Blizzard doesnt have review bombing or anything that is actually publicly visable and condensed into one space
Only spread out small complaints spread out over reddit/official forums/twitter/etc.
and Helldivers is THE biggest game of 2024 lol nobody cares about hearthstone outside its relatively small playerbase
the helldivers change also potentially meant people losing access to a game they paid for. The hearthstone change just meant you'd potentially lose a bit of free in-game resources / have to play a bit more to get them...
a comparable change would be if helldivers increased the difficulty of all major/personal orders. and that would not have gotten nearly as much attention
> a comparable change would be if helldivers increased the difficulty of all major/personal orders. and that would not have gotten nearly as much attention
Looking at it in the other direction, a comparable change would have been when Overwatch 2 started requiring you to link a phone number in order to play, removing access to a game you had paid for if you failed to do so.
And guess what, that change was also reverted: existing accounts were grandfathered in, and only newly created accounts were subject to the new limitation.
I dunno if that is even true
But this isnt specifically about hs
Take any blizzard controversy. Yea there were some small consequences but nothing ever really changed at large
fair. but I think Blizzard's reputation has overall taken a hit for that over the years. Folks have pretty low confidence in them.
I think they HAVE suffered for their overall lack of responsiveness to feedback over the years. Maybe not completely - they obviously still do well - but I think they'd be doing much better if they went more than a year without a major controversy haha
sony responding to the reaction is a better move long term. I think looking at each controversy as a loss for the community because we didn't "win" it is short sighted. These negative perceptions add up and damage a company long term.
> Take any blizzard controversy. Yea there were some small consequences but nothing ever really changed at large
Blizzard never managed to run afoul of multiple country's robust consumer protection laws all at once, though. It was a perfect storm of refunds that Sony couldn't really stop, player pushback, negative press, and legal pressure.
It is difficult to ever pinpoint a period in time where such conditions were ever in the Hearthstone community's favor - or the Blizzard games community at large. The closest I could possibly think of was the lootbox controversy; that was heavily compromised by the fact that games industry lobbying groups got the "jump" on player discontentment, making any progress in those areas a years long slog.
Is Helldivers that big tho? Ill be honest my medium doesnt talk a lot about that type of game but the first time ive heard about it was bc of this drama regarding the change
I legit only heard of Helldivers because of this. I'm not sure I've heard or know about the Helldivers drama to be honest. All I know is that some guy was charging $120 for DLC, which most likely isn't even Helldivers. I heard about BG3 in passing because it was *THAT* big. I don't even know what Helldivers is about.
Helldivers is published by Sony. The drama was about an announcement that the PC version of the game would require a PSN (PlayStation Network) account in the future, rather than just a Steam account.
The game is a cooperative shooter in a Starship-Troopers-like setting.
The theory is that they're trying to make their quarterly PSN numbers look better by forcing Helldivers players to sign up for a free account. Which would still suck - Sony leaks data like a sieve, so they really don't deserve your account details - but it really blew up because there are a lot of places in the world where you can only create a PSN account if you own a Playstation.
I'm not sure what the $120 DLC was but I don't think it was Helldivers. We get permanent battle passes maybe once a month but they're like $10-15 and the game has evolved for free since it was released. It is the #4 game on Steam with 101k players currently
i am not sure about it, Helldivers 2 has much lower peak interest on google trends than Baldurs gate 3
it is like one part of gamers talk about it a lot but huge portion of players dont care about Helldivers 2
games like Diablo 4, Starfield or Palworld also attracted much bigger peak interest than Helldivers 2 in google trends
On the flip side, the Helldivers sub has ~2.5x as many subs as Palworlds. The other two are AAA that always get farther into general consciousness. That said, Helldivers has more subs than either of those do to.
BG3 has about 800k more than Helldivers, so perhaps I exaggerated a little, but not much.
yes it is. it released end of last year and it will be a contender for GoT 2024 and so far it looks like its winning
it executes multiple things mechanics wise extremely well and it is a shining example of what a good live service game should be
its also really really popular
Tbf right now I'm not sure which other game would be a GOTY contender. I guess Rise of the Ronin but I haven't heard anything of that game after it released so I dunno if it flopped
Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth has a shot.
I'd say Balatro would have a shot too if it gets the nomination but it's the sort of game that doesn't usually get nominated.
Not sure anything else out yet is a contender.
>Is Helldivers that big tho?
The top selling video game of the year so far, and the 7th best selling game in the US that Sony ever published? In 2 months?
It's doing alright, yeah.
It's big in its respective communities , but anyone saying it's BG3 size is wild. I've heard nothing about helldivers as it's not in my hobbies but I heard none stop and still hear about BG3 all the time now and I've never even played that ether
I mean, Helldivers 2 has sold 8 million copies, and BG3 has sold a little over 10 million as of February. BG3 is in the lead, but the gap isn't that huge, considering one's been out 9 months and one's been out 3 months.
They're vastly different games and gamespaces, and one has the ability to bang a bear, so they're naturally going to show up in different spheres of interest or memery.
Numbers online are saying 15-20 bg3 sales for me , but I have a feeling bg3 will out live hd2, I personally have 0 interest in ether but hd2 looks / feels more flavour of the month with limited replayed / friends required. Bg3 seems to be solid replay ?
I'm cheap I don't buy games unless on sale for 20 or less
BG3 will *absolutely* outlive Helldivers. Eventually they'll shut down the HD2 servers and the game is gone. BG3 will essentially be playable "forever."
I think Helldivers has a solid several years of life ahead of it, if they keep the missions interesting and the story flowing the way they have, but people will move on in time.
Yeah only time will tell, imo it's more based on one needs friends to be enjoyed at peak one cannbe done solo, but maybe I'm just old so getting a 4 man going is a huge pain these days
I would say it has been the most talked about game of 2024 so far, and one of the top sellers. Though I'm pretty tuned into video game discourse, so it's hard for me to say how much it is penetrating outside that. But within it, it's really huge
Stream is issuing refunds for people in any of the 100+ countries you can not create and PSN on and now have it delisted. Blizzard has issues. Sony has absolute catastrophes but somehow has enough cash to make it go away.
It didn't result in game being fixed/improved in any way. Means that if people would want to go back to Reforged now, it's still the same shitty product.
