Was going to make this comment. They only do strategy/sims but they literally have a clause written in their company manifesto that forbids the same line goes up/profit above everything mindset that is the default for most game publishers and actively harms the industry
A publisher that supports strategy games all while still retaining their humanity? Well fuck me sideways, time to go look up every game they've ever fondled lovingly i guess.
That game had me locked in for DAYS. I absolutely loved how it worked. Roguelike demanding you switch up your playstyle with resource management and the music is Top tier.
Terra Invicta is my favourite hooded horse game.
My favourite anecdote about the game is that it released *before* the in game start date, but only by like a month.
I'm sure I wasn't the only one watching the skies when the alien crash date passed.
It does a really fantastic job of slowly introducing mechanics and building upon itself as you unlock things, so as not to overwhelm you. They also somewhat recently added a psuedo-tutorial, with a character that explains different mechanics to you.
And I'm discovering that I already had a few of their games wishlisted already, hahaha.
And lookie here, a whole lot more coming out this year that look fun as hell.
Its cheap now, but could do with some more time to cook. I've only played the intro scenario, but there's a tonne of potential. I am enjoying it, though. Its very chill.
Playable, but definitely early access. It definitely feels like there are some things missing, and there are some things that need improvement, but I'm having a blast. Limited content means I can churn through different strategies and see what works and what i like
Needs at least a few more years of development. It's very bare bones and has some fundamental issues (Markets/supplying goods to houses aren't really working like they should, for example), but the foundation is there for a really great game.
As it's a solo developer it's a really impressive effort, but it also just means any progress is going to be sloooow.
The thing about Terra Invicta is that it's definitely not for everyone, but if it's for you there's nothing else like it.
For those not familiar: take a setting built on XCOM and The Expanse and throw it in with gameplay that's a mix of Kerbal Space Program and a Paradox grand strategy game.
There's quite nothing like being able to be decelerating towards your target, while constantly dropping missiles which will all arrive roughly at the same time (due to the drop in speed), allowing it to overwhelm the enemies point defenses (expanse is a good reference, as TI just uses relativistic spaceflight models).
Coffee Stain comes to mind for me. Granted I don't know much about them, but they're behind Deep Rock Galactic and Valheim which speaks for itself imo.
Satisfactory as well. I guess a tad different since it's also developed by their own in house studio. But also a fantastic game that has been in early access for a long time but is releasing 1.0 this year.
They made Sanctum, Sanctum 2, and Goat Simulator years before Satisfactory.
Sanctum is a *fantastic* FPS/Tower Defense game and I very badly want them to make a third one.
EDIT: Sanctum *2* is fantastic; the first one is just OK.
Oh man Terra Invicta is so good. You boot it up and hover over the "Normal Speed" option, and it goes "this is the average campaign experience. It could take 100 hours to finish." which is INSANE. I play EU4 and that game doesn't even go that long.
It's by the same people that made the Long War mod for XCOM and its absolutely incredible how it goes from espionage type gameplay fighting in the shadows to controlling armies to vying for control of the solar system. Nothing is quite like it but its so hard to learn. Its taking me forever to tackle but wow, I love every second of it. Failure feels good, lack of understanding feels good because it feels like its part of a bigger story due to the scale of it all. Even if there are parts I haven't reached yet.
I love Dunkey but he is not really cut out for that kind of a job. He has specific preferences and wants the stuff he likes to be in the games that he publishes.
It was also bankrolled by a trillion-dollar entertainment giant. A lot of what makes Indie "indie" is their budget. Having Sony basically take care of the marketing for you probably helps.
It was produced by a larger studio than Skyrim. Fromsoft cranked out Elden Ring and Armored Core 6 simultaneously with about twice as many people.
They also had Sony money behind them. Did you miss the massive ad campaign and huge number of sponsored streams and videos? Or how they went a decade between games with no public funding?
I'm glad it blew up and sorry it's falling apart, but let's not pretend this is equivalent to something like Kenshi, Songs of Syx, or Starsector where it's basically one dude working for himself getting sales exclusively through word-of-mouth until he has enough money to hire a few people.
For equal comparison, FromSoft is backed by Bandai-Namco, which is by no means a small company.
In fact, Zenimax (Bethesda's parent company) prior to the MS acquisition is probably smaller than either of them.
I feel everyone's forgetting that Sony owns the Helldivers IP. It's not like they could have released the game without them.
Edit: People think that I'm implying that they were stuck making Helldivers. Yes, they could have made a completely different game of a similar style, but Helldivers specifically is owned by Sony, which is the point of my comment, as I misunderstood the tweet and I originally thought it implied that AH could have just gone to someone else for HD2.
You could copy and paste Halo, Aliens or a lot of sci-fi IPs to the formula for Helldivers.
The magic isn’t the IP. It’s the gameplay Formula. The live service making it feel like a virtual war.
The actual Helldivers IP (characters, story, locations) aren’t the valuable part. It’s the formula of a MMO/PvE/FPS.
As soon as I heard of Helldivers, my first thought was of Helljumpers. If you never played Halo ODST, you might not know.
A lot of similarities.
The Pelican Drop ship. The way the you come down in a pod. This game screams Halo to me. But then again, Halo ripped off a lot from Aliens.
The formula for this game would work with so many IPs, it’s kinda ridiculous.
Sony really have a gold mine, that they are just squandering away.
Orbital drop pods are such an old sci fi concept I don’t even know where it originated first
It definitely wasn’t halo though, 40k for one had space marine and dreadnought orbital drop pods years earlier
I’m sure something had them before 40k though
I think that Starship Troopers (1959) and Forever War (1974) were the two big pieces of science-fiction media that really cemented the concept of the orbital drop pod. Power armor too, for that matter.
I don’t think it necessarily invented it, but I do think Starship Troopers the book codified a lot of that concept and trope. It’s interesting - Helldivers clearly pays homage to Starship Troopers the movie, but it’s a more faithful adaptation of the Mobile Infantry as described by Heinlein.
IIRC in _Starship Troopers_ by Heinlein the soldiers were put into power-assist suits and _then_ loaded into drop-pods. It always disappointed me that the film had zero mechs or power suits.
