Helldivers 2 is setting a new standard for live storytelling, and not a little of that is how the game's fiction has bled-over into the online interactions between Arrowhead Game Studios and the playerbase.
This found spectacular expression last week after the game's first real misstep, a Sony-mandated account linking requirement, saw Helldivers collectively organise and (what else) review bomb their own beloved game on Steam in an effort to get the situation reversed.
There is something apposite in the Helldivers themselves, albeit metaphorically, hitting upon an explosive solution: even more fitting is that it actually worked.
Helldivers 2 has been a huge success for Sony as a simultaneous PC release, already its seventh highest-grossing game ever in the US, and this concerted pushback clearly caught the publisher off-guard.
After a brief doubling down on the requirement, Sony abandoned it: for now, at least. The Helldivers surveyed the wreckage, and it was good.