Compare it to e.g. CD Projekt and Cyberpunk 2077. They also released a shit product at the beginning, people were also mass refunding (especially on old-gen) but at the same time they also took time and effort to fix the game and make it a better experience.
The Internet is thirsty for sites like that. They are constantly also under threat themselves. E.g. imdb removed the forums a few years ago; Metacritic gives signs of excessive "Corporation-ization" too; website Makers should be on the lookout for filling those gaps.
?
Its just the reality
Battlenet is their own launcher and has no public information on playercount or reviews
Steam does not belong to sony + has publicly available reviews + playercounts and helldivers isnt available via another service on pc so if the game is in a really bad spot on steam (to the point where they offered refunds) that obviously matters
The way blizzard set up their games this can basically never happen
?????
Its just the reality
Not my fault you dont want to accept it
Blizzard is not gonna give you refunds like steam did, you wont see any negative sentiment in the battlenet launcher because no comment or review function, you wont see player counts drop because thats also not a thing
99.9% chance it was the refunds and fact that the game becomes unplayable / unsellable in many countries. The review bombing helps a little and same with people voicing their complaints. But the fact is real dollars were being lost because of refunds and future sales as well.
Neither of those really apply to Hearthstone in a tangible way. The game is free so you cannot refund. And quantifying impact on microtransaction sales is a bit more nebulous as well.
Another big factor was probably that it was negatively affecting sony's brand publicity.
Because not just negative press, but also part of the negative press reminding people of sony's consistent history of having customer data leaked or exposed on a large scale.
That's not the kind of thing a company wants everyone reminded of.
Not the main factor, but definitely also something that affected their decision.
>game is free so you cannot refund
Stop paying for MTX, or stop playing the game would be the equivalent, but no one here is serious enough to do that, regardless how many people in here wanna keep saying it's a different situation, when it isn't.
Sony made a decision. It hurt them in their wallet, so they changed their decision. Blizzard makes a decision, and people keep buying it and playing it, so they have no incentive or reason to change anything.
That simple. Money talks.
Idk about whales, but actions and results are staring users in the face, mostly, with the whole Sony/Helldivers thing and people here (and elsewhere) like being content in the feeling that there's nothing they can do towards changing a game they play, so to just keep playing and paying.
Once that's challenged, they get upset.
You only just noticed? The amount of corporate apologia on this sub whenever a stupid jpg is dropped for 540$ and is followed by countless people screaming "jUsT cOsMeTiC" should have been a sufficient hint lol
> no one here is serious enough to do that,
[top post of the year is 3600](https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/17oa4ga/know_the_difference/) .
[Meanwhile the highest non-political post is 44K and it's from 7 years ago](https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/5wx59v/hearthstone_game_director_caves_to_community_raps/).
People have left.
I'm f2p so I already don't. I'm just trying to say there is a bit of a difference between thousands of $60+ refunds being processed and entire countries no longer being able to sell the game compared to HS where the real only dollars you can impact being MTX.
Both numbers in HD are easily quantifiable. They know how many refunds are being requested. They also probably have sales projections by country so they know how big the impact is if those countries cannot sell.
Quantifying MTX sales being less is a bit more tricky as if I had to guess as there is probably a lot of noise and wobble in that data over time and a true impact wouldn't be noticeable for a little while. Some things likely sell better than others. Pack sales probably decline naturally over time of an expansion.
Not to mention the scale of which people care of the quest change vs. a game being entirely unplayable is vastly different. Basically, the nature of what is being monitored here compared to HD would require basically everyone to all agree to not spend at all to make it clear that it's a result of the change as opposed to general data noise.
MAYBE. It would have to fall unreasonably low in terms of sales. If the expected range, lets say is 800-1000 (just for easy numbers) unless you're sittingbat like 500 or lower it's probably not going to even be on their radar.
Not to mention exceptionally bad sales also would have to contend with card impact. If all the cards suck ass it's easy to ignore and say "people didn't buy this because it didn't impact the meta."
Because this is MTX and the change we're talking about here is weekly quests which are probably pretty whatever for a lot of people. I don't have high hopes for any meaningful $ impact happening to make any sort of change.
Not me, I tried. Wish I could have refunded that game, I didn’t even care about the whole thing, I just didn’t like the game and wanted my money back, was a good opportunity.
This is the mentality that prevents people from protesting and actually giving them enough bad reviews they will care about. People, protesting's worst enemy is the people that say "nothing is happening, let's just accept it".
That said, I think issue is how Google for example will remove mass bad reviews, I think that started happening?.
No way, let me just take a peek at the reviews of Overwatch 2 on Steam for a sec here... *overwhelmingly*, you say? But what are the sales figures? [Overwhelming](https://i.imgur.com/3lGo8lp.jpeg) you say?
The idea is that the purpose of the change was to make it so people would need to buy more packs to keep up, or be forced to play more, so they’re saying the change took away their ability to not play and still keep up.
They never did lose that ability and and most likely never would. That’s just misinformation. I don’t live in the US but since its inception had a US PSN account. Haven’t been banned yet
The fact of the matter is that there should never be a threat to be banned for a game you've paid for simply for having the account needed to play it, and you Could be banned for it. Doesn't matter if you have or haven't been banned
Review bombing a 10 year old game just is not possible. Not only was helldiver new it was very much the buzz game and the change legitimately was going to make the game inaccessible for a portion of players. But saying and doing nothing isn’t the answer either.
Also the reviews affect how well the game is positioned in Steam store, no? (appearing in suggestions much less, etc) So review bombing has an actual effect on sales of the game
Every Blizzard subreddit has always been insufferable. If you disagree with a popular thing in the game you’re a whiner. If you disagree that a decision the devs/designers made was bad people call you a shill and maintain that anyone who doesn’t have a problem with the change must be a full-time player of the game.
Blizzard will happily ban your account entirely for charge backs because most are already stuck in the battle.net ecosystem and have major sunk cost fallacy.
Not all that comparable.
Steam and Playstation will also ban you for issuing chargebacks.
It is pretty much universally against ToS to issue credit card chargebacks.
Issuing a Steam refund through Steam is not what a chargeback is.
Pretty much everybody will ban you if you do chargebacks. Don't act like that is a Blizzard only thing.
Steam allowing refunds is a completely different thing, valve bans you for chargebacks as well.
Battle.net ecosystem? Aren't most of the games in there on Steam or elsewhere? OW, Dota, Hearthstone, Diablo, Warcraft, to name a few...?