ODST was such a vibe, one of the most atmospheric Halos of all time, banger soundtrack (they all have good soundtracks to be honest), and such a unique campaign. I'm eagerly awaiting the helljumpers mod for infinite that's supposed to come out in a couple months.
The alternating back and forth between past/present with ODST was absolutely wild. For it to be a Halo game so far removed from 'you are the Master Chief' was also definitely an experience.
I wonder if Saber Interactive could make a mode like Helldivers 2 as a post-launch PvE mode for Space Marine 2. I'm still very hyped for Space Marine 2 because the main horde we're fighting this time around is the Tyranids, who are like the Terminids on steroids, and likely their inspiration. So have us drop in via space marine drop pods on battlefields against Tyranids, Necrons, Orks, Chaos Space Marines, and go nuts while completing objectives. It would be a good time if done right.
Some old Halo devs came out and said they pitched almost this exact game to the higher ups back when, but it got shot down.
Microsoft is letting the Halo IP languish. It's actually sad as hell how long of a leash 343 has had with it.
Spartan IIIs would be even better imo (especially the portrayal in the books). They were given crazy equipment and funding but sent on suicide missions, heavily outnumbered, intention to complete the objective at whatever cost in lives
GW seems to not renew licenses if a game underperforms. There's like six games I have in my library that people can't buy anymore because GW pulled them.
They started development almost a decade ago, this requirement was probably fairly recent and at that point it would have been suicide to try to pull out, and literally change everything to make a new game in the hope that Sony wouldn't sue them to the ground.
Asking a major publisher to fund a game of this magnitude, when your only work has been isometric top down games surely will lead to the same quality. Its all hindsight now cause the game was successful but it was never a slam dunk that this would pan out.
At the same time, they didn’t want to invent an entirely new IP for an already new gameplay formula, especially because they wanted to make sure their core player base stayed.
Additionally, the Helldivers IP is probably one of the major factors that rocketed the game to success. It’s such a hilarious yet engaging premise that it makes players invested in contributing to the community effort.
You think the hundreds of thousands of people who bought this game because of its IP? This games branding is basically starting from scratch because of how obscure the original game was. This could have just as easily been an entirely new IP.
Yea, the running joke w/ my friends was that Helldivers 2 made a better Starship Troopers game. And Starship Troopers wasn't even a bad game -- not GOTY, but not bad.
The real problem is money. Arrowhead maybe has "legally distinct Helldivers" kind of money now after how successful Helldivers 2 was, but they almost certainly didn't before. They've only previously developed four games, only two of which have even niche name recognition.
The game would‘ve had the same success if it was called „Planetdroppers“ and they fought for „The Republic“ of „Greater Earth“ against the „Bots“ and „Bugs“.
You think if Arrowhead broke ties with Sony and made "helljumpers," Sony's lawyers wouldn't have eaten them for breakfast?
I know everyone here wants there to have been a super easy way around this, but there wasn't.
They're nothing alike, so that's not surprising. I kind of wonder if people making Helldiver and ODST connections ever actually played ODST or know what their lore is.
The first was a free PS+ download when it came out and maintained a massive following. The second game wouldn't have been as big, but it still would have had a huge return player base.
Nah, Sony [trademarked](https://trademarks.justia.com/860/42/helldivers-86042209.html#:~:text=HELLDIVERS%20Trademark%20of%20SONY%20INTERACTIVE,Number%2086042209%20%3A%3A%20Justia%20Trademarks) it some time ago.
I forgot that trademarks and copyright are different, but here's a copyright for both [Helldivers on PS4](https://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=7&ti=1,7&Search%5FArg=Helldivers&Search%5FCode=TALL&CNT=25&PID=GlZqX2JPyqHonUIo4OjMXc9kVUuYa5hN&SEQ=20240505164715&SID=1) and [Helldivers 2](https://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=1&ti=1,1&Search%5FArg=Helldivers&Search%5FCode=TALL&CNT=25&PID=M1yiea3I9xSbj-OomZMy-8b0N7lN&SEQ=20240505165123&SID=1).
Look I'm a fan of HD1 and Magicka. I've enjoyed AH games for a long time, although I'm getting increasingly frustrated with how many ways they've dropped the ball with HD2. But its not like the HD1 brand was what turned HD2 into a wild success.
As was pointed out during the early server outages, HD1 all time player peak was 6,744. Sure there might be 20k people like me that had good memories of HD1 and bought HD2 because of that. But that's chump change in the end, the IP was worth very little when acquired, no need to act like they're locked in to the HD IP now.
i get what hes saying, but it doesnt seem like Arrowhead was in any way blindsided by the PSN bit there was just horrendously terrible communication with the playerbase about it leading to us being blindsided
There's a very clear chain of events that likely played out here:
1. Arrowhead agrees to Sony's 'mandatory PSN' signup prior to launch
2. Game comes out, ten times expected players, WORLD IS ON FIRE
3. CEO goes 'PSN is causing problems, turn that shit off and we'll figure it out later'
4. For three months, it's almost certainly 'all hands on deck' trying to keep up and bugfix while keeping to an agreed-upon schedule for content drops. PSN becomes an afterthought.
5. Sony rolls up: 'Later' is now 'now.'
6. Arrowhead: "....shit."
7. Players revolt.
It's one of those things where like - it's *totally reasonable* that people are mad about it. But so many people are playing this up like there's some deliberately shady, greedy conspiracy by Arrowhead and just want a moustache-twirling villain to be mad at.
Nah. This was regrettable, but understandable, human error. At least on their part. Sony can fuck themselves.
Or how the old saying goes: Never atribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. (or in this case, standard software industry shenanigans)
with his credentials i'm not surprised, but when the Apex hacking stuff was going on and he goes to introduce himself to some of the Apex pros it was hard not to cringe. dude really does sound like he's fellating himself going down the achievement list.
Eh, i see it alot on the field, alot of software engineering talks or conferences i've gone to, the speaker or whoever is the focus does a timeline of what they did or where they worked at.
And honestly, with the massive influx of developers and such nowadays, you kinda need to tell people why you are "special", or you're just another pandemic developer.
Yeah, everyone wants attention and everyone screams out, and the shit they're screaming out about takes a lot of effort to get competent at and recognize whether they scream bs or not...
