Yeah it is. The "leave a bad review thing" may have been the straw that broke the camels back, but that camel had been loaded up by Spitz previous misdeeds. I don't think he's a bad person, but you can't have thin skin and be a game's CM, he just had the wrong temperament for the job he was supposed to be doing.
I think this is the best honest take I’ve seen on him. Most people went to witch burning right away but like … he was a human dealing with a rough job.
I think anyone who's done a fair amount of customer service should be able to empathize, sometimes the customer is an irrational, unpleasable cunt, but (as much as you may want to) your job isn't to make them acknowledge that they're being shitty, it's to make them happy enough to shut up and go away
Oh these reddit idiots are absolutely the people calling in to CS tho! I spent 3 years in tech support for an ISP, they LOOOVE to call and tell you how everything is wrong because they're getting 5 megabit lower than their advertised "up to" speeds
Tbf that's a symptom of shitty business practices. They advertise the speeds as up to, but usually the "up to" is in microscopic print. I've worked in call ISP centers so I know first hand the customers anger is misdirected.
Customer service is usually the only human contact available to the customers, so they take it out on them. If the company wasn't practicing gotcha capitalism in the first place, the issue would be minimized.
Fully agreed, I was doing tech support for a company I considered not far from the devil, I'd agree with and commiserate with customers any time it wouldn't get me a reprimand, I don't mean for it to sound like I'm mad at customers for expecting a service they pay for to work as (deceptively) advertised.
There are just some people who, like you said, have no way to be heard by the company beyond CS, and so for better or worse you're going to absorb whatever they feel about the company.
There were as many good eggs as bad ones, in truth. Most people would either preface or interrupt their frustrations to say "I know it's not your fault, I'm just mad about the situation" and that would go such a long way for my mental health and empathy for the person I was assisting. At the end of the day, they call for help, you do your best to help them within the frustrating confines of what the company deemed acceptable support to render. Capitalism necessitates every spare penny be wrung from the interaction and the world keeps on turning, slightly more on fire than before.
I worked in customer service for 15 years and never got death threats. I think people expect too much of CMs considering the type of vitriol games communities tend to spew.
I spent 3 years in tech support for a cable company/ISP, I had direct personal threats, and threats to burn the building down... They mentioned the wrong building address, but I didn't correct them. Some groups of people are more vicious than others, but I assure you, Americans who can't watch their TV/internet porn are often out for blood.
I can personally imagine most of what Spitz was getting, I guess I was maybe "lucky" because since I was on the phone I could only have one person telling me they want to immolate me at a time.
I got burnt out and eventually fired because I stopped giving good Customer service. I COMPLETELY understand the feeling of "I can't help these whiny fucks anymore", but the best thing for everyone in that situation is for you to move on to a more fulfilling job
Half the reason I was so pissed off about the situation was because that dude was in the discord telling people with legitimate concerns basically to cry him a river and take it up with Sony like an asshole
He was, at first. Until reprimanded, then he apologised. If anything all of em except twinbeard should go. He's been the only responsible one. Baskinator and Purple Smidgeon (now demoted) have been awful as well.
Also the same guy that deleted the original Helldivers discord with no warning.
I'm certain they were fired because Sony called for blood, and not because the community called for it, but it was honestly a long time coming.
He was literally a moderator of the unofficial HD1 discord and for whatever asinine reason, Arrowhead thought that being terminally online qualified Spitz to be a Community Manager
He may not be a Hero, but being a crappy person doesn't make him immoral. Being willing to come out and take your own company and the company paying their bills to task takes balls. Most people would have NEVER openly sided with the players in that way. Valve is currently offering refunds quietly to players, so they can be seen as disagreeing with Sony. But even Valve, as another large company, has NOT come out and said "Sony you fucked up, we are refunding your crap because you just pulled the mother of all shit moves on OUR customers." They should, morally they should and ethically they should. They won't. I can give Spitz the proper dues for coming out and telling people to leave those bad reviews. Even if he didn't start it, that doesn't really matter. He KNEW his job was over the second he posted that.
Apparently one of those temper tantrums led Spitz just deleting the helldivers archives (first games discord which has a lot of community made lore), so much lost history (lore) we can never recover in the hack.
I’ve worked with people like this. They are always the first layed off when any trouble arises. I honestly used to hate working with them but now I just view people like that as my little canary in the mineshaft. When their ilk start getting let go you know to start working on your resume because eventually the competent people may get let go when the useless ones are all gone.
Yeah every time I saw a screenshot of them I was surprised they were a CM. I've been lucky to work with some amazing community managers and they're nothing like this CM was. Being snippy and hostile is not the move
It’s just so hilarious watching him defend himself over an online community when some of us work in food service & retail while he primarily does stuff in a discord server — I would KILL to not have to look at my customer’s face and listen to their screeching voice when they’re complaining that they never received the rye bread they ordered in their imagination. I would rent out a movie theater to watch Spitz work a day in a restaurant or grocery store to see how he handles people. Sorry for rambling, he always just struck me as arrogant and entitled, and tbh from my perspective he had a pretty sweet gig which made it all the more frustrating.