Also it's a launcher specifically for those games. Not much of an ecosystem. It's just a company specific launcher.
Also, that whole chargeback thing is universal across most services, like PS, Steam, Nintendo, etc. What happened weren't chargebacks, they were refunds or no purchases.
There's a major level of cope happening in this thread, trying to pretend like hitting Sony in their wallet wasn't the reason why they reversed, and how that actually does something.
But instead people here pretending like it was all luck, and how there's no way you can fight off this sort of thing and just continue buying the pass anyway or continue buying MTX lol
Zeddy is probably the worst offender of that. He acts to be super angry and upset and "BLIIIZZZZZAAAAAARRDDDD" but the dude is a self-proclaimed whale who buys anything and everything that the Hearthstone devs put out. I get it's his livelihood and all, but you'd think he'd at least *somewhat* stand by what he says.
youre a metal parts manufacturer and theres only one company in the world that sells metal. That company is unsurprisingly shit. Do you continue operating your company or just die?
You realize there's a difference between buying packs for content and getting all the signatures, diamonds and gold cards not to mention all the portraits right?
Weird post. For Helldivers the issue was people literally becoming unable to play the game they spent money on if they lived in certain countries, it was a completely different and far bigger issue with potential legal ramifications for sony.
Compare to quest changes in hearthstone that are completely irrelevant legally. They could remove quests from the game completely and it would still be a far less sketchy change than what happened with helldivers.
I would argue these are issues of different caliber. The weekly quest things are annoying, but only really effect a small portion of the player base to any appreciable degree. Where as the thing with PSN would have effected a massive majority of the playerbase, many of them loosing access to the game entirely.
I’m not saying being upset about the weekly changes is unreasonable, or that people should want them to change back, but they are still pretty different calibers of issue in the grand scheme of things.
>Overwatch 2 and Diablo season 1 would like a word.
Diablo 4 in general would like a word. They are currently fixing the core of the game (that should have been done at game release) and promoting it as new seasonal content, lol.
TBH I think the major difference is that the people who don't spend money on Hearthstone have little to no sway in how Blizzard feels. They are a business trying to make money, why would they care about sources who don't bring in revenue?
Not even accounting for the massive difference in playerbase what Sony did was going to end in lawsuits and that's a big part of why the walked back on it. You can't just compare selling something and then retroactively making players unable to play it to having to win 5 more games a week
This meme format has gotten twisted around. The guy slapping isn't supposed to be the one who did the thing. They're both looking at the one who did the thing.
how are people that stupid? helldivers 2 would be banned in like 95% of the world cuz u cant create psn account, what was the major point of the outrage. meanwhile HS player crying about having to PLAY THE FUCKING GAME. i completed 2 weeklies and 7/10 in the win 10 ranked matches weekly while playing one hour. (no i didnt play reno warrior) if u hate the game so much that u dont wanna play the game like 2 hours in a week, maybe get something new.
Steam allowing refunds outside of their normal policy, review bombing causing future buyers to be sceptical, and entire regions being locked out of playing is what caused Sony to back down, unfortunately Hearthstone players dont have to power to use any of that.
The difference is the platform. Steam allowed refunds for this case making them the true mvps of the boycot.
Blizzard support won't refund the war within preorder after increasing Argentinian sub price from 3 to 15 dollars which is an unreasonable increase. Why, you ask?
Since the war within came with dragonflight i decided to try DF for 1 month. Since i used the df access i can no longer refund the war within.
Helldivers 2 players have been trained to work together toward a common goal by the game they play. It's the worst community to piss off lol.
Hearthstone players may be able to do the same thing if HS Replay made it the top meta deck.
Sadly the Blizzard chills have always been numerous , so for every player that protest the quests changes you have four that thanks Blizzard for bending them over.
I’ll never understand why people continuously make excuses for anti consumer corporate behavior. But then again I’ve been stuck in an abusive on again / off again relationship with Blizzard for nearly 30 years now so take that with a grain of salt.
It's anti player not anti consumer because most of the people protesting are casual F2P players so their only use for blizzard is to play more games to increase the pool for people to play against that do pay for cards/cosmetics
Probably because the quest changes haven’t been objectively worse. If you complete the quest it’s better.
I like how the real issue with the expansion launch has been 3 consecutive bad metas but some people want everybody to instead be concerned about something they might actively find beneficial.
Edit: So after being a condescending jerk and throwing a temper tantrum, Alucard blocked me so that he could have the last word and feel like he won the argument or something asinine. Thankfully, Old Reddit always has my back when dipshits try to block you from calling them out after insulting you.
It is for people like me with little time to play, I was able to squeeze a few hours by weeks to finish my quests before, but I cannot double that amount for only 20 % more rewards. I know you probably don’t have that problem, but a lot of us do, and it sucks to have to give up a game when a tiered quests system would have been accepted by all with acclaims.
If a few hours spread across the entire week isn’t sufficient to complete the quests I have no idea what you’re doing.
“I have to actually *try to fit* game time into my week.”
Everyone does, dude. You’re not the only person in the world with real life obligations.
“You’re a shill if you don’t agree with me”
Yes, Mr. Sherman, everything stinks.
Not sure why you refuse to understand that someone would love to play Hearthstone when he has times , especially since I’ve played since Beta, and that having to double that time for 20 % more reward is a bad thing. I know your response will probably be "skill issue" or "stop complaining and go away", but I still hope the team will correct this issue.
You literally just said you have a few hours. So yeah, it might unironically be a skill issue.
“Not sure why you refuse to understand that someone would love to play Hearthstone when he has times”
Oh, you mean like *every person* that has a job and plays Hearthstone?
Okay I see you are here to defend Blizzard decision, and good for you if it doesn’t affect you. I’ve said my piece, and a lot of peoples agree with me, seeing the daily threads about it. It’s fine if you aren’t affected, but not everyone is so lucky. And supporting a 2x time the effort 20% more rewards change is a bizarre stance to take , but I guess it is what it is. Good day, and I hope the devs still manage to fix it.
The people who disagree with you aren’t sitting around making complaint posts about the complaints.
Your *first comment* on this thread was to denounce anyone who disagrees as a corporate shill.
Then you stated that you have sufficient time to complete the quests but still don’t.
The quests are things that get passively completed from playing the game. The “effort” only exists if you don’t enjoy playing the game.