So the industry standard became: hey, here I am, here what I did in the past, here's why I'm good at that and that's why I know what the fuck I'm about to talk about and you can take my word for it.
Through this whole thing, he *really* wasn't good about accuracy with information, and was pushing his anti-publisher agenda (no matter how valid) way too hard.
He leaned way too hard into "It was never communicated, it wasn't a requirement from launch, big bad Sony conspiracy, PS+ pushed on PC players" angle and it showed, particularly when he was straight *wrong* about many of his tweets and takes.
He's fun to watch and has a lot of good advice, but he really did fellate himself pretty hard about being consumer friendly on this one.
As if lawyers didn't look over the helldivers 2 contracts? I'd bet money permission to do what Sony's done was in every contract written, and just brushed off as not a big deal. I don't like what don't did but I'm under the impression this is a standard industry practice.
I get the impression the target audience for this tweet is solo or small team game devs who are in a position to get taken for a ride from various small time publishers.. similar to musicians who score their first “big record deal” only to discover it leaves them $50k in debt to Warner music and they no longer own anything about their one big hit.
People acting like it's no big deal to just head on over to the next AAA publisher and make a deal with them instead. Usually if you're small time, *any* AAA publisher agreeing to work with you is a massive deal.
This. Pirate may have been in the industry, but that still doesn't mean he knows what happened here. Clearly evident by the fact that the account linking decision came during development and not during initial talks.
There are some issues with some stuff he says if you dig deeper however. The whole "mr robot stole a hacker contest thing from defcon" turned out to be untrue for example (defcon people were consultants on the show lol). Same with how he represents his eve career. Dude is the epitome of "speak confidently" without verifying whether what is saying is true.
I don't think the Blizzard credentials are as impressive when you consider his dad was a dev at Blizzard from the beginning.
I too have been the beneficiary of nepotism in the job market. Doesn't mean his resume and skill set are in question, just that he potentially had an easier way in.
Government/DoD contracts are the lowest point in your life, not the peak lol.
They only sound cool on paper
(Nothing against this guy, I just have never heard someone refer to government work as their "peak" lol, especially with shit as bogged down as the DoE and DoD)
Yeah government contractors will typically hire anybody and everybody they can to throw on a contract and extract as much money as possible from the government. I've worked with some of the dumbest motherfuckers I have ever met while working on DoD contracts and would never go back to that life.
Just FYI Sony has been a good publisher.
Outside of reversing the Helldiver's situation because they listened to their fans, they also purchased Bungie to fund them while allowing them to continue independent development and cross-platform games, they published Stellar Blade to allow the mobile game company to burst into the AA gaming sphere, and published FromSoftware's best game without interfering with Bloodborne to make it more mainstream or accessible. Not to mention all of the first party games that they really only publish that get showered with awards and gamer devotion to the series.
They've had a good track record, this is an oddity that is exclusive to them biting off more than they can chew with their PC audience - an audience that already doesn't like them due to inferior ports and being a company that owns a console.
I know we like to pretend that consoles are devils and everyone is out to get us persecuted gamers, but that really isn't the case. This wasn't evil Sony preying upon a poor indie studio and their fans, this was Sony trying to integrate a game they published into their ecosystem, seeing it doesn't work, and reversing their decision. Not everything is a conspiracy.
I like the guy, but people acting like this is purely Sony’s fault are being disingenuous. The CEO of AH admitted to shutting off the requirement at launch due to the rough state of the game. He also admits to failing to properly tell every one of the requirement.
Sounds like the studio got swept up it their own success and kept putting it off hoping to find a solution before the problem got too big and sadly that didn’t happen.
I just hope they haven’t permanently fucked their relationship with their publisher.
I’ll be completely honest this guy always annoys me. Maybe he doesn’t mean to come off this way but he always sounds so arrogant and better than everyone else
For real. “Have lawyers review your contracts!” Yeah bro I’m sure Arrowhead just glanced it over and didn’t even bother to send it over to their lawyers before signing, that’s definitely a thing companies do.
In one of his previous streams where he talks about uninstalling helldiver's, he mentions that AH is also to blame cause these types of contracts are negotiated by lawyers. Now he mentions that you need to have the contracts read by a lawyer though not exactly directed at AH. I think he also asserted that AH was responsible for selling the game in countries not supported by PSN but the CEO cleared that up later. He should have couched his language better even if he is familiar with the industry. Occam's razor and all
He's an interesting one to me, because whenever I see the guy my red flag sense goes off, and I don't know why. It's just a weird vibe.
Like here, where he talks about starting a publishing house as a goal, like that's something you do on the weekend as a neat little side project, instead of the full time job for several years that it is.
You don't have "start publishing house" somewhere on your todo list next to your laundry and doing some programming. Either that's what you do, or it isn't.
After I learned his dad worked at blizzard and that was his “in”, it all made sense to me. I’m glad he’s speaking out against the bad actors in the gaming industry but that’s as far as I can go with acknowledging him
Yea, the gaming community is making this dude out like some omnipotent deity, he says he wants to start a publisher that will be totally superior to other publishers because he knows best how things should work in the gaming industry *eye roll*
I don’t expect anything from him I find it sad that people no matter what take he’s currently giving are like this is the correct take all hail pirate software. He called anyone trying to explain the side of AH in his chat a white knighter and he wasn’t having any of that.
Also anyone who uses the term white knight unironically gives me the ick and is a red flag. Haven’t run into anyone in the past decade who’s used that term in all seriousness and not had them turn out to be at least a little sketch.
He was calling out his own chat members that went over to Arrowhead's discord to bash Arrowhead based on what he had just said
"Don't white-knight for me" was the overarching point
Yeah, anybody who uses such broad, dismissive terms for anything in place of having to listen and respond in a civil, rational manner can kick rocks. It's completely antithetical to good faith talks and actual progress toward solutions.
Gotta ride the trend while its hot, feed the following.
Ignore the indecency shown to the people at AH, a small af studio instead of dog piling on Sony the multi-billion dollar company
ignore all the facts on who you should be mad at because AH made the mistake of having an open channel comms
Be mad.