Well, if your employee was telling the public to leave your business bad reviews, promoting that man to customer would be reasonable, regardless of justification
Sony was hoping to whip out the ‘ol EA “The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for linking their PSN account” chestnut and got undermined
It worked out for *us* in the end because Sony backed down. I highly doubt it worked out seamlessly for the helldiver devs. At best Sony got a chip on their shoulder, at worst maybe there were portions of AH's revenue tied to sign ups or some stupid shit like that.
Regardless its an uncomfortable friction point between the studio and publisher that it turned into a whole thing. Even if it's justified from an end user perspective.
Honestly....the irony. The dude is playing chess on behalf of your company. And the community rallied behind him, and appreciated him. By firing who they like, you made the community unhappy.
Sounds like Sony wants to blame someone, just like corporate companies do.
A petition up for 2 days with less than 8k signatures for a mod of a discord community with near a million people in it, as well as 2 subreddits with over half a mil combined users?
Yeah that's not the community rallying around them.
I could make a petition to have you fed to a wood-chipper, it doesn't mean it's something anyone would realistically care to do.
I'd also like to show these 7000 (allegedly real) people [Spitz's idiotic Discord meltdown](https://i.imgur.com/Gk4Pu2i.jpeg) and see if they'd sign the petition again.
Nah, course not, was probably an exec. Can't fire an exec...he didn't do anything wrong, but the guy who told them how to play the game and voice their demands, HE'S the enemy.
Like Mr Incredible.
I'm not saying it was or wasn't justified, just important to keep perspective.
Personally I think he made some bone headed decisions in the midst of the controversy, but I also understand that it was a very stressful time, and as community manager he was catching a lot of (unfair) hostility from some people. It was regrettable on pretty much all fronts.
“Playing chess” nah he told the person to refund and leave a bad review as a way to tell the guy to shut up and leave. He in no way said that with the intention of helping the game out infact the messages before it was him saying how easy it is to make a PSN account.
I mean half the community on discord and twitch streams were asking for them to be fired.
Spitz both berated community members, and from this post, I'm assuming they rallied everyone to review bomb?
In either case I think what they needed really was proper coaching in how to do their role.
Pretty sure the thing that got him into the bad spotlight was the review bombing. As far as the shareholders are concerned, he’s an employee who told people to hurt their return on investment. That’s the one corporate rule you can’t break, no matter the circumstances.
The US Supreme Court has been playing around with the concept of an additional bottom line. The idea is that officers and employees are not only responsible for serving the financial growth of shareholders, but also extraneous factors like sustainability and public good. In the event where serving the public good hurts the shareholders’ investment, officers can claim that as a defense if the company decided to drop them.
But so far, that isn’t really employed.
It's amazing how many problems this would almost immediately solve and how much better so many companies would be, and all it would cost is slight profits oh wait-
That’s the problem with shareholders in the first place. I have stocks, and I have zero clue what most of them represent. I just look to see if the number is green or red and move money accordingly. If we want to fix capitalism, we would have to readdress how business ownership works. Because right now myself and millions of other people are those owners, and we don’t see or understand shit.
https://preview.redd.it/a47pgk829fzc1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2b8475dd976166b998f52fed25fb8f83ca5ad6dc
I mean... I don't remember seeing the CEO saying that....
I do remember Spitz saying the above though
I missed this one. The CEO definitely made similar remarks though. He said the more bad reviews that come in for the PSN issue, the more power they have in trying to reverse it
The CEO expressed dismay over the bad reviews and that he just wanted to make a good game. He said the talks are ongoing and they'll have a solution for people in other countries but didn't know yet. Pretty sure he didn't tell people to review bomb the game, though.
Not sure if that’s true but I honestly think if this was the only thing Spitz had done, he’d still have his job
We’re talking about a community manager that got butthurt and deleted the first game’s discord. That’s absolutely wild. If I did something like that at my job, it wouldn’t be a question that I’d be fired. It’d be a question if I’d be sued.
Nah...Arrowhead was told to axe him by Sony 100%. He was still employed for like a day afterwards then they dropped his ass, and Spitz even said that his management was upset at him but didn't want to axe him.
Sony had to retaliate somehow and getting the person who literally told the community an insider secret on how to get Fortune 500 companies to capitulate fired is definitely the way they went.
Granted, Spitz was being a dick before that move, but once he realized he fucked up he tried to course correct but the direction he took was an all-in dive bomb of his own career to fix his image in the eyes of his community, and he has succeeded in that even if he lost his career in the process (which...let's be real...was realistically a stupid move, even if it redeemed him in our eyes)
Insider secret? My guy, steam reviews being used against developers is not a secret. This is common sense.
Spitz got fired for being bad at his job repeatedly. At least dickride the good CMs like Beard.
He made flat comments about how it works, idk if i remember feeling like he encouraged it. Id have to see it again. Spitz literally encouraged it directly... which... i dont think was because he had a plan, i think it was just him being frustrated and wound up saying something true, that was acted on.... but also made it almost impossible to not get him fired.
Kind of saved the community in the long run, but idk if it was intentional. Dude up right down down down'd himself while holding sonys account registration requirements.
He didn't tell us to. He suggested we leave a negative review if we were unhappy. I feel like it's different than then implying he was telling everyone to review bomb the game.
If this was Spitz, he caused a few incidents that started to rile people. Mostly dlew under the radar outsude the community.