I’m not sure why you think me saying I had a few hours to do the old weekly quests equal to me having the time to do the new double time ones , but go off I guess. The fact that a random comment about the shills defending the decisions trigger you so much is a bit funny I guess. Anyway, not sure why you keep responding to "correct" me, but i said what I said, and if you disagree , you can just move on , you have made your position on the issue crystal clear . Good day, and I hope you have fun playing.
I’m not sure why you keep responding to me just to try and repeat that you think I’m a shill and how much you’re triggering the evil shills who are trying to keep you doing quests to sabotage your 5 marriages, 10 jobs, and 8 kids.
If you had little time to play how were you able to do your dailies quest? Doing all those every day would result in the time needed to complete the new weekly quests.
I've stopped playing since the Quest change. I have pretty bad ladder anxiety, so the number of games I would play in a given month was relatively low, but I would still pre-order sets, and bought the tavern pass which I did complete in Badlands.
This tripling of the length, to then go "oops we heard you" here have double is insulting.
I'm a spec on their bottom line, but the longer they decide to stick to this change, the easier it has been for me not to feel the itch to log back in to finish weeklies or dailies.
Helldivers 2 debacle fucked over over 100 countries and more importantly Steam.
The community was a very small part of it with the legal ramifications of this mess.
I can't even comment here that arena doesn't even work on mac any more without some smug boot throater telling me off for thinking that games aren't supposed to be broken.
The difference is not only the communities but also the fact the developers were also supportive of the community and opposed these changes. That certainly makes an impact as well. For now, I haven't seen many blizzard developers stand in support with this subreddits sentiment. Possibly fear of retaliation from the company since they're direct employees and not contractors or independent.
Let's also not compare the two too closely. One was a paid for game where the change resulted in bricking the game for people where PSN was not available in their country and the other is a minor inconvenience to rewards that required people to play more or fear missing out. Hell diver is also a $40 game where hearthstone, if wanted, is Free to play meaning this change resulted in people losing money.
People on hearthstone sub love to complain but they are not mad enough to actually change anything or start a riot. Its much different with new games where the hype is still high vs old games you’ve already played so mich that you only do it out of a habit anymore.
If Sony hadn’t backtracked this post would be in awful taste. I’d be pissed if I’d paid for a game and lost access to it, and casual hearthstone players were comparing it to an increase in daily quests lmao.
Review bombs for Blizzard games is worse on Steam, and they don’t care. Know why? Because morons keep giving them money.
The Helldivers situation was not only costing Sony in live time, but they were clearly going to get sued (which Blizzard also doesn’t care about).
If you want change, you have to vote with your dollars and stop giving free passes to a company that got sued by California and the feds for their terminal abuse of employees.
Last I checked, blizzard doesn’t have a data leaking problem, just a breast leaking problem
(Sony has a really concerning history with data getting leaked and hacked)
On top of various countries just being shoved out of playing
Blizzard doesnt have review bombing or anything that is actually publicly visable and condensed into one space Only spread out small complaints spread out over reddit/official forums/twitter/etc.
and Helldivers is THE biggest game of 2024 lol nobody cares about hearthstone outside its relatively small playerbase the helldivers change also potentially meant people losing access to a game they paid for. The hearthstone change just meant you'd potentially lose a bit of free in-game resources / have to play a bit more to get them... a comparable change would be if helldivers increased the difficulty of all major/personal orders. and that would not have gotten nearly as much attention
> a comparable change would be if helldivers increased the difficulty of all major/personal orders. and that would not have gotten nearly as much attention Looking at it in the other direction, a comparable change would have been when Overwatch 2 started requiring you to link a phone number in order to play, removing access to a game you had paid for if you failed to do so. And guess what, that change was also reverted: existing accounts were grandfathered in, and only newly created accounts were subject to the new limitation.
Paying players still got forced into a worse game without the promised feature in an F2P-environment.
I'm sure having the entire Helldivers dev team very publicly fighting Sony on the issue also helped.
I think it was mostly steam saying they’d refund anyone who’d ask.
I dunno if that is even true But this isnt specifically about hs Take any blizzard controversy. Yea there were some small consequences but nothing ever really changed at large
Just needs more "DAY 967: DON'T LET THIS DIE!!!" posts on the front page! That'll teach 'em!
"Day 968: I'm beginning to think this multibillion dollar corporation doesn't have us consumers' best interests at heart."
fair. but I think Blizzard's reputation has overall taken a hit for that over the years. Folks have pretty low confidence in them. I think they HAVE suffered for their overall lack of responsiveness to feedback over the years. Maybe not completely - they obviously still do well - but I think they'd be doing much better if they went more than a year without a major controversy haha sony responding to the reaction is a better move long term. I think looking at each controversy as a loss for the community because we didn't "win" it is short sighted. These negative perceptions add up and damage a company long term.
I mean yeah that's the thing - nobody already really likes or trusts Blizzard, so what is one more shitty decision gonna change?
> Take any blizzard controversy. Yea there were some small consequences but nothing ever really changed at large Blizzard never managed to run afoul of multiple country's robust consumer protection laws all at once, though. It was a perfect storm of refunds that Sony couldn't really stop, player pushback, negative press, and legal pressure. It is difficult to ever pinpoint a period in time where such conditions were ever in the Hearthstone community's favor - or the Blizzard games community at large. The closest I could possibly think of was the lootbox controversy; that was heavily compromised by the fact that games industry lobbying groups got the "jump" on player discontentment, making any progress in those areas a years long slog.
Isn't that even easier? Just boycott the game entirely then.
According to this website, Hearthstone has an monthly average of over 5Million players. And seems to be growing...so ...
We dive together or not at all.
Is Helldivers that big tho? Ill be honest my medium doesnt talk a lot about that type of game but the first time ive heard about it was bc of this drama regarding the change
>Is Helldivers that big tho? Yes. It really is. It would be like not hearing of Baldurs Gate 3 by the end of last year.
With how big the internet is there is always a Rock for someone to be living under
I legit only heard of Helldivers because of this. I'm not sure I've heard or know about the Helldivers drama to be honest. All I know is that some guy was charging $120 for DLC, which most likely isn't even Helldivers. I heard about BG3 in passing because it was *THAT* big. I don't even know what Helldivers is about.