The context here is the AH community manager on the Helldiver discord was shitting on players who were upset at the changes.
[Here](https://imgur.com/a/QRqtdkm)
[And here](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Falh5epn4a8yc1.png)
That's why Thor was trashing talking AH and saying he was done with them. And I mean, he's right.
Sony has owned the Helldivers IP since before 2015, before the first game even came out. It's not a case of the devs picking the wrong publisher. Without Sony there is no Helldivers.
Yep, I'd never heard of Helldivers before Helldivers 2 and I've put ~100 hours into it (which is chump change compared to some).
I don't play it for the IP. I play it because it's fun as fuck.
Ex-Blizzard dev (back when Blizzard made good games) that has gotten himself a huge following online for being a really kind hearted guy that posts motivational shorts online for game creators and people looking to do stuff in life and he streams like 12 hour days as well talking to people while he develops.
Correction here if you look at his indeed it wasn't exactly back when blizzard made good games, he worked on titles that did far worse to their community then asking you make a third party account. Which at his time all of blizzard did.
Sony walked back their PSN shit. Can we finally get this asshat’s takes off this sub? I can’t understand how we are liking this dude, when he has on numerous occasions shit on the game and developers themselves.
This community baffles me.
Bad take.
I wouldn’t work with someone who doesn’t seem to have an inkling of how anything works. Good luck to their future endeavors, hope they gain some business acumen before then.
I miss the days when artists, creators, and visionaries didn't have to make a deal with the Devil for their masterpieces. Goddamn shareholders and execs.
I do like Thor, his content is great and a lot of contains very good advice, but he's been... Really not great about spreading misinformation and *really* misinformed takes in this particular situation. The guy is a cybersecurity expert and *still* got details about personal data security, what is actually shared between linked accounts and how much data PSN accounts have completely wrong, for goodness sake. He didn't even get the cause or reasoning right, and leaned into the "it's a conspiracy by Sony" angle, despite that being provably, demonstrably false.
Like, he bemoans Sony's pathetic history with data protection, then immediately and conveniently forgot to mention that Steam is, by their own self-admission, *much worse* about it.
Take his stance with a grain of salt. While he's generally speaking on the side of consumers and players, he's very, *very* misinformed about the HD2 situation, and appears to be wilfully ignorant of new information just to push his biases.
Hooded Horse is such a publisher
Was going to make this comment. They only do strategy/sims but they literally have a clause written in their company manifesto that forbids the same line goes up/profit above everything mindset that is the default for most game publishers and actively harms the industry
A publisher that supports strategy games all while still retaining their humanity? Well fuck me sideways, time to go look up every game they've ever fondled lovingly i guess.
https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/HoodedHorse/
Against the Storm was my game of the year last year. It's fantastic on the steam deck.
That game had me locked in for DAYS. I absolutely loved how it worked. Roguelike demanding you switch up your playstyle with resource management and the music is Top tier.
Terra invicta is insanely good (i love realism)
Terra Invicta is my favourite hooded horse game. My favourite anecdote about the game is that it released *before* the in game start date, but only by like a month. I'm sure I wasn't the only one watching the skies when the alien crash date passed.
It also released full playable version, not just empty early access. And after that, all what they doing is basically polishing the game
This game confused the absolute shit out of me
that's what happen when games throws at you HOI4, XCOM, KSP, The expanse and Stellaris mixed all together at the same time
Same at first hahaha it has a massive entry curve.
I really need to try that game. It just seemed super confusing at first look.
It does a really fantastic job of slowly introducing mechanics and building upon itself as you unlock things, so as not to overwhelm you. They also somewhat recently added a psuedo-tutorial, with a character that explains different mechanics to you.
And I'm discovering that I already had a few of their games wishlisted already, hahaha. And lookie here, a whole lot more coming out this year that look fun as hell.
I'm literally playing Manor Lords right now!
How is it? Is it playable or should I wait a few more months
Its cheap now, but could do with some more time to cook. I've only played the intro scenario, but there's a tonne of potential. I am enjoying it, though. Its very chill.
Playable, but definitely early access. It definitely feels like there are some things missing, and there are some things that need improvement, but I'm having a blast. Limited content means I can churn through different strategies and see what works and what i like
Needs at least a few more years of development. It's very bare bones and has some fundamental issues (Markets/supplying goods to houses aren't really working like they should, for example), but the foundation is there for a really great game. As it's a solo developer it's a really impressive effort, but it also just means any progress is going to be sloooow.
Frontier Falling, Alliance of the sacred sun.. Dang, didn't know they had so many of my favorites.
Terra Invicta is my favorite, such a unique concept.
The thing about Terra Invicta is that it's definitely not for everyone, but if it's for you there's nothing else like it. For those not familiar: take a setting built on XCOM and The Expanse and throw it in with gameplay that's a mix of Kerbal Space Program and a Paradox grand strategy game.
There's quite nothing like being able to be decelerating towards your target, while constantly dropping missiles which will all arrive roughly at the same time (due to the drop in speed), allowing it to overwhelm the enemies point defenses (expanse is a good reference, as TI just uses relativistic spaceflight models).
Lol. Basically just said the same thing. I already own against the storm but now fragile existence is on my list
Ohh crap manor lords is on there!
Oh sick, I absolutely adore Against the Storm.
Nebulous Fleet Command is very raw and still in development but it's potential is frightening. Battlestar combat sim.
A perfect example of how if people like your company the line will go up on its own
I don’t play a ton of strategy, but Nebulous: Fleet Command (under Hooded Horse’s umbrella) is a ‘beaut.
Yeah its a shame they only do strat games because they could be a real shining star. But I respect wanting to stick to what you're good at/know.
Devolver too
Devolver is very good - Hotline Miami, Enter the Gungeon, Katana Zero, Loop Hero, Cult of the Lamb, Broforce…
Remnant: From The Ashes
My Friend Pedro
BROFORCE. I fixed it for you
Coffee Stain comes to mind for me. Granted I don't know much about them, but they're behind Deep Rock Galactic and Valheim which speaks for itself imo.
Satisfactory as well. I guess a tad different since it's also developed by their own in house studio. But also a fantastic game that has been in early access for a long time but is releasing 1.0 this year.