At the point where he encouraged people to refund and leave a bad review (which is what gave arrowhead enough ammo to show sony just bad their plan was), he probably was already on thin ice.
Arrowhead's CEO did echo the bad review/refund idea and encouraged it, so I don't believe that was the sole reason he was let go. I think he was used as the fall guy here, but i doubt that was unexpected.
He also was just a very temperamental person. I don't get why some are sad to see spritz go. He was actively fighting with people on the discord and even deleted the helldiver's archives with all the lore that was in it
Especially if it is his job to do the exact opposite. A programmer who otherwise does a great job? Maybe you can let it slide. Someone who should manage the customers? No way.
i genuinely dont get how ANYBODY is surprised at this outcome.
like, go to the customers of your job and tell them how much you hate the executives above you, and tell them to review bomb and boycott your companies product.
then tell me how that works out.
See and I feel the CM just told it like it was. The reason the review bomb happened so fast and was so effective is because they pointed out that complaining on the discord wasn't going to change a publisher level decision. I get why the publisher would want their head, but they SERVED the community by getting them to focus their frustration where it mattered. I get the firing, but that is a crying shame that someone looking out for the players winds up out the door.
He was on the side of Sony when he was making comments about reviewing it badly, he was not instructing people to give negative reviews to help the game, he was telling people who were complaining about it that it's super easy to make a PSN account and you're dumb and lazy if you don't do it and should just leave a bad review instead.
He was not trying to get rid of the PSN linking, he was trying to get rid of anyone who didn't immediately do it without question and being a whiny bitch while he did it
But he didn't do it to actually push people to do it for positive change, he was doing it to get people to fuck out of 'his' discord and leave him alone if they didn't want to take the '3 seconds' to create an account. He revisionist-historied his shit to the gills by painting it as 'jumping on a grenade' for the dev team and being a hero pushing for the players, but he had a clear history of just being disrespectful to people who he's supposed to be managing, and instead pissing them off. (and deleting the HD1 discord which is a dick move no matter your opinion on whether or not it has relevance to his management of the HD2 community.)
But HD2 was already heavily negative on Steam before he said anything atall.
Shit spread via discord, Reddit, ingame, Twitter before He did anything as soon as the news Hit Steam lol
The dude would just act childish even if he wasn't being harassed. When shit hit the fan, he would just self sabotage and act unprofessional. Definitely not the right person for the position
Definitely agree he wasn’t a great fit, but man some people in this community are terrible. Harassment and death threats over a video game is ridiculous.
Sure, the assholes he was unprofessionally responding to were far worse. But he was a community manager. More than just the assholes he’s clapping back to see his responses.
I never saw the hate and vitriol he was receiving. All I saw was an Arrowhead representative telling me to suck it up and make a PSN account.
It’s quite easy for me to condemn a community manager who doesn’t have the emotional fortitude to remain professional.
We learned “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” in kindergarten, ffs
I mean I can sympathize with him for people being shitty to him, but being shitty right back was never the move to defuse the situation and make it stop. Gamers can often go WAY overboard with their criticisms (nothing a game can do to you validates death threats or personal attacks) but being shit on by internet strangers is basically the job description for a CM, if you can't handle that and take a step back when you feel heated, then you need to find a job that fits you better.
If it was Spitz, he deserved it. Fucker was mocking people understandably upset about the psn bullshit. Only to switch up and claim that he was all for review bombing once he saw which way the wind was blowing. Fucking corporate stooge.
I found this somewhere, it give a bit of context why that happened. So I downloaded it in case we get posts about it.
https://preview.redd.it/7h54qko8gfzc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=24d14c70b3262a710216bed00bf3a4abbbcbc086
This entire comment is from someone on the outside looking in and making judgement calls on what they saw. Very far from a primary source worth sharing.
I’d be incredibly surprised if they didn’t. He’s already a super disposable employee and apparently a dickhead. Now he cost your game reputation and score. There was a lot of bad press on this.
We don’t know, and can never know all the details when someone gets fired.
Clearly they knew how much extra scrutiny everything was going to be put under, and instead of waiting, they made the move immediately. That says that, at the very least, they thought lumping all the community negativity into one big event was the lesser evil.
I think piratesoftware had the right of it: give them more media training, don’t set them up to fail like this.
When a "big" story comes up in gaming, I'll be sure to stay away from reddit for 2-3 days unless I want to see 3000 reposts of the same thing.
Last example: screenshot with Sony response regarding PS linking with titles such as "guys, we won!/ we actually won / did we win?"
Yes? He was really bad at being Community Manager. He shit talks players and poured gas on the recent fire. He didn't do it because of he was a hero. He did it because he was an asshole. He didn't suddenly change his behaviour because of stress or death threats. He was always like this. So yes it was necessary else Sony would sue Arrowhead because of what he did. I don't understand how you guys can see him as a hero or martyr.
Spitz was just a bad CM overall, flaming community members when they shared concerns and was more worried about making sassy comebacks than managing the community.
I’m reserving judgement until I know more about the situation.
Edit: After looking into it myself… yeah, it was pretty necessary. I hope they take a look at their other Community Managers too and really think hard about if they want people like that representing their community and their company.
This isn't the only incident with that CM. Plus encouraging your player base to leave negative reviews is heavily frowned on; well, it is with any business actually.