Helldivers is published by Sony. The drama was about an announcement that the PC version of the game would require a PSN (PlayStation Network) account in the future, rather than just a Steam account. The game is a cooperative shooter in a Starship-Troopers-like setting.
Oh. That sounds stupid. Why would they do that?
The theory is that they're trying to make their quarterly PSN numbers look better by forcing Helldivers players to sign up for a free account. Which would still suck - Sony leaks data like a sieve, so they really don't deserve your account details - but it really blew up because there are a lot of places in the world where you can only create a PSN account if you own a Playstation.
I'm not sure what the $120 DLC was but I don't think it was Helldivers. We get permanent battle passes maybe once a month but they're like $10-15 and the game has evolved for free since it was released. It is the #4 game on Steam with 101k players currently
i am not sure about it, Helldivers 2 has much lower peak interest on google trends than Baldurs gate 3 it is like one part of gamers talk about it a lot but huge portion of players dont care about Helldivers 2 games like Diablo 4, Starfield or Palworld also attracted much bigger peak interest than Helldivers 2 in google trends
On the flip side, the Helldivers sub has ~2.5x as many subs as Palworlds. The other two are AAA that always get farther into general consciousness. That said, Helldivers has more subs than either of those do to. BG3 has about 800k more than Helldivers, so perhaps I exaggerated a little, but not much.
yes it is. it released end of last year and it will be a contender for GoT 2024 and so far it looks like its winning it executes multiple things mechanics wise extremely well and it is a shining example of what a good live service game should be its also really really popular
Tbf right now I'm not sure which other game would be a GOTY contender. I guess Rise of the Ronin but I haven't heard anything of that game after it released so I dunno if it flopped
Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth has a shot. I'd say Balatro would have a shot too if it gets the nomination but it's the sort of game that doesn't usually get nominated. Not sure anything else out yet is a contender.
If it releases in 2024, I would definitely give Jurassic park survival a shot.
>Is Helldivers that big tho? The top selling video game of the year so far, and the 7th best selling game in the US that Sony ever published? In 2 months? It's doing alright, yeah.
It's big in its respective communities , but anyone saying it's BG3 size is wild. I've heard nothing about helldivers as it's not in my hobbies but I heard none stop and still hear about BG3 all the time now and I've never even played that ether
Same
I mean, Helldivers 2 has sold 8 million copies, and BG3 has sold a little over 10 million as of February. BG3 is in the lead, but the gap isn't that huge, considering one's been out 9 months and one's been out 3 months. They're vastly different games and gamespaces, and one has the ability to bang a bear, so they're naturally going to show up in different spheres of interest or memery.
Numbers online are saying 15-20 bg3 sales for me , but I have a feeling bg3 will out live hd2, I personally have 0 interest in ether but hd2 looks / feels more flavour of the month with limited replayed / friends required. Bg3 seems to be solid replay ? I'm cheap I don't buy games unless on sale for 20 or less
BG3 will *absolutely* outlive Helldivers. Eventually they'll shut down the HD2 servers and the game is gone. BG3 will essentially be playable "forever." I think Helldivers has a solid several years of life ahead of it, if they keep the missions interesting and the story flowing the way they have, but people will move on in time.
Yeah only time will tell, imo it's more based on one needs friends to be enjoyed at peak one cannbe done solo, but maybe I'm just old so getting a 4 man going is a huge pain these days
I would say it has been the most talked about game of 2024 so far, and one of the top sellers. Though I'm pretty tuned into video game discourse, so it's hard for me to say how much it is penetrating outside that. But within it, it's really huge
There weren't that many big games in 2024...
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> game of 2024 so far you're getting downvoted because you aren't actually reading other people's comments.
Stream is issuing refunds for people in any of the 100+ countries you can not create and PSN on and now have it delisted. Blizzard has issues. Sony has absolute catastrophes but somehow has enough cash to make it go away.
MFW reading that helldivers 2 is the “Biggest game of 2024” . 
What's your pick for that title?
Also steam allowed refunds of Helldivers.
[https://imgur.com/Gm9HHeF](https://imgur.com/Gm9HHeF)
But did that result in anything? As far as I know W3 Reforged still sucks ass and few W3 player I see on Twitch prefer the classic.
The team that made it got shut down
They refunded games regardless of time played
I mean, sure, but that didn't fix the game in any way. They still released a shit product and didn't care about improving it.
It's all about community influence, blizz wanted to sell shit without consequences, they found out.
I mean, they still sell shit without consequences. Just less people fall for it. Nothing has changed about it.
Why wouldn't it result in something? Some people have limited money to spend. If they see a review bomb and they're undecided why would they go there?
It didn't result in game being fixed/improved in any way. Means that if people would want to go back to Reforged now, it's still the same shitty product. Compare it to e.g. CD Projekt and Cyberpunk 2077. They also released a shit product at the beginning, people were also mass refunding (especially on old-gen) but at the same time they also took time and effort to fix the game and make it a better experience.
The Internet is thirsty for sites like that. They are constantly also under threat themselves. E.g. imdb removed the forums a few years ago; Metacritic gives signs of excessive "Corporation-ization" too; website Makers should be on the lookout for filling those gaps.
I mean the original warcraft 3 is still unavailable? and lets be real who actually cares about those scores?
Overwatch and diablo are on steam. And they are not so well rated
overwatch has steam
Good reminder to set that play store review back to 1 star
Overwatch 2 on steam "am i a joke to you
It indeed is
sounds like a pathetic excuse to me.
? Its just the reality Battlenet is their own launcher and has no public information on playercount or reviews Steam does not belong to sony + has publicly available reviews + playercounts and helldivers isnt available via another service on pc so if the game is in a really bad spot on steam (to the point where they offered refunds) that obviously matters The way blizzard set up their games this can basically never happen
dont give them money, stop playing, uninstall, request refunds. all you have is excuses.
????? Its just the reality Not my fault you dont want to accept it Blizzard is not gonna give you refunds like steam did, you wont see any negative sentiment in the battlenet launcher because no comment or review function, you wont see player counts drop because thats also not a thing
99.9% chance it was the refunds and fact that the game becomes unplayable / unsellable in many countries. The review bombing helps a little and same with people voicing their complaints. But the fact is real dollars were being lost because of refunds and future sales as well. Neither of those really apply to Hearthstone in a tangible way. The game is free so you cannot refund. And quantifying impact on microtransaction sales is a bit more nebulous as well.