IIRC they started as a dev for Satisfactory, and the publishing house grew out of that. Which is the right way to do it, imo
They made Sanctum, Sanctum 2, and Goat Simulator years before Satisfactory. Sanctum is a *fantastic* FPS/Tower Defense game and I very badly want them to make a third one. EDIT: Sanctum *2* is fantastic; the first one is just OK.
I really wish I had the mind for these games, Terra Invicta and Nebulous fucking *speak* to me but I'm incapable of grasping them :|
Oh man Terra Invicta is so good. You boot it up and hover over the "Normal Speed" option, and it goes "this is the average campaign experience. It could take 100 hours to finish." which is INSANE. I play EU4 and that game doesn't even go that long. It's by the same people that made the Long War mod for XCOM and its absolutely incredible how it goes from espionage type gameplay fighting in the shadows to controlling armies to vying for control of the solar system. Nothing is quite like it but its so hard to learn. Its taking me forever to tackle but wow, I love every second of it. Failure feels good, lack of understanding feels good because it feels like its part of a bigger story due to the scale of it all. Even if there are parts I haven't reached yet.
I want to see Big Mode become such a publisher.
Dunkey is divisive and his insistence on direct involvement in the games they publish is... concerning.
I love Dunkey but he is not really cut out for that kind of a job. He has specific preferences and wants the stuff he likes to be in the games that he publishes.
Yup, Nebulous Fleet Command.
And New Blood Interactive
Unrelated I always forget how Helldivers 2 isn't a AAA game. Everytime I'm reminded I have a mini existential crisis 😭
it was made by a small studio of about 120 people For a game this scale, and with a roadmap like it has, thats nuts.
120 people is not a small studio anymore. For comparison, Skyrim was made by a team of about 100 people.
It was also bankrolled by a trillion-dollar entertainment giant. A lot of what makes Indie "indie" is their budget. Having Sony basically take care of the marketing for you probably helps.
They also had 10 years between games. Sony was clearly paying them money during that time.
Sony isn't worth anywhere near a trillion dollars.
What makes indie “indie” is the fact that they are independent.
The IP is Sony's and so is the studio funding. They're indie in name only until they're no longer bound by contract with Sony.
Ah yes, the struggling mom-and-pop publisher Sony
Just how big do you think Sony is?
this 100-120 count of people working on a game seems to do a lot of good for it...
Guy who has only seen The Boss Baby, watching his second movie: Getting a lot of 'Boss Baby' vibes from this…
It was produced by a larger studio than Skyrim. Fromsoft cranked out Elden Ring and Armored Core 6 simultaneously with about twice as many people. They also had Sony money behind them. Did you miss the massive ad campaign and huge number of sponsored streams and videos? Or how they went a decade between games with no public funding? I'm glad it blew up and sorry it's falling apart, but let's not pretend this is equivalent to something like Kenshi, Songs of Syx, or Starsector where it's basically one dude working for himself getting sales exclusively through word-of-mouth until he has enough money to hire a few people.
For equal comparison, FromSoft is backed by Bandai-Namco, which is by no means a small company. In fact, Zenimax (Bethesda's parent company) prior to the MS acquisition is probably smaller than either of them.
Successful games kicked off by one-man teams with no marketing budget warm the cockles of my heart. Like, most of the cockles.. possibly all of them.
I feel everyone's forgetting that Sony owns the Helldivers IP. It's not like they could have released the game without them. Edit: People think that I'm implying that they were stuck making Helldivers. Yes, they could have made a completely different game of a similar style, but Helldivers specifically is owned by Sony, which is the point of my comment, as I misunderstood the tweet and I originally thought it implied that AH could have just gone to someone else for HD2.
You could copy and paste Halo, Aliens or a lot of sci-fi IPs to the formula for Helldivers. The magic isn’t the IP. It’s the gameplay Formula. The live service making it feel like a virtual war. The actual Helldivers IP (characters, story, locations) aren’t the valuable part. It’s the formula of a MMO/PvE/FPS.
ODST-Divers just makes too much sense
As soon as I heard of Helldivers, my first thought was of Helljumpers. If you never played Halo ODST, you might not know. A lot of similarities. The Pelican Drop ship. The way the you come down in a pod. This game screams Halo to me. But then again, Halo ripped off a lot from Aliens. The formula for this game would work with so many IPs, it’s kinda ridiculous. Sony really have a gold mine, that they are just squandering away.
Orbital drop pods are such an old sci fi concept I don’t even know where it originated first It definitely wasn’t halo though, 40k for one had space marine and dreadnought orbital drop pods years earlier I’m sure something had them before 40k though
I think that Starship Troopers (1959) and Forever War (1974) were the two big pieces of science-fiction media that really cemented the concept of the orbital drop pod. Power armor too, for that matter.
I don’t think it necessarily invented it, but I do think Starship Troopers the book codified a lot of that concept and trope. It’s interesting - Helldivers clearly pays homage to Starship Troopers the movie, but it’s a more faithful adaptation of the Mobile Infantry as described by Heinlein.
IIRC in _Starship Troopers_ by Heinlein the soldiers were put into power-assist suits and _then_ loaded into drop-pods. It always disappointed me that the film had zero mechs or power suits.
Starship Troopers (1959) starts with orbital drop pods fired out of a cannon and shuttle pickup in the first chapter
There's actually a Helljumpers mod for Infinite that's been in the works by a bunch of Forge veterans (Forge Falcons, if you want to look it up).
ODST was such a vibe, one of the most atmospheric Halos of all time, banger soundtrack (they all have good soundtracks to be honest), and such a unique campaign. I'm eagerly awaiting the helljumpers mod for infinite that's supposed to come out in a couple months.
The alternating back and forth between past/present with ODST was absolutely wild. For it to be a Halo game so far removed from 'you are the Master Chief' was also definitely an experience.
Freakin' Warhammer 40K, dude! I'd kill for that game.
I wonder if Saber Interactive could make a mode like Helldivers 2 as a post-launch PvE mode for Space Marine 2. I'm still very hyped for Space Marine 2 because the main horde we're fighting this time around is the Tyranids, who are like the Terminids on steroids, and likely their inspiration. So have us drop in via space marine drop pods on battlefields against Tyranids, Necrons, Orks, Chaos Space Marines, and go nuts while completing objectives. It would be a good time if done right.