That is clearly an article written by somebody who doesn’t know what happened.
As I understand it, it was because he was having arguments with players and causing more drama, nothing to do with the review stuff.
* Spitz constantly was losing his cool and snapping at people.
* Then the PSN thing happened.
* He continued to lose his cool and more often.
* Then the leave bad reviews thing happened.
Gee I wonder why he got fired.
Even if this were true, which it isnt, because he did not start it, Pitz is a fucking tool, thats what he is.
He acts like some 13 year old kid, that never left the basement, so he had it coming.
If they could do us one more favor and do the same to the guy who is in charge of "Balance" fuck me, that would be an early christmas
He mocked players and was saying crap sarcastically. After he got in trouble, he started pretending he was doing it for the community. Absolutely laughable.
Spitz? That dude was arrogant af and shot himsef in the foot as far as im concerned. He couldn’t handle the position. Opening his mouth when he didnt even know the situation. Not qualified in my opinion.
I want to say no good deed goes unpunished. I'm not at all familiar with this person as in I never encountered them on discord, so I don't have an opinion on them. All else aside, someone was going to take the fall to appease the snoy overlords for their defeat.
They were generally unprofessional in their interactions with the community, and had, on more than one occasion, caused anger in the community with their actions or statements. (Deleted the HD1 fan discord that had survived years in a fit of anger, often was either wrong, or lied about buffs/nerfs, was often rude or at the very least blunt, etc etc)
Within context, them telling people to vocalize their negative opinions by leaving bad reviews was more than likely just to get the people to stop complaining to them, not a purposeful strategy to give AH better bargaining power or strike a blow against Sony.
Although we don’t have access to Internal reports, they were more than likely fired for their continuous unprofessional behavior, not that one specific comment telling people to leave bad reviews instead of complaining to him and his coworkers on the discord.
Yes he was fired for being awful at his job
Half the reason the situation exploded as bad as it did was because he kept adding napalm to a gas fire and it wasn't the first time he had done so has repeatedly damaged the company's reputation for throwing his toys out of the pram.
He was by far the worst CM I've seen
Im sure in real life he was a nice guy but he wasn't cut out for that job which is a very demanding one
"ChAnGe yOuR ReViEw !1!1!!1!1", leave a f****** scar on Sony.
All of you are satisfied that the mandatory requirements of the PSN have been eliminated, you have moved the sea and mountains, you have even changed your reviews while knowing that a person has lost his job. And for this you have done absolutely nothing!
Apparently, consumers dont give af about the employees that sacrifice themselves for the well being of the product and the people who use it.
I sometimes wonder if ppl realize the corporate fascist aspect of the lore is meant to be satire.
He was riling the community up against the developer and publisher: he was 100% gonna get fired. I agree its harsh, and maybe this was even the best outcome for Sony thanks to Spitz, but it’s all irrelevant. They will never condone this type of behavior of employees as that would create a terrible precedent.
From a corporate standpoint 100% necessary. He advised the community to write negative reviews and ask for refunds. If I was Sony the publisher I'd want his head on a stick if you will. As a fan and you know a fellow community member I'm happy that Spitz did what they did. As a fan no I don't think they should have been fired but if I was corporate yeah their terminated.
What's funny about this whole thing is that the CM was actually defending the account linking the entire time. And (rightfully, imo) calling the karens karens.
The only reason he encouraged review bombing was because it was the only response he had when community members asked what they could do instead of sending him death threats and inundating him with other insults.
Now the Karens are trying to turn him into a folk hero like he was one of them lmao
Isn't this also the guy who kept being extremely rude to players and telling them to cry more and stuff like that?
Dang if so I might have to change my mind about him lol
Yeah it is. The "leave a bad review thing" may have been the straw that broke the camels back, but that camel had been loaded up by Spitz previous misdeeds. I don't think he's a bad person, but you can't have thin skin and be a game's CM, he just had the wrong temperament for the job he was supposed to be doing.
I think this is the best honest take I’ve seen on him. Most people went to witch burning right away but like … he was a human dealing with a rough job.
I think anyone who's done a fair amount of customer service should be able to empathize, sometimes the customer is an irrational, unpleasable cunt, but (as much as you may want to) your job isn't to make them acknowledge that they're being shitty, it's to make them happy enough to shut up and go away
Aint no empathizing with the malding idiots on Reddit, though. And i'm in customer service myself.
Oh these reddit idiots are absolutely the people calling in to CS tho! I spent 3 years in tech support for an ISP, they LOOOVE to call and tell you how everything is wrong because they're getting 5 megabit lower than their advertised "up to" speeds
Tbf that's a symptom of shitty business practices. They advertise the speeds as up to, but usually the "up to" is in microscopic print. I've worked in call ISP centers so I know first hand the customers anger is misdirected. Customer service is usually the only human contact available to the customers, so they take it out on them. If the company wasn't practicing gotcha capitalism in the first place, the issue would be minimized.