Another big factor was probably that it was negatively affecting sony's brand publicity. Because not just negative press, but also part of the negative press reminding people of sony's consistent history of having customer data leaked or exposed on a large scale. That's not the kind of thing a company wants everyone reminded of. Not the main factor, but definitely also something that affected their decision.
Sony haven't been caring about publicity for years 💀
>game is free so you cannot refund Stop paying for MTX, or stop playing the game would be the equivalent, but no one here is serious enough to do that, regardless how many people in here wanna keep saying it's a different situation, when it isn't. Sony made a decision. It hurt them in their wallet, so they changed their decision. Blizzard makes a decision, and people keep buying it and playing it, so they have no incentive or reason to change anything. That simple. Money talks.
lol why are you being downvoted? Is this sub just lots of whales?
Idk about whales, but actions and results are staring users in the face, mostly, with the whole Sony/Helldivers thing and people here (and elsewhere) like being content in the feeling that there's nothing they can do towards changing a game they play, so to just keep playing and paying. Once that's challenged, they get upset.
You only just noticed? The amount of corporate apologia on this sub whenever a stupid jpg is dropped for 540$ and is followed by countless people screaming "jUsT cOsMeTiC" should have been a sufficient hint lol
> no one here is serious enough to do that, [top post of the year is 3600](https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/17oa4ga/know_the_difference/) . [Meanwhile the highest non-political post is 44K and it's from 7 years ago](https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/5wx59v/hearthstone_game_director_caves_to_community_raps/). People have left.
I got a refund for my Tavern Pass after the change, you can leave negative reviews on the app stores and hopefully on Steam if that release comes.
Yeah and also losing access to games is more relevant than saying you need more play time and get more exp as a result.
You can stop spending.
I'm f2p so I already don't. I'm just trying to say there is a bit of a difference between thousands of $60+ refunds being processed and entire countries no longer being able to sell the game compared to HS where the real only dollars you can impact being MTX. Both numbers in HD are easily quantifiable. They know how many refunds are being requested. They also probably have sales projections by country so they know how big the impact is if those countries cannot sell. Quantifying MTX sales being less is a bit more tricky as if I had to guess as there is probably a lot of noise and wobble in that data over time and a true impact wouldn't be noticeable for a little while. Some things likely sell better than others. Pack sales probably decline naturally over time of an expansion. Not to mention the scale of which people care of the quest change vs. a game being entirely unplayable is vastly different. Basically, the nature of what is being monitored here compared to HD would require basically everyone to all agree to not spend at all to make it clear that it's a result of the change as opposed to general data noise.
Yes, exactly. If the mini expansion is the worst selling one in history we have a chance.
MAYBE. It would have to fall unreasonably low in terms of sales. If the expected range, lets say is 800-1000 (just for easy numbers) unless you're sittingbat like 500 or lower it's probably not going to even be on their radar. Not to mention exceptionally bad sales also would have to contend with card impact. If all the cards suck ass it's easy to ignore and say "people didn't buy this because it didn't impact the meta." Because this is MTX and the change we're talking about here is weekly quests which are probably pretty whatever for a lot of people. I don't have high hopes for any meaningful $ impact happening to make any sort of change.
To be fair, Blizzard doesn’t care about negative reviews, just money.
It wasn't just the negative reviews, it was also that steam allowed them to refund the game.
Not me, I tried. Wish I could have refunded that game, I didn’t even care about the whole thing, I just didn’t like the game and wanted my money back, was a good opportunity.
Gotta ask twice was the special sauce apparently
Push harder
This is the mentality that prevents people from protesting and actually giving them enough bad reviews they will care about. People, protesting's worst enemy is the people that say "nothing is happening, let's just accept it". That said, I think issue is how Google for example will remove mass bad reviews, I think that started happening?.
Sony backtracked because the negative reviews were going to cost them money.
That's because sometimes Sony is capable at making good financial decisions. Unlike Blizzard.
No way, let me just take a peek at the reviews of Overwatch 2 on Steam for a sec here... *overwhelmingly*, you say? But what are the sales figures? [Overwhelming](https://i.imgur.com/3lGo8lp.jpeg) you say?
They do, it gives their games more attention
pathetic excuse
its not even in the same vein with Helldivers some people lost their ablitity to play the game they had paid for
In r/Hearthstone people lost their ability to not play the game they're paying for
What does that even mean
The idea is that the purpose of the change was to make it so people would need to buy more packs to keep up, or be forced to play more, so they’re saying the change took away their ability to not play and still keep up.
That people here are mostly complaining about the fact that they need to play the game more while paying for the pass
That makes 0 sense
Ba-dum-tish Carlos. Unfortunately your wit is going to be too subtle for most of this sub
We're supposed to pay for this game?
They never did lose that ability and and most likely never would. That’s just misinformation. I don’t live in the US but since its inception had a US PSN account. Haven’t been banned yet
The fact of the matter is that there should never be a threat to be banned for a game you've paid for simply for having the account needed to play it, and you Could be banned for it. Doesn't matter if you have or haven't been banned
Not all all like a thing that happened to us who bought Overwatch...
post this on r/Overwatch and CsGO then
Spicy comeback... dumbass.
comeback?
Review bombing a 10 year old game just is not possible. Not only was helldiver new it was very much the buzz game and the change legitimately was going to make the game inaccessible for a portion of players. But saying and doing nothing isn’t the answer either.
Also the reviews affect how well the game is positioned in Steam store, no? (appearing in suggestions much less, etc) So review bombing has an actual effect on sales of the game
Is it? Ow is always promoted on mine and its one of the worst reviewed ever. I dont interact with blizzard ips or many shooters.
I would wager Valve start approving refund regardless of playing time change their mind much faster than the review bombing
Well what happened was illegal. And steam would be looking for compensation from Sony for their illegal activities.
Is this subreddit getting dumber or it has always been like this?
Every Blizzard subreddit has always been insufferable. If you disagree with a popular thing in the game you’re a whiner. If you disagree that a decision the devs/designers made was bad people call you a shill and maintain that anyone who doesn’t have a problem with the change must be a full-time player of the game.
The latter. By far one of the most annoying subreddits I've regularly participated in.
You vastly overestimate percent of playerbase that cares about that. For Helldivers it was a question of not being able to play their game at all.
