It's been a rough few days for Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead. Seemingly blindsided by Sony's attempt to restore the requirement for Steam players to link their game to a PlayStation Network account (which was suspended at launch due to the game's extensive technical issues), the studio has seen its game subject to a ferocious review bombing campaign, with its recent review score dropping to an «Overwhelmingly Negative» rating.
Now though, the crisis is over. Sony has walked back its plans to force PSN accounts onto Steam players, and those negative steam reviews are slowly being flipped to positive (though the game's recent review rating remains at «Mostly Negative»).
It seems Arrowhead hasn't lost its sense of humour over the debacle either. Following up a tweet about how «impressed» he was by the willpower of the Helldivers 2 community, Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt shared an «accidental» cape design based on the game's recent avalanche of negative reviews.
Also, the accidental cape design is pretty cool. From a community member. pic.twitter.com/7LQZA6RekwMay 6, 2024 Created by a community member, the cape 'design' is based upon the three red lines from Helldivers 2's recent reviews graph, which, when isolated from the rest of the graph against Steam's blueish background, looks just like the kind of cape typically worn by Helldivers 2's fascist cannon fodder.
Sharing the cape design, Pilestedt remarked that it was «pretty cool». Already in a jubilant mode having convinced Sony to reverse course, the Helldivers 2 community is naturally all for the cape design becoming a real thing. «Do it Pilestedt, it would be a genius play!» wrote reddit user Connect_Atmosphere80 on Reddit, while ObsidianFireg commented «I would wear it would you?» Some community members have even been sharing their own designed based on the review graph, such as this one on reddit, and another below shared in reply to Pilestedt's tweet.