Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead is making the most of the weekend’s PSN account linking drama. After being review-bombed on Steam harder than your poor teammate with an Orbital Barrage, Arrowhead seems pretty keen on fan cape designs to commemorate the fall (and re-rise) of the game’s review scores.
Taking to X (formerly Twitter), Helldivers 2 Creative Director and Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt shared a “pretty cool,” albeit “accidental,” cape design from a community member – featuring four red lines from the game’s recent reviews graph on a Steam blue background.
In the comments section, Pilestedt said the “team is talking about a good name” for the tongue-in-cheek Helldivers 2 cape design “right now,” so it looks like Arrowhead is pretty keen to create another niche in-joke for the community in the wake of a frankly nightmarish weekend for the game. Some suggested dubbing it “Held The Line” in reference to the community’s “willpower.”
When asked if the Helldivers 2 cape design would be free, Pilestedt jokingly suggested it would be “$999.99 easy,” before confirming that “ofc it will be free.”
Helldivers 2 fans were quick to share their own cape designs now that Sony has backtracked on PC players requiring a linked PSN account to play. The bit fed over to Reddit, where one fan shared a hi-res concept for a design called “The Prodigal Son.” Sticking with the plummeting Steam review theme, the cape’s description reads: “The cape’s cropped length symbolises the brevity of galactic conflicts, thanks to the efficiency of the Helldivers.”
The blue arrow in the Reddit design is a reference to “Operation Cleanup,” an effort from the Helldivers 2 community to reverse the negative review scores on Steam, which dropped to “Overwhelmingly Negative” over the weekend. The operation so far has managed to bump recent reviews back up into “Mixed” territory, with over 60,000 additional reviews since yesterday aiming to shore up the game’s score.
Helldivers 2 is still recovering from the drama of the weekend, which saw Arrowhead and Sony announce that PC players would have to link a PSN account in order to continue playing beyond May. This led to a major backlash as players demanded refunds despite clocking hundreds of in-game hours, and saw the title removed from sale in 177 countries and territories without access to PSN. Given the major pushback from the community, PlayStation rolled back the decision yesterday – a victory greater than that against the Automaton menace.
Arrowhead is no stranger to committing to the bit when it comes to Helldivers 2, and the cape design is another example of some pretty solid community management on the developer’s behalf. While some players are still cautious given Steam doesn’t appear to have added the game back to the restricted countries, things seem to be looking up for 2024’s smash hit.
Image: Arrowhead Studios / PlayStation / mjbga04 on Reddit / Kotaku Australia
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