Some old Halo devs came out and said they pitched almost this exact game to the higher ups back when, but it got shot down. Microsoft is letting the Halo IP languish. It's actually sad as hell how long of a leash 343 has had with it.
Fuck, imagine if they went with Microsoft instead.... I'd go broke buying spartan and ODST cosmetics.
AH already said they want to keep their game as original as possible.
Spartan IIIs would be even better imo (especially the portrayal in the books). They were given crazy equipment and funding but sent on suicide missions, heavily outnumbered, intention to complete the objective at whatever cost in lives
The HD formula would be great for a Warhammer 40K game...but then you'd have to interact with GW....still I'd love to see such a game.
Iirc it started life as a 40k game and GW backed out.
Man how many time did GW drop the ball
Would be hilarious if that was the case because that's how StarCraft got started
Starcraft AND warcraft. GW really dropped the ball into a volcano on that one.
GW seems to not renew licenses if a game underperforms. There's like six games I have in my library that people can't buy anymore because GW pulled them.
They started development almost a decade ago, this requirement was probably fairly recent and at that point it would have been suicide to try to pull out, and literally change everything to make a new game in the hope that Sony wouldn't sue them to the ground.
Asking a major publisher to fund a game of this magnitude, when your only work has been isometric top down games surely will lead to the same quality. Its all hindsight now cause the game was successful but it was never a slam dunk that this would pan out.
At the same time, they didn’t want to invent an entirely new IP for an already new gameplay formula, especially because they wanted to make sure their core player base stayed. Additionally, the Helldivers IP is probably one of the major factors that rocketed the game to success. It’s such a hilarious yet engaging premise that it makes players invested in contributing to the community effort.
You think the hundreds of thousands of people who bought this game because of its IP? This games branding is basically starting from scratch because of how obscure the original game was. This could have just as easily been an entirely new IP.
The game's branding is already Legally Distinct Starship Troopers
Yea, the running joke w/ my friends was that Helldivers 2 made a better Starship Troopers game. And Starship Troopers wasn't even a bad game -- not GOTY, but not bad.
The real problem is money. Arrowhead maybe has "legally distinct Helldivers" kind of money now after how successful Helldivers 2 was, but they almost certainly didn't before. They've only previously developed four games, only two of which have even niche name recognition.
The game would‘ve had the same success if it was called „Planetdroppers“ and they fought for „The Republic“ of „Greater Earth“ against the „Bots“ and „Bugs“.
You think if Arrowhead broke ties with Sony and made "helljumpers," Sony's lawyers wouldn't have eaten them for breakfast? I know everyone here wants there to have been a super easy way around this, but there wasn't.
such subtle matter of law is why lawyer is a profession. but It's not like Microsoft can sue Sony for infringing on ODST either.
They're nothing alike, so that's not surprising. I kind of wonder if people making Helldiver and ODST connections ever actually played ODST or know what their lore is.
If WotC couldn't successfully sue Pathfinder I doubt Sony could stop someone else from also ripping off Starship Troopers.
The first was a free PS+ download when it came out and maintained a massive following. The second game wouldn't have been as big, but it still would have had a huge return player base.
I thought arrowhead owns the IP and sony was just the publisher/money bags
Nah, Sony [trademarked](https://trademarks.justia.com/860/42/helldivers-86042209.html#:~:text=HELLDIVERS%20Trademark%20of%20SONY%20INTERACTIVE,Number%2086042209%20%3A%3A%20Justia%20Trademarks) it some time ago.
Time to make the totally legally distinct Helljumpers
Hadesfallers
Heckfallers
Hellfellas
Would buy the game for the name alone
Honestly the name alone is enough to sell it to me.
Fallguys
Ironically enough, there's a Forge-based PvE mode coming to Halo Infinite next month called Helljumpers, which is a Helldivers clone.
NotHeavenDownwardJumpers
wait, they trademarked the game but does that mean they only own the name or the whole IP ?
Pilestedt has confirmed Sony owns the IP
But basically AH created the IP? Sounds like their original agreement gave all their work to Sony.
Exactly how the music industry works.
I forgot that trademarks and copyright are different, but here's a copyright for both [Helldivers on PS4](https://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=7&ti=1,7&Search%5FArg=Helldivers&Search%5FCode=TALL&CNT=25&PID=GlZqX2JPyqHonUIo4OjMXc9kVUuYa5hN&SEQ=20240505164715&SID=1) and [Helldivers 2](https://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=1&ti=1,1&Search%5FArg=Helldivers&Search%5FCode=TALL&CNT=25&PID=M1yiea3I9xSbj-OomZMy-8b0N7lN&SEQ=20240505165123&SID=1).
yes yes but it's the devs work we are enjoying. not Sony. but it's a sad truth.
Look I'm a fan of HD1 and Magicka. I've enjoyed AH games for a long time, although I'm getting increasingly frustrated with how many ways they've dropped the ball with HD2. But its not like the HD1 brand was what turned HD2 into a wild success. As was pointed out during the early server outages, HD1 all time player peak was 6,744. Sure there might be 20k people like me that had good memories of HD1 and bought HD2 because of that. But that's chump change in the end, the IP was worth very little when acquired, no need to act like they're locked in to the HD IP now.
i get what hes saying, but it doesnt seem like Arrowhead was in any way blindsided by the PSN bit there was just horrendously terrible communication with the playerbase about it leading to us being blindsided
There's a very clear chain of events that likely played out here: 1. Arrowhead agrees to Sony's 'mandatory PSN' signup prior to launch 2. Game comes out, ten times expected players, WORLD IS ON FIRE 3. CEO goes 'PSN is causing problems, turn that shit off and we'll figure it out later' 4. For three months, it's almost certainly 'all hands on deck' trying to keep up and bugfix while keeping to an agreed-upon schedule for content drops. PSN becomes an afterthought. 5. Sony rolls up: 'Later' is now 'now.' 6. Arrowhead: "....shit." 7. Players revolt. It's one of those things where like - it's *totally reasonable* that people are mad about it. But so many people are playing this up like there's some deliberately shady, greedy conspiracy by Arrowhead and just want a moustache-twirling villain to be mad at. Nah. This was regrettable, but understandable, human error. At least on their part. Sony can fuck themselves.
