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As the creators of Concord mourn the shooter's hasty end, publisher Sony is continuing its pursuit of the live service dollar and tapping its biggest win in the space for some timely feedback. A new survey straight from PlayStation Research asked players of Helldivers 2, which is also owned and published by Sony, how they're feeling about the game, and it was quickly struck by so much democracy that it was pulled – but then seemingly reposted.
The survey was shared earlier today, September 9, by the official Reddit account of developer Arrowhead. It was also posted to the Helldivers Discord server by community manager Baskinator, who said in a Reddit comment that "this survey is conducted by the PlayStation Research team. We will pull this link down when the survey has gathered enough responses. We hope to do these more often moving forward."
In an updated Discord comment, Baskinator notes that the link was removed there since the survey was "full." However, the Reddit post is still up and the link is still live at the time of writing; I was able to complete it a few hours after the link was removed from Discord.
The survey is brief, and its format has drawn some criticism from Helldivers 2 fans and statisticians alike. The first question asks players to rate their past week of Helldivers 2 gameplay on a scale from 1 to 5, but the scores are oddly qualified, with 1 being "Not good," 2 somehow being "Average," and 3, the actual median score, being "Good." With 4 being "Very good" and 5 being "Excellent," the question inherently favors positive feedback, so you've got to wonder how useful it actually is.
The other two questions are more open-ended, simply asking players to list what they are and are not currently enjoying about Helldivers 2. I would imagine many players have a wealth of feedback to share here given the ongoing developer conversations about Arrowhead's 60-day plan for getting the game back on track after some updates, in the creative director's own words, strayed too far from raw fun. Helldivers 2 was an explosive success from the get-go, but it's definitely – and not at all unexpectedly – had a bit of a comedown post-launch.
If you're wondering, Arrowhead has its own separate player feedback form. Whatever today's survey was, it was Sony's idea. We can't say that it was actually motivated by the stark contrast of Concord's failure, but the timing is impeccable. Well that didn't work, Sony's live service overseers seem to say. Let's see how this one's doing.
It's also worth remembering that Sony owns Bungie now, and it acquired the studio in part to harness the live service muscle that made Destiny 2. So it's extra timely that, earlier today, the 10th anniversary of the Destiny series, Bungie unveiled sweeping changes to its release model, doing away with annual expansions and opting for smaller, more agile releases and free updates. Destiny 2 isn't exactly having a peachy time of it either, but it is frankly the only game of its kind to ever survive this long, and Bungie says it's committed to another "multi-year" saga.
