Good morning everyone. It is I, Scrooloose, and once again it's time to do a WRUP. It's a beautiful Saturday morning and soon it'll busy AF for my entire day as I'm hosting a BBQ this evening and I also need to grocery shop for said BBQ. Okay let's go right to it.
I'd like to start by correcting something I said in last weeks WRUP about Johan Pilestedt advocating for the downvotes to Helldivers 2. I was under the impression he was giving the green light to the community in order to fight back against the PSN linking and that whole fiasco. To be clear, I misinformed myself here. Nobody else is at fault. In fact the person who was advocating for the downvotes was a community manager called "Spitz".
Going a bit further into this, Spitz has since been let go from Arrowhead Studios. In a quote given to Gamesradar, Spitz says "...I knew I was taking a risk with what I said about refunding and changing reviews. I stand by it. It was my job to represent the community, that's what I did." They went to say that working for Arrowhead was a great opportunity and that if things had worked out differently they'd gladly still be there. That's a hero move, Spitz and I salute your integrity. There's a very real possibility that without this encouragement things would have came out differently. There's since been a community outcry to have Spitz brought back and perhaps we'll see more of this as the days go on.
Of course soon after all the downvoting and review bombing, Sony decided to back off and cancel the mandatory PSN account linking. They posted a statement and things began to correct course.
The problem with Helldivers 2 being de-listed from Steam in 177 countries is still being dealt with now. This occurred because those countries don't have access to PSN and with plans making Helldivers 2 playable only by linking accounts suddenly alienated those regions. This is a huge part of what sparked the controversy in the first place and as of now players in these countries are still unable to purchase Helldivers 2. Refunds were handed out pretty openly to the credit of Valve, but now of course this is unnecessary. So what happens to folks who decide they want to play again if or when Helldivers 2 is re-listed on Steam in their country? Do they have to start over after losing dozens of hours? Some save data is stored on the users PC but stats are tracked on Sonys servers. I guess it all remains to be seen.
Johan Pilestedt has said that he is pushing for global reinstatement so everyone can play again. And this time I'm right about who said what ><. Here's more from PCgamesn.
Asus seems to be at it again with some super weird customer support issues that border on straight up scamming consumers. GamersNexus has come through again with a sort of consumer report video about sending one of their own hand held devices in for a warranty repair. In the video you'll see that the left stick has lost some functionality and begun to drift heavily. Also present is an SD card reader that apparently never worked. Both issues should be covered by warranty, but what ensues is bafflingly bad communication that turns into what feels like a ransom demand. Here's the link to GamersNexus YouTube. I recommend watching the entire video and if you've had a similar issue with ASUS follow the prompts GN give at the end because they want to know about, record and possibly use redacted statements for case files.
Okay that's it for me this weekend. I need to eat, work out, get cleaned up and go get this shindig supplied. Oh and I'm going to se Afro Man tomorrow at a local pub here in my tiny ass town. Have a great one guys.
We're playing stuff
Greywolfe: ok. well. more midnight suns. i'm actually on the story path now. but it also insists that between story missions, i do side missions and that's just all the frustration in one place right there. midnight suns is a passable game that has no respect for the player's time at all.
AJ: I recently picked up Samba de Amigo: Party Central for the Switch so I may try that out, along with New Star GP, which I just downloaded for PS4 (on PS5).
Scrooloose: I'm going to be spreading more democracy in Helldivers 2. Hopefully I'll be winding down Horizon Forbidden West as well. I'm deep into Burning Shores so it depends on how long that takes. I really would like to get a real start on Pacific Drive. I've been pushing that back for too long now and with Ghost of Tsushima coming pretty dang soon I would like to have room to get into that.