Or how the old saying goes: Never atribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. (or in this case, standard software industry shenanigans)
Arrowhead didn’t approach Sony for Helldivers.
Regardless of name you should look him up. He does genuine good shit and is a true OG in game development and management
And sometimes sucks his own cock a bit too much lmao, but he is a pretty good figure to follow when it comes to these topics
with his credentials i'm not surprised, but when the Apex hacking stuff was going on and he goes to introduce himself to some of the Apex pros it was hard not to cringe. dude really does sound like he's fellating himself going down the achievement list.
Eh, i see it alot on the field, alot of software engineering talks or conferences i've gone to, the speaker or whoever is the focus does a timeline of what they did or where they worked at. And honestly, with the massive influx of developers and such nowadays, you kinda need to tell people why you are "special", or you're just another pandemic developer.
Yeah, everyone wants attention and everyone screams out, and the shit they're screaming out about takes a lot of effort to get competent at and recognize whether they scream bs or not... So the industry standard became: hey, here I am, here what I did in the past, here's why I'm good at that and that's why I know what the fuck I'm about to talk about and you can take my word for it.
Through this whole thing, he *really* wasn't good about accuracy with information, and was pushing his anti-publisher agenda (no matter how valid) way too hard. He leaned way too hard into "It was never communicated, it wasn't a requirement from launch, big bad Sony conspiracy, PS+ pushed on PC players" angle and it showed, particularly when he was straight *wrong* about many of his tweets and takes. He's fun to watch and has a lot of good advice, but he really did fellate himself pretty hard about being consumer friendly on this one.
As if lawyers didn't look over the helldivers 2 contracts? I'd bet money permission to do what Sony's done was in every contract written, and just brushed off as not a big deal. I don't like what don't did but I'm under the impression this is a standard industry practice.
I get the impression the target audience for this tweet is solo or small team game devs who are in a position to get taken for a ride from various small time publishers.. similar to musicians who score their first “big record deal” only to discover it leaves them $50k in debt to Warner music and they no longer own anything about their one big hit.
People acting like it's no big deal to just head on over to the next AAA publisher and make a deal with them instead. Usually if you're small time, *any* AAA publisher agreeing to work with you is a massive deal.
I feel like this is some 20/20 hindsight stuff to blame AH for saddling up with Sony, not knowing they were going to do something insanely stupid.
This. Pirate may have been in the industry, but that still doesn't mean he knows what happened here. Clearly evident by the fact that the account linking decision came during development and not during initial talks.
You know you're fucked up when someone named "Pirate Software" calls you out for being a scumbag
Thor is pretty well respected at this point. His credentials from Blizzard are no joke, even if his name is amusing :D
Also the south park WoW guy is based on his dad lol
 …for real?
Yep, I was surprised too! His father worked on WoW and with South Park for the episode
According to him, it [literally is](https://youtube.com/shorts/PqkpyoVXEUk) his dad
Yep. Not based on, it is his dad, in their old apartment.
There are some issues with some stuff he says if you dig deeper however. The whole "mr robot stole a hacker contest thing from defcon" turned out to be untrue for example (defcon people were consultants on the show lol). Same with how he represents his eve career. Dude is the epitome of "speak confidently" without verifying whether what is saying is true.
His credentials from blizzard aren't even the peak. Working for the government and nuclear power plants as a pen tester and shit whats wild to me.
I don't think the Blizzard credentials are as impressive when you consider his dad was a dev at Blizzard from the beginning. I too have been the beneficiary of nepotism in the job market. Doesn't mean his resume and skill set are in question, just that he potentially had an easier way in.
Government/DoD contracts are the lowest point in your life, not the peak lol. They only sound cool on paper (Nothing against this guy, I just have never heard someone refer to government work as their "peak" lol, especially with shit as bogged down as the DoE and DoD)
Yeah government contractors will typically hire anybody and everybody they can to throw on a contract and extract as much money as possible from the government. I've worked with some of the dumbest motherfuckers I have ever met while working on DoD contracts and would never go back to that life.
Just FYI Sony has been a good publisher. Outside of reversing the Helldiver's situation because they listened to their fans, they also purchased Bungie to fund them while allowing them to continue independent development and cross-platform games, they published Stellar Blade to allow the mobile game company to burst into the AA gaming sphere, and published FromSoftware's best game without interfering with Bloodborne to make it more mainstream or accessible. Not to mention all of the first party games that they really only publish that get showered with awards and gamer devotion to the series. They've had a good track record, this is an oddity that is exclusive to them biting off more than they can chew with their PC audience - an audience that already doesn't like them due to inferior ports and being a company that owns a console. I know we like to pretend that consoles are devils and everyone is out to get us persecuted gamers, but that really isn't the case. This wasn't evil Sony preying upon a poor indie studio and their fans, this was Sony trying to integrate a game they published into their ecosystem, seeing it doesn't work, and reversing their decision. Not everything is a conspiracy.
The Goblin Lord has spoken! All hail Thor, Goblin Lord!
I like the guy, but people acting like this is purely Sony’s fault are being disingenuous. The CEO of AH admitted to shutting off the requirement at launch due to the rough state of the game. He also admits to failing to properly tell every one of the requirement. Sounds like the studio got swept up it their own success and kept putting it off hoping to find a solution before the problem got too big and sadly that didn’t happen. I just hope they haven’t permanently fucked their relationship with their publisher.
I’ll be completely honest this guy always annoys me. Maybe he doesn’t mean to come off this way but he always sounds so arrogant and better than everyone else
For real. “Have lawyers review your contracts!” Yeah bro I’m sure Arrowhead just glanced it over and didn’t even bother to send it over to their lawyers before signing, that’s definitely a thing companies do.
