Second - Helldivers ain’t Flappy Bird. Making an online multiplayer game that needs the ability to do reliable matchmaking across multiple platforms with hundreds of thousands of players out there needs MASSIVE network and infrastructure support…
So you may say “don’t take money from the mob,” but this is more a situation of where if they HADN’T taken Sony’s support, they likely wouldn’t have been able to have the resources to have done all that themselves which could have made the difference between their great success and failure.
Remember that the first helldivers game was also a Sony published title where everything worked out fine for everyone then… but mostly because it wasn’t near as big a success story and making headlines but was instead a far more niche title lost mostly in the noise of smaller dev Sony titles.
I’m sure arrowhead has learned its lesson now and it will likely able probably to flex its muscles in the future thanks to its success financially - as I’m sure lots of publishers will be now coming at them with much more lucrative and favorable contract deals going forward, but they probably would not have been able to do what they wanted to do at the scale that they have been able to had Sony not been there to help provide that initial capital and infrastructure support.
This is Sony’s fault fully. The guys at Arrowhead are just wanting to have the means to make good games. They needed the resources to launch successfully and pretending it would have been feasible otherwise without said resources is sadly… naive.
The lesson we learn here is that you don’t take money from the mob.
Don’t go public with youre company.
Don’t get involved with the devil.
Said this in another thread :
First off - yes Sony is in the wrong.
Second - Helldivers ain’t Flappy Bird. Making an online multiplayer game that needs the ability to do reliable matchmaking across multiple platforms with hundreds of thousands of players out there needs MASSIVE network and infrastructure support…
So you may say “don’t take money from the mob,” but this is more a situation of where if they HADN’T taken Sony’s support, they likely wouldn’t have been able to have the resources to have done all that themselves which could have made the difference between their great success and failure.
Remember that the first helldivers game was also a Sony published title where everything worked out fine for everyone then… but mostly because it wasn’t near as big a success story and making headlines but was instead a far more niche title lost mostly in the noise of smaller dev Sony titles.
I’m sure arrowhead has learned its lesson now and it will likely able probably to flex its muscles in the future thanks to its success financially - as I’m sure lots of publishers will be now coming at them with much more lucrative and favorable contract deals going forward, but they probably would not have been able to do what they wanted to do at the scale that they have been able to had Sony not been there to help provide that initial capital and infrastructure support.
This is Sony’s fault fully. The guys at Arrowhead are just wanting to have the means to make good games. They needed the resources to launch successfully and pretending it would have been feasible otherwise without said resources is sadly… naive.