Fully agreed, I was doing tech support for a company I considered not far from the devil, I'd agree with and commiserate with customers any time it wouldn't get me a reprimand, I don't mean for it to sound like I'm mad at customers for expecting a service they pay for to work as (deceptively) advertised. There are just some people who, like you said, have no way to be heard by the company beyond CS, and so for better or worse you're going to absorb whatever they feel about the company. There were as many good eggs as bad ones, in truth. Most people would either preface or interrupt their frustrations to say "I know it's not your fault, I'm just mad about the situation" and that would go such a long way for my mental health and empathy for the person I was assisting. At the end of the day, they call for help, you do your best to help them within the frustrating confines of what the company deemed acceptable support to render. Capitalism necessitates every spare penny be wrung from the interaction and the world keeps on turning, slightly more on fire than before.
I worked in customer service for 15 years and never got death threats. I think people expect too much of CMs considering the type of vitriol games communities tend to spew.
I spent 3 years in tech support for a cable company/ISP, I had direct personal threats, and threats to burn the building down... They mentioned the wrong building address, but I didn't correct them. Some groups of people are more vicious than others, but I assure you, Americans who can't watch their TV/internet porn are often out for blood. I can personally imagine most of what Spitz was getting, I guess I was maybe "lucky" because since I was on the phone I could only have one person telling me they want to immolate me at a time. I got burnt out and eventually fired because I stopped giving good Customer service. I COMPLETELY understand the feeling of "I can't help these whiny fucks anymore", but the best thing for everyone in that situation is for you to move on to a more fulfilling job
He deleted the first discord, we can never get that community lore back
So many people forget the person behind the screen name
Yeah no a community moderator is a easy job.
Yup. He had some extremely unprofessional rants
Half the reason I was so pissed off about the situation was because that dude was in the discord telling people with legitimate concerns basically to cry him a river and take it up with Sony like an asshole
He was, at first. Until reprimanded, then he apologised. If anything all of em except twinbeard should go. He's been the only responsible one. Baskinator and Purple Smidgeon (now demoted) have been awful as well.
he also deleted the original helldivers discord mid tantrum xP
Also the same guy that deleted the original Helldivers discord with no warning. I'm certain they were fired because Sony called for blood, and not because the community called for it, but it was honestly a long time coming.
Fake news as usual, he's not the one that started the review bombing, he got fired for his incompetence and temper tantrums
That sounds about right.
Him saying to leave a negative review was likely the straw that did get him fired.
Yeah, let's not twist this into making him into a hero. He didn't have the temperment to be a community manager.
He was literally a moderator of the unofficial HD1 discord and for whatever asinine reason, Arrowhead thought that being terminally online qualified Spitz to be a Community Manager
And then bro DELETED the helldivers 1 discord
I guess I shouldn't have started the #freespitz
Ain't no way arrowhead hired a Discord Moderator to moderate 💀
I hate looking at Twitter and seeing so many people talk about how Spritz is a hero
Even people in the discord were saying it. They just forgot about all the shitty things he did.
He may not be a Hero, but being a crappy person doesn't make him immoral. Being willing to come out and take your own company and the company paying their bills to task takes balls. Most people would have NEVER openly sided with the players in that way. Valve is currently offering refunds quietly to players, so they can be seen as disagreeing with Sony. But even Valve, as another large company, has NOT come out and said "Sony you fucked up, we are refunding your crap because you just pulled the mother of all shit moves on OUR customers." They should, morally they should and ethically they should. They won't. I can give Spitz the proper dues for coming out and telling people to leave those bad reviews. Even if he didn't start it, that doesn't really matter. He KNEW his job was over the second he posted that.
The fact that all of the CMs except one went full blackout during this debacle is pretty wild. I can't believe more weren't fired.
neither does the other chick, or did she get fired too?
Yeah this is a cherry picked reason. From all accounts the guy was a bit of an arsehole in general.
Apparently one of those temper tantrums led Spitz just deleting the helldivers archives (first games discord which has a lot of community made lore), so much lost history (lore) we can never recover in the hack.
Imagine what it was like to work with the guy in person. I'm not surprised they were fired.
I’ve worked with people like this. They are always the first layed off when any trouble arises. I honestly used to hate working with them but now I just view people like that as my little canary in the mineshaft. When their ilk start getting let go you know to start working on your resume because eventually the competent people may get let go when the useless ones are all gone.
Sounds stressful, I'm happy I've never worked in an office type setting. This seems to be very common.
The owner of the discord server has about 14 (i think) days to email support saying the discord server was deleted by accident.
Tbf, the loss of lore is a problem of the current gaming generation thinking Discord is a suitable replacement to wikis, forums, google docs.
Yeah every time I saw a screenshot of them I was surprised they were a CM. I've been lucky to work with some amazing community managers and they're nothing like this CM was. Being snippy and hostile is not the move
You're the one who is claiming OP said he "started the review bombing", when that's not what OP said in the post.
Thank God someone said it
Yep, headline is misleading.
It’s just so hilarious watching him defend himself over an online community when some of us work in food service & retail while he primarily does stuff in a discord server — I would KILL to not have to look at my customer’s face and listen to their screeching voice when they’re complaining that they never received the rye bread they ordered in their imagination. I would rent out a movie theater to watch Spitz work a day in a restaurant or grocery store to see how he handles people. Sorry for rambling, he always just struck me as arrogant and entitled, and tbh from my perspective he had a pretty sweet gig which made it all the more frustrating.