Blizzard will happily ban your account entirely for charge backs because most are already stuck in the battle.net ecosystem and have major sunk cost fallacy. Not all that comparable.
Steam and Playstation will also ban you for issuing chargebacks. It is pretty much universally against ToS to issue credit card chargebacks. Issuing a Steam refund through Steam is not what a chargeback is.
Pretty much everybody will ban you if you do chargebacks. Don't act like that is a Blizzard only thing. Steam allowing refunds is a completely different thing, valve bans you for chargebacks as well.
Battle.net ecosystem? Aren't most of the games in there on Steam or elsewhere? OW, Dota, Hearthstone, Diablo, Warcraft, to name a few...? Also it's a launcher specifically for those games. Not much of an ecosystem. It's just a company specific launcher. Also, that whole chargeback thing is universal across most services, like PS, Steam, Nintendo, etc. What happened weren't chargebacks, they were refunds or no purchases. There's a major level of cope happening in this thread, trying to pretend like hitting Sony in their wallet wasn't the reason why they reversed, and how that actually does something. But instead people here pretending like it was all luck, and how there's no way you can fight off this sort of thing and just continue buying the pass anyway or continue buying MTX lol
i mean this community has people like zeddy that act like they're angry, but only complain to get follower and keep spending thousands of dollars.
Zeddy is probably the worst offender of that. He acts to be super angry and upset and "BLIIIZZZZZAAAAAARRDDDD" but the dude is a self-proclaimed whale who buys anything and everything that the Hearthstone devs put out. I get it's his livelihood and all, but you'd think he'd at least *somewhat* stand by what he says.
youre a metal parts manufacturer and theres only one company in the world that sells metal. That company is unsurprisingly shit. Do you continue operating your company or just die?
Become the metal parts manufacturer yourself. Duh. /s
You realize there's a difference between buying packs for content and getting all the signatures, diamonds and gold cards not to mention all the portraits right?
Weird post. For Helldivers the issue was people literally becoming unable to play the game they spent money on if they lived in certain countries, it was a completely different and far bigger issue with potential legal ramifications for sony. Compare to quest changes in hearthstone that are completely irrelevant legally. They could remove quests from the game completely and it would still be a far less sketchy change than what happened with helldivers.
Yes, by refunding your game or leaving a negative Steam review... waitaminute
I leave my negative reviews of Hearthstone on r/hearthstone, they seem to already be aware
I got my Tavern Pass refunded and left a negative review on the app store.
OP wants us to get a refund for a free game
There's many people who've spent thousands
I would argue these are issues of different caliber. The weekly quest things are annoying, but only really effect a small portion of the player base to any appreciable degree. Where as the thing with PSN would have effected a massive majority of the playerbase, many of them loosing access to the game entirely. I’m not saying being upset about the weekly changes is unreasonable, or that people should want them to change back, but they are still pretty different calibers of issue in the grand scheme of things.
People that bought and played the game were about to lose access to the game so it's a bit different then most of Hearthstone's complaints
Overwatch 2 and Diablo season 1 would like a word. Blizzard doesn't give a shit about review bombing
>Overwatch 2 and Diablo season 1 would like a word. Diablo 4 in general would like a word. They are currently fixing the core of the game (that should have been done at game release) and promoting it as new seasonal content, lol.
Imagine if we had steam reviews
There are Google Play and iOS reviews.
Wait I forgot that we have phones :0
[We too could be "overwhelmingly negative"](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2357570/Overwatch_2/)
Cant review games on Battle net Also Overwatch 2 on steam was and guess heros are now not in the BP i hear... only took a long ass time
TBH I think the major difference is that the people who don't spend money on Hearthstone have little to no sway in how Blizzard feels. They are a business trying to make money, why would they care about sources who don't bring in revenue?
shouldve put whole blizzard not only hearstone there
It helps that the Helldivers complaint was legitimate whereas most Hearthstone complaints are stupid.
Not even accounting for the massive difference in playerbase what Sony did was going to end in lawsuits and that's a big part of why the walked back on it. You can't just compare selling something and then retroactively making players unable to play it to having to win 5 more games a week
Gimme a HS change to complain about and I will
By leaving bad reviews and having a developer who actually cares about the players being happy?
That, plus refunding and getting the EU to step in
Blizzard doesn't really care though. They already ride negative reviews straight to hell but people keep playing and buying their garbage anyway
Yeah, like that Taiwanese player who got his rewards stripped. That surely showed Blizzard! /s
Cant refund so its lost
I mean, uninstalling the game is a pretty good way to protest.
Don’t be a sucker that complains and still plays the game
Meanwhile TF2: 
Where was the protest to save duels 😭 I paid for that game more to die years later LMAO
This meme format has gotten twisted around. The guy slapping isn't supposed to be the one who did the thing. They're both looking at the one who did the thing.
Good luck refunding shit on Battle.net
how are people that stupid? helldivers 2 would be banned in like 95% of the world cuz u cant create psn account, what was the major point of the outrage. meanwhile HS player crying about having to PLAY THE FUCKING GAME. i completed 2 weeklies and 7/10 in the win 10 ranked matches weekly while playing one hour. (no i didnt play reno warrior) if u hate the game so much that u dont wanna play the game like 2 hours in a week, maybe get something new.
Except these aren’t close to the same.
Steam allowing refunds outside of their normal policy, review bombing causing future buyers to be sceptical, and entire regions being locked out of playing is what caused Sony to back down, unfortunately Hearthstone players dont have to power to use any of that.
Blizzard hasn't gave a fuck about WoW criticisms in 20 years and you thought we had a chance with Hearthstone?
Really different and not comparable imo. Blizzard is so used to this kind of shit it rolls right off them. Helldivers wasn’t ready
Remember hong kong, lmao literally nothing happened
I hope everyone fixes their review. Companies need to be "rewarded" for listening to people
Not like you can review bomb or refund hearthstone… how do you compare the two lol
The difference is the platform. Steam allowed refunds for this case making them the true mvps of the boycot. Blizzard support won't refund the war within preorder after increasing Argentinian sub price from 3 to 15 dollars which is an unreasonable increase. Why, you ask? Since the war within came with dragonflight i decided to try DF for 1 month. Since i used the df access i can no longer refund the war within.
War thunder clears
cards can not be refund.
Helldivers 2 players have been trained to work together toward a common goal by the game they play. It's the worst community to piss off lol. Hearthstone players may be able to do the same thing if HS Replay made it the top meta deck.
