Recent updates
May 9: As expected, players voted not to delay the warbond, and it's out now.
Temperatures have chilled in the Helldivers 2 barracks since this weekend's PSN account linking meltdown that saw an influx of 200,000+ negative reviews on the best-selling game of the year.
Sony backed down from its unpopular decision, and Helldivers 2's Steam rating is steadily recovering, but Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt is worried about opening up fresh wounds by going through with tomorrow's scheduled release of the Polar Patriots premium warbond, a $10 DLC pack that adds three new armor sets, guns, and other cosmetics to the game. The most democratic course of action, the CEO figures, is putting it to a vote.
"With the negative sentiment around account linking, a concern from the team came up about 'is it tone deaf to release a new (paid) warbond this soon?'" Pilestedt tweeted today. "And therefore we are putting it to a real vote in true democratic fashion."
The poll, which is live now and ends Thursday in the early morning hours in the US, has two options: "Release tomorrow" or "Delay release." With over 50,000 votes submitted so far, "Release tomorrow" has a healthy 74% lead.
As you can see, I voted tomorrow as well. Not to try to sway the vote—I'm just excited for new guns—but I'm not surprised by the early lead. The majority of the PSN linkage frustrations were leveled at Sony, not Arrowhead, after the developer made it clear the mandate wasn't coming from them. It's understandable many are ready to move on and get some new stuff in the game.
Still, it's a nice gesture to let the community decide, and it shows an uncommon sensitivity (maybe even an oversensitivity) to the community's feelings on microtansactions. Helldivers have 10-ish more hours to let their voices be heard.
