Helldivers 2

Alright, the title is a bit clickbaity, but hear me out!

Little background: Since the start of the Ukraine invasion, Russia and Belarus have been hit with massive sanctions, and a lot of stuff suddenly became unavailable. That includes quite a few video games that became unavailable on steam. Helldivers being one of them. And, since it started, a lot of people, myself included, have left the country in disagreement with the regime, mostly to ex-USSR countries, like Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Others, who, for some reason, are unable or are unwilling to move, either resorted to piracy, or got their steam accounts switched to one of said countries, mostly with help from friends in one of them. This is a good thing in a way that that that it moves place where the taxes are paid, and gives more power to those countries, especially as they grow wary of their warmongering neighbor and increasingly drift away from their shared USSR past, effectively weakening war machine.

Now with geographic restrictions put on all of those countries on Steam, I've been pondering if there's a way to still somehow buy this game for my friends to play with, some of whom are still residing in Russia, and stumbled upon this:

https://shop.buka.ru/item/HELLDIVERS_2_versiya_RF

This is a totally legit, official store of one of the oldest major publishers in Russia, and official SONY's partner. What caught my attention is that they have two separate versions available - one for Russia and Belarus, and another for ex-USSR countries. The first one is a little problematic as it means that SONY is continuing doing business in Russia and doesn't give a fuck about it waging a war. But whatever. The second one, on the other hand, is completely nuts. As far as I can tell, it is the only place where you could obtain the game officially in said countries. With the price of roughly $40 with 20% VAT included, that'd be $8 straight into Putin's pockets for every copy sold. Sweet liberty! Plus whatever the publisher's cut is, that gets further taxed down the road. For a person who fled from dictatorship and is conscious about where their money go, or for a citizen of a country that was invaded and is still partly occupied, or a person displaced from their home because the peacekeepers just told them to fuck off and left, that sounds like a bad joke.

I do realize that VAT from video game sales is a drop in the ocean, compared to oil and gas exports. But still, I'd say that a good enough reason to keep pushing SONY to lift geographic restrictions on Steam.

Helldivers 2 community rallies behind wholesome hero after a remorseful villain kicks them, giving rise to Super Earth's new battlecry: 'im frend'

Title^

Helldivers has been on my radar for a while now and I was wondering what should I expect

Since I dropped planetside I’ve been looking for a “main game” to fill the void

All I really know is shoot bug and if you aren’t getting friendly fired to hell and back you’re playing wrong

Looking for friends to add who use a mic. Sick of playing solo or getting teamed up with people who can't or won't talk.

If this belongs elsewhere, let me know where to post.

Logged on today and saw the new major Order. ~~Did we fuck up so badly~~ Was the enemy so treacherous that we needed a MO on holding planets that were already ours or is something big coming (again)? What do you think/know? Reminder: Spreading unapproved misinformation or propaganda WILL be reported!

Not OC

Twinbeard says:

Helldivers!

As many of you have noticed, something has been off with patrols and spawn rate for some time now. This primarily leads to more enemies rearing their ugly heads than they're supposed to, indirectly to players feeling overrun, kiting, and subsequently less fun gameplay. This has been the case for all players, but predominantly for smaller teams and solo playing. We've been aware, but frankly, the past couple of weeks have been so hectic that we haven't been able to give this the TLC that it required. We now have, and we've concluded that it's not working as intended and we're changing it. There might be some minor tweaks, but overall we're reverting back to how patrols and spawn rate worked before the patch that changed them a few weeks ago. We believe that this is more or less how you currently want them to be.

We also know you want us to do things and changes properly instead of rushing them, and we do as well. Therefore, implementing this will take some time. We want to give it proper testing and review it ... ah heck, simply see that it works this time. Even if this means we're faced with more bugs and bots than even the bravest of citizens would deem realistic for a while longer, we hope you're happy with us fixing the problem.

Onwards and upwards!

Just sigh. Come on Sony learn harder.

I did change my review back to negative because missing 180 countries full of helldivers is making major orders harder.

I feel happy with my loadout vs bugs. Spray and pray is easy to understand. Run and gun. I'm not as confident with bots.

Loadout: Armor is medium with crouch aim bonus. Base gun, the Adjudicator (assault rifle) from Democratic Demolition because of its armor pen. 2ndary is Autocannon and ammo backpack. Strategems are orbital laser, eagle airstrike, and mortar sentry.

All the advice I read is "go slower, avoid patrols, etc." and I'm fine with that but everyone I play with does the opposite. They engage EVERYTHING. I feel like I've got OK damage per shot, but everyone is getting there faster and killing things faster because they got there earlier. So I end up feeling like I'm not pulling my weight.

https://steamdb.info/sub/137730/history/

No update on the situation otherwise.

So there was some speculation whether Valve delisted the 177 (now 180) countries to protect itself legally or if Sony had done it for Sony reasons. It appears that Sony has been confirmed to be the one who delisted it

So in a first for my group, we were hit with three bugged and failed missions tonight.

1st was a defense missions where bugs stopped spawning and missiles stopped shooting.

2nd what the extraction vehicle left immediately when one person entered it.

3rd what no one could get in the shuttle.

This was a serious WTF night, we lost so many samples. While I appreciate the devs, stop trying to balance and fix some bugs.

Edit: Interestingly there are 3 unknown country codes in the list of deisted regions previously, so optimistically it might just be them correcting it and they would start selling world wide again.

Also some people say this might put them in violation of EU laws, but I'm no law expert nor an EU resident.

Edit 2 [update]: screenshot from someone who got denied a refund. Looks like it's confirmed to be Sony's decision.

Things that happen in game differently from my headcanon:

• During a dive, destroyers just hang around over player heads
  • Even worse, there's an actual game mechanic that causes orbital stratagems to have an AoA at 90° at the center of the map but lower it at the edges, like the ships were actually hovering over the center (realistically, all orbital stratagems calls would have roughly the same AoA)
    • I say "even worse", because I have to actively ignore a decision the devs made for the sake of realism rather than just tell myself "eh, they didn't think about this too much"
• Orbital stratagem timings make no sense, and are strictly a gameplay balance issue that cannot be realistic: the loading screen shows the first helldiver drops well outside the atmosphere and take several minutes to reach the ground, but turrets take 3 seconds to deploy? This game sucks, literally unplayable
• Surely Eagles must be capable of atmosphereless flight, if the cheap ahh shuttle is?
• At the beginning of the loading screen, the destroyer doesn't have an atmospheric re-entry fire effect which would be countered by shields or whatever

Things that oddly do make sense:

• Hellpods do have the atmospheric re-entry fire effect immediately after launching, which wouldn't make sense in the absence of (less than extremely thin) atmosphere
• ... that's it, actually

The reason I made this nerd emoji of a post:
I've played KSP and my suspension of disbelief towards games or shows with spaceships is completely broken.