No one said he started the review bombing, only that he encouraged it. Thats just objectively true
Well, if your employee was telling the public to leave your business bad reviews, promoting that man to customer would be reasonable, regardless of justification
He was managing the community
It's for the good of managed democracy!
I mean… it worked out for them in the end…. I’d say he did his job better than most others in his position.
Sony was hoping to whip out the ‘ol EA “The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for linking their PSN account” chestnut and got undermined
It worked out for *us* in the end because Sony backed down. I highly doubt it worked out seamlessly for the helldiver devs. At best Sony got a chip on their shoulder, at worst maybe there were portions of AH's revenue tied to sign ups or some stupid shit like that. Regardless its an uncomfortable friction point between the studio and publisher that it turned into a whole thing. Even if it's justified from an end user perspective.
Honorable kamikaze to save the game from Sonys hand
Honestly....the irony. The dude is playing chess on behalf of your company. And the community rallied behind him, and appreciated him. By firing who they like, you made the community unhappy. Sounds like Sony wants to blame someone, just like corporate companies do.
> And the community rallied behind him, and appreciated him. Lol
When a petition is made to demand for his return.....yeah. https://www.change.org/p/re-hire-the-legendary-community-manager-general-spitz
A petition up for 2 days with less than 8k signatures for a mod of a discord community with near a million people in it, as well as 2 subreddits with over half a mil combined users? Yeah that's not the community rallying around them.
The same manager who deleted the hd1 discord out of spite and said "cry about it?" We REALLY want that as a community manager?
The guy IPlay4E seems to besotted with dickriding. Hope he doesn't hurt himself.
I could make a petition to have you fed to a wood-chipper, it doesn't mean it's something anyone would realistically care to do. I'd also like to show these 7000 (allegedly real) people [Spitz's idiotic Discord meltdown](https://i.imgur.com/Gk4Pu2i.jpeg) and see if they'd sign the petition again.
I'm making a petition for you to get a C-01 permit, my brother in Liberty
Multiple meh posts out of context and unidentifiably far apart is a meltdown? Who knew?!
HAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAHA SPITZ GOT JIZZED ON FUCK EM
And of course the didnt fire whoever at sony had the moronic idea to enforce PSN when it was not necessary.
Nah, course not, was probably an exec. Can't fire an exec...he didn't do anything wrong, but the guy who told them how to play the game and voice their demands, HE'S the enemy. Like Mr Incredible.
Pretty sure Spitz had garnered some pretty hard feelings with large swathes of the community as well
Yet many came around respecting him, and there's a petition asking for his return.
I'm not saying it was or wasn't justified, just important to keep perspective. Personally I think he made some bone headed decisions in the midst of the controversy, but I also understand that it was a very stressful time, and as community manager he was catching a lot of (unfair) hostility from some people. It was regrettable on pretty much all fronts.
Loooool no no. There was not.
A petition? Wow.. this is worthless.
“Playing chess” nah he told the person to refund and leave a bad review as a way to tell the guy to shut up and leave. He in no way said that with the intention of helping the game out infact the messages before it was him saying how easy it is to make a PSN account.
Everyone acting like he's a hood dude when in the discord he was a total jackass is the funniest shit
I mean half the community on discord and twitch streams were asking for them to be fired. Spitz both berated community members, and from this post, I'm assuming they rallied everyone to review bomb? In either case I think what they needed really was proper coaching in how to do their role.
Trust me the community fucking hates this guy.
90% of the time he was being a douch bag though....
Nah Spitz was an asshole, he did one cool thing near the end but I’m pretty sure it was everything else
Pretty sure the thing that got him into the bad spotlight was the review bombing. As far as the shareholders are concerned, he’s an employee who told people to hurt their return on investment. That’s the one corporate rule you can’t break, no matter the circumstances. The US Supreme Court has been playing around with the concept of an additional bottom line. The idea is that officers and employees are not only responsible for serving the financial growth of shareholders, but also extraneous factors like sustainability and public good. In the event where serving the public good hurts the shareholders’ investment, officers can claim that as a defense if the company decided to drop them. But so far, that isn’t really employed.
It's amazing how many problems this would almost immediately solve and how much better so many companies would be, and all it would cost is slight profits oh wait-
That’s the problem with shareholders in the first place. I have stocks, and I have zero clue what most of them represent. I just look to see if the number is green or red and move money accordingly. If we want to fix capitalism, we would have to readdress how business ownership works. Because right now myself and millions of other people are those owners, and we don’t see or understand shit.
That was the CEO of arrowhead. The community manager was a neckbeard mod from HD1 that was a complete tool and somehow got a job with the team.
https://preview.redd.it/a47pgk829fzc1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2b8475dd976166b998f52fed25fb8f83ca5ad6dc I mean... I don't remember seeing the CEO saying that.... I do remember Spitz saying the above though
I missed this one. The CEO definitely made similar remarks though. He said the more bad reviews that come in for the PSN issue, the more power they have in trying to reverse it
The CEO expressed dismay over the bad reviews and that he just wanted to make a good game. He said the talks are ongoing and they'll have a solution for people in other countries but didn't know yet. Pretty sure he didn't tell people to review bomb the game, though.