In one of his previous streams where he talks about uninstalling helldiver's, he mentions that AH is also to blame cause these types of contracts are negotiated by lawyers. Now he mentions that you need to have the contracts read by a lawyer though not exactly directed at AH. I think he also asserted that AH was responsible for selling the game in countries not supported by PSN but the CEO cleared that up later. He should have couched his language better even if he is familiar with the industry. Occam's razor and all
He look like the type of person who sound like I can fix better than you type
It's completely exhausting.
He's an interesting one to me, because whenever I see the guy my red flag sense goes off, and I don't know why. It's just a weird vibe. Like here, where he talks about starting a publishing house as a goal, like that's something you do on the weekend as a neat little side project, instead of the full time job for several years that it is. You don't have "start publishing house" somewhere on your todo list next to your laundry and doing some programming. Either that's what you do, or it isn't.
After I learned his dad worked at blizzard and that was his “in”, it all made sense to me. I’m glad he’s speaking out against the bad actors in the gaming industry but that’s as far as I can go with acknowledging him
Started from the bottom the same way everyone did: by having his dad get him a job at a a AAA developer.
Yea, the gaming community is making this dude out like some omnipotent deity, he says he wants to start a publisher that will be totally superior to other publishers because he knows best how things should work in the gaming industry *eye roll*
He just blows hot air cuz his Dad worked at blizzard and he "cracked the youtube shorts code"
Which is funny because at the start of this he was trash talking AH and saying he wipes his hands clean of them and HD2 on his stream.
he's a streamer what do you expect lol
I don’t expect anything from him I find it sad that people no matter what take he’s currently giving are like this is the correct take all hail pirate software. He called anyone trying to explain the side of AH in his chat a white knighter and he wasn’t having any of that. Also anyone who uses the term white knight unironically gives me the ick and is a red flag. Haven’t run into anyone in the past decade who’s used that term in all seriousness and not had them turn out to be at least a little sketch.
Let me turn my compressor to max on my mic and draw a paint diagram to tell you how right I am from my pedestal!
He was calling out his own chat members that went over to Arrowhead's discord to bash Arrowhead based on what he had just said "Don't white-knight for me" was the overarching point
Yeah, anybody who uses such broad, dismissive terms for anything in place of having to listen and respond in a civil, rational manner can kick rocks. It's completely antithetical to good faith talks and actual progress toward solutions.
Gotta ride the trend while its hot, feed the following. Ignore the indecency shown to the people at AH, a small af studio instead of dog piling on Sony the multi-billion dollar company ignore all the facts on who you should be mad at because AH made the mistake of having an open channel comms Be mad.
The context here is the AH community manager on the Helldiver discord was shitting on players who were upset at the changes. [Here](https://imgur.com/a/QRqtdkm) [And here](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Falh5epn4a8yc1.png) That's why Thor was trashing talking AH and saying he was done with them. And I mean, he's right.
I like Thor but at the end of the day he is a streamer, and sometimes his takes are a bit over dramatic. he also isn't always right.
Sony has owned the Helldivers IP since before 2015, before the first game even came out. It's not a case of the devs picking the wrong publisher. Without Sony there is no Helldivers.
People didnt buy the game because of the name
Without Helldivers 1, there is no Helldivers 2.
Yep, I'd never heard of Helldivers before Helldivers 2 and I've put ~100 hours into it (which is chump change compared to some). I don't play it for the IP. I play it because it's fun as fuck.
Why do people keep saying this lol? Oh my lord it’s just comical at this point.
Who is this?
The only good publisher I can think of is bigmode. I forgot the rest because of amnesia
Coffeestain published Deep Rock Galactic and Valheim iirc
Also Satisfactory and Goat Simulator!
What about Devolver digital?
Devolver my beloved They always publish some of the coolest and most unique looking games
Dude, no offence, I love Dunkey, but he still haven't published a game yet, how can you say it's the only good publisher lol
Because of amnesia
New Blood is great too.
New Blood Interactive too
I had ChatGPT also write "is a grim reminder of the pitfalls". I'm all for ChatGPT as a writing aid, but it is so damn repetitive.
This guy literally says the most common sense shit so his streams chat will go “TRUE”
That is an overreaction. The game isn't dead.
Doesnt asmon Gold do something like that An publisher/sponsor for Indies
Who is pirate software and why should I care?
Ex-Blizzard dev (back when Blizzard made good games) that has gotten himself a huge following online for being a really kind hearted guy that posts motivational shorts online for game creators and people looking to do stuff in life and he streams like 12 hour days as well talking to people while he develops.
Correction here if you look at his indeed it wasn't exactly back when blizzard made good games, he worked on titles that did far worse to their community then asking you make a third party account. Which at his time all of blizzard did.
[удалено]
Coffee stain>>>>>
Sony walked back their PSN shit. Can we finally get this asshat’s takes off this sub? I can’t understand how we are liking this dude, when he has on numerous occasions shit on the game and developers themselves. This community baffles me.
Clearly pirate software doesn't know shit because Sony owns helldivers IP not AH
Bad take. I wouldn’t work with someone who doesn’t seem to have an inkling of how anything works. Good luck to their future endeavors, hope they gain some business acumen before then.
Anyone else read this in his voice?
Pirate software, dude. I dont think I've ever seen or heard a bad thing from them.
The dude must not know that they didn’t make it a stipulation until like 6 months before release.
I miss the days when artists, creators, and visionaries didn't have to make a deal with the Devil for their masterpieces. Goddamn shareholders and execs.
Lol gutted is a stretch.
"sony gut helldivers 2" you mean after 3 months ask AH to hold up their end of the contract re: PSN account requirements?
I do like Thor, his content is great and a lot of contains very good advice, but he's been... Really not great about spreading misinformation and *really* misinformed takes in this particular situation. The guy is a cybersecurity expert and *still* got details about personal data security, what is actually shared between linked accounts and how much data PSN accounts have completely wrong, for goodness sake. He didn't even get the cause or reasoning right, and leaned into the "it's a conspiracy by Sony" angle, despite that being provably, demonstrably false. Like, he bemoans Sony's pathetic history with data protection, then immediately and conveniently forgot to mention that Steam is, by their own self-admission, *much worse* about it. Take his stance with a grain of salt. While he's generally speaking on the side of consumers and players, he's very, *very* misinformed about the HD2 situation, and appears to be wilfully ignorant of new information just to push his biases.