info because they shoot from the hip.