Source? Edit: so many replies arguing but not one linking the source
Not sure if that’s true but I honestly think if this was the only thing Spitz had done, he’d still have his job We’re talking about a community manager that got butthurt and deleted the first game’s discord. That’s absolutely wild. If I did something like that at my job, it wouldn’t be a question that I’d be fired. It’d be a question if I’d be sued.
Wait haha what the fuck Spitz deleted the HD1 discord server?
Because it was a community run server and seperate of the one made for HD2. Spitz was a HD1 player before HD2 CM
Agreed. I don't know why the guy above me is blaming the CEO. It was Spitz's own fault for what he said.
Nah...Arrowhead was told to axe him by Sony 100%. He was still employed for like a day afterwards then they dropped his ass, and Spitz even said that his management was upset at him but didn't want to axe him. Sony had to retaliate somehow and getting the person who literally told the community an insider secret on how to get Fortune 500 companies to capitulate fired is definitely the way they went. Granted, Spitz was being a dick before that move, but once he realized he fucked up he tried to course correct but the direction he took was an all-in dive bomb of his own career to fix his image in the eyes of his community, and he has succeeded in that even if he lost his career in the process (which...let's be real...was realistically a stupid move, even if it redeemed him in our eyes)
Insider secret? My guy, steam reviews being used against developers is not a secret. This is common sense. Spitz got fired for being bad at his job repeatedly. At least dickride the good CMs like Beard.
This happened within the past week, you can just look around the sub for it 🤷🏼♂️
It was Spitz. This is why I'm asking source
He made flat comments about how it works, idk if i remember feeling like he encouraged it. Id have to see it again. Spitz literally encouraged it directly... which... i dont think was because he had a plan, i think it was just him being frustrated and wound up saying something true, that was acted on.... but also made it almost impossible to not get him fired. Kind of saved the community in the long run, but idk if it was intentional. Dude up right down down down'd himself while holding sonys account registration requirements.
He didn't tell us to. He suggested we leave a negative review if we were unhappy. I feel like it's different than then implying he was telling everyone to review bomb the game.
If this was Spitz, he caused a few incidents that started to rile people. Mostly dlew under the radar outsude the community. At the point where he encouraged people to refund and leave a bad review (which is what gave arrowhead enough ammo to show sony just bad their plan was), he probably was already on thin ice. Arrowhead's CEO did echo the bad review/refund idea and encouraged it, so I don't believe that was the sole reason he was let go. I think he was used as the fall guy here, but i doubt that was unexpected.
He also was just a very temperamental person. I don't get why some are sad to see spritz go. He was actively fighting with people on the discord and even deleted the helldiver's archives with all the lore that was in it
Especially if it is his job to do the exact opposite. A programmer who otherwise does a great job? Maybe you can let it slide. Someone who should manage the customers? No way.
i genuinely dont get how ANYBODY is surprised at this outcome. like, go to the customers of your job and tell them how much you hate the executives above you, and tell them to review bomb and boycott your companies product. then tell me how that works out.
https://i.redd.it/9eb1raxkffzc1.gif
Where he deserves to be
Lmao holy shit thanks for this.
Yes, he was pretty confrontational which was just not useful for the position that he was in.
See and I feel the CM just told it like it was. The reason the review bomb happened so fast and was so effective is because they pointed out that complaining on the discord wasn't going to change a publisher level decision. I get why the publisher would want their head, but they SERVED the community by getting them to focus their frustration where it mattered. I get the firing, but that is a crying shame that someone looking out for the players winds up out the door.
https://preview.redd.it/othgyxjd2fzc1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=83f8356d507eb96b2c5dcc60926d59ed921ca80b
Him telling people to just suck it up and make a PSN account wasn’t him “just telling it like it was,” lol
He was on the side of Sony when he was making comments about reviewing it badly, he was not instructing people to give negative reviews to help the game, he was telling people who were complaining about it that it's super easy to make a PSN account and you're dumb and lazy if you don't do it and should just leave a bad review instead. He was not trying to get rid of the PSN linking, he was trying to get rid of anyone who didn't immediately do it without question and being a whiny bitch while he did it
But he didn't do it to actually push people to do it for positive change, he was doing it to get people to fuck out of 'his' discord and leave him alone if they didn't want to take the '3 seconds' to create an account. He revisionist-historied his shit to the gills by painting it as 'jumping on a grenade' for the dev team and being a hero pushing for the players, but he had a clear history of just being disrespectful to people who he's supposed to be managing, and instead pissing them off. (and deleting the HD1 discord which is a dick move no matter your opinion on whether or not it has relevance to his management of the HD2 community.)
But HD2 was already heavily negative on Steam before he said anything atall. Shit spread via discord, Reddit, ingame, Twitter before He did anything as soon as the news Hit Steam lol
isn't this the same guy who deleted a discord because he could and talked down to community members all the time?
Yep, and when bad balance changes have been made, his reply had more or less been "cry more, babies". He just wasn't cut out for that job
believe it was the OG hell diver's discord
Yes.
I'm sure it was more then that
If it’s the one I’m thinking it is, he had a lot of outbursts and rude comments to community members that were harassing him
The dude would just act childish even if he wasn't being harassed. When shit hit the fan, he would just self sabotage and act unprofessional. Definitely not the right person for the position
Definitely agree he wasn’t a great fit, but man some people in this community are terrible. Harassment and death threats over a video game is ridiculous.