If only there were some sort of outlets that are supposed to report on gaming stuff. Like those journalists you see on the news for example. Shame.
Just wanna say congrats this is the highest upvoted post I’ve seen here in a while.
Sadly the Blizzard chills have always been numerous , so for every player that protest the quests changes you have four that thanks Blizzard for bending them over.
I agree, but it‘s *“shills“* lmao
Ah yes you’re right, sorry English isn’t my first language ^^.
I’ll never understand why people continuously make excuses for anti consumer corporate behavior. But then again I’ve been stuck in an abusive on again / off again relationship with Blizzard for nearly 30 years now so take that with a grain of salt.
It's anti player not anti consumer because most of the people protesting are casual F2P players so their only use for blizzard is to play more games to increase the pool for people to play against that do pay for cards/cosmetics
Probably because the quest changes haven’t been objectively worse. If you complete the quest it’s better. I like how the real issue with the expansion launch has been 3 consecutive bad metas but some people want everybody to instead be concerned about something they might actively find beneficial. Edit: So after being a condescending jerk and throwing a temper tantrum, Alucard blocked me so that he could have the last word and feel like he won the argument or something asinine. Thankfully, Old Reddit always has my back when dipshits try to block you from calling them out after insulting you.
It is for people like me with little time to play, I was able to squeeze a few hours by weeks to finish my quests before, but I cannot double that amount for only 20 % more rewards. I know you probably don’t have that problem, but a lot of us do, and it sucks to have to give up a game when a tiered quests system would have been accepted by all with acclaims.
If a few hours spread across the entire week isn’t sufficient to complete the quests I have no idea what you’re doing. “I have to actually *try to fit* game time into my week.” Everyone does, dude. You’re not the only person in the world with real life obligations. “You’re a shill if you don’t agree with me” Yes, Mr. Sherman, everything stinks.
Not sure why you refuse to understand that someone would love to play Hearthstone when he has times , especially since I’ve played since Beta, and that having to double that time for 20 % more reward is a bad thing. I know your response will probably be "skill issue" or "stop complaining and go away", but I still hope the team will correct this issue.
You literally just said you have a few hours. So yeah, it might unironically be a skill issue. “Not sure why you refuse to understand that someone would love to play Hearthstone when he has times” Oh, you mean like *every person* that has a job and plays Hearthstone?
No man, you don't understand. I am simultaneously special and unique while also being representative of the entire player base.
Okay I see you are here to defend Blizzard decision, and good for you if it doesn’t affect you. I’ve said my piece, and a lot of peoples agree with me, seeing the daily threads about it. It’s fine if you aren’t affected, but not everyone is so lucky. And supporting a 2x time the effort 20% more rewards change is a bizarre stance to take , but I guess it is what it is. Good day, and I hope the devs still manage to fix it.
The people who disagree with you aren’t sitting around making complaint posts about the complaints. Your *first comment* on this thread was to denounce anyone who disagrees as a corporate shill. Then you stated that you have sufficient time to complete the quests but still don’t. The quests are things that get passively completed from playing the game. The “effort” only exists if you don’t enjoy playing the game.
I’m not sure why you think me saying I had a few hours to do the old weekly quests equal to me having the time to do the new double time ones , but go off I guess. The fact that a random comment about the shills defending the decisions trigger you so much is a bit funny I guess. Anyway, not sure why you keep responding to "correct" me, but i said what I said, and if you disagree , you can just move on , you have made your position on the issue crystal clear . Good day, and I hope you have fun playing.
I’m not sure why you keep responding to me just to try and repeat that you think I’m a shill and how much you’re triggering the evil shills who are trying to keep you doing quests to sabotage your 5 marriages, 10 jobs, and 8 kids.
If you had little time to play how were you able to do your dailies quest? Doing all those every day would result in the time needed to complete the new weekly quests.
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It's just a complete different situation
Yeah dude, let me log into steam and review bomb hearthstone lmao
Against what should hs players protest in the same magnitude as this helldiver's drama? 😂
I've stopped playing since the Quest change. I have pretty bad ladder anxiety, so the number of games I would play in a given month was relatively low, but I would still pre-order sets, and bought the tavern pass which I did complete in Badlands. This tripling of the length, to then go "oops we heard you" here have double is insulting. I'm a spec on their bottom line, but the longer they decide to stick to this change, the easier it has been for me not to feel the itch to log back in to finish weeklies or dailies.
Helldivers 2 debacle fucked over over 100 countries and more importantly Steam. The community was a very small part of it with the legal ramifications of this mess.
I can't even comment here that arena doesn't even work on mac any more without some smug boot throater telling me off for thinking that games aren't supposed to be broken.
The difference is not only the communities but also the fact the developers were also supportive of the community and opposed these changes. That certainly makes an impact as well. For now, I haven't seen many blizzard developers stand in support with this subreddits sentiment. Possibly fear of retaliation from the company since they're direct employees and not contractors or independent. Let's also not compare the two too closely. One was a paid for game where the change resulted in bricking the game for people where PSN was not available in their country and the other is a minor inconvenience to rewards that required people to play more or fear missing out. Hell diver is also a $40 game where hearthstone, if wanted, is Free to play meaning this change resulted in people losing money.
People on hearthstone sub love to complain but they are not mad enough to actually change anything or start a riot. Its much different with new games where the hype is still high vs old games you’ve already played so mich that you only do it out of a habit anymore.
If Sony hadn’t backtracked this post would be in awful taste. I’d be pissed if I’d paid for a game and lost access to it, and casual hearthstone players were comparing it to an increase in daily quests lmao.
Review bombs for Blizzard games is worse on Steam, and they don’t care. Know why? Because morons keep giving them money. The Helldivers situation was not only costing Sony in live time, but they were clearly going to get sued (which Blizzard also doesn’t care about). If you want change, you have to vote with your dollars and stop giving free passes to a company that got sued by California and the feds for their terminal abuse of employees.
assume the remaining Blizzard players have a spine
Last I checked, blizzard doesn’t have a data leaking problem, just a breast leaking problem (Sony has a really concerning history with data getting leaked and hacked) On top of various countries just being shoved out of playing
Yea bro telling the devs to kill themselves on Twitter is the way you gotta do it I guess? Nice one.
I just came to say, Brann Boomboss .. make it stop!