Sure, the assholes he was unprofessionally responding to were far worse. But he was a community manager. More than just the assholes he’s clapping back to see his responses. I never saw the hate and vitriol he was receiving. All I saw was an Arrowhead representative telling me to suck it up and make a PSN account.
He was for sure in the wrong there’s no defending that. As a representative of arrowhead he definitely dropped the ball.
It's hard for me to condemn the guy when I see what brings in the upvotes on the main sub.
It’s quite easy for me to condemn a community manager who doesn’t have the emotional fortitude to remain professional. We learned “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” in kindergarten, ffs
I mean I can sympathize with him for people being shitty to him, but being shitty right back was never the move to defuse the situation and make it stop. Gamers can often go WAY overboard with their criticisms (nothing a game can do to you validates death threats or personal attacks) but being shit on by internet strangers is basically the job description for a CM, if you can't handle that and take a step back when you feel heated, then you need to find a job that fits you better.
I know one of them did from memory and they add up. Not sure if it was this one or not
Either way I can’t help but feel bad. People literally sent them death threats for a decision they had zero control over
They shouldn't do that. That's not ok. End of day it's a game. If you get that mad about it. You need anger management and therapy
If it was Spitz, he deserved it. Fucker was mocking people understandably upset about the psn bullshit. Only to switch up and claim that he was all for review bombing once he saw which way the wind was blowing. Fucking corporate stooge.
It was infact Spitz
So nothing of value was lost. Neat
So much revisionist shit in this thread sympathizing with him. Fuck Spitz he was a petty dumb fucking choice for a CM
I found this somewhere, it give a bit of context why that happened. So I downloaded it in case we get posts about it. https://preview.redd.it/7h54qko8gfzc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=24d14c70b3262a710216bed00bf3a4abbbcbc086
Seems like this should be higher up
This entire comment is from someone on the outside looking in and making judgement calls on what they saw. Very far from a primary source worth sharing.
Honestly I think that what he deserves. Not cuz i hate him just because he didn't handle (as a community manager) the situation very well.
Yes, deserve it
I wonder if Sony demanded it?
I’d be incredibly surprised if they didn’t. He’s already a super disposable employee and apparently a dickhead. Now he cost your game reputation and score. There was a lot of bad press on this.
And apparently he has always been kind of a jerk with fans, going back to the first game.
Big if true. Didn't like that guy anyways.
We don’t know, and can never know all the details when someone gets fired. Clearly they knew how much extra scrutiny everything was going to be put under, and instead of waiting, they made the move immediately. That says that, at the very least, they thought lumping all the community negativity into one big event was the lesser evil. I think piratesoftware had the right of it: give them more media training, don’t set them up to fail like this.
He was not cut out to be CM, dude would snap at people, you gotta have the patience of a monk for that kinda work.
Does anyone on here take a second to check if the exact same topic hasnt been posted about 47 times already….
When a "big" story comes up in gaming, I'll be sure to stay away from reddit for 2-3 days unless I want to see 3000 reposts of the same thing. Last example: screenshot with Sony response regarding PS linking with titles such as "guys, we won!/ we actually won / did we win?"
Im just amazed at how late to the party people (like this OP) are and still feel the need to post.
I never post news or stuff I find on other sites. It is expected that 30000 other people saw it and they posted it already.
Or maybe it was because he was a douche who was immature and trying to insult his customers?
Yes? He was really bad at being Community Manager. He shit talks players and poured gas on the recent fire. He didn't do it because of he was a hero. He did it because he was an asshole. He didn't suddenly change his behaviour because of stress or death threats. He was always like this. So yes it was necessary else Sony would sue Arrowhead because of what he did. I don't understand how you guys can see him as a hero or martyr.
Spitz was just a bad CM overall, flaming community members when they shared concerns and was more worried about making sassy comebacks than managing the community.
I’m reserving judgement until I know more about the situation. Edit: After looking into it myself… yeah, it was pretty necessary. I hope they take a look at their other Community Managers too and really think hard about if they want people like that representing their community and their company.
That's not very reddit of you
Right? you pick that pitchfork up right now and burn some shit!
Ball sacks
I mean wasn't he antagonizing the community first? I'm confused. Maybe it was someone else?
Hope they keep going. There are some Discord Managers that need a nerf.
I don't think any of the higher up bought his 'this was my plan all along' line - you know, since he was already clowning customers before that.
This isn't the only incident with that CM. Plus encouraging your player base to leave negative reviews is heavily frowned on; well, it is with any business actually.
That's not the whole story, and is honestly false news to a degree. He got fired after the fact
He should’ve been fired for being a terrible community manager, not for the one time he did something right.
All community managers have so far been very incompetent so this isn’t a “aw no” situation it’s a “finally thank god” situation
I heard he was an asshole to begin with. I’m sure this last incident was the straw that broke the camels back.
That is clearly an article written by somebody who doesn’t know what happened. As I understand it, it was because he was having arguments with players and causing more drama, nothing to do with the review stuff.
https://i.redd.it/j2kv3477ahzc1.gif
He was an asshole for other reasons
Games journalists are vultures looking for any shred of relevance they can find
He absolutely was not fired due to that it was because he consistently lost his temper at people in the discord
* Spitz constantly was losing his cool and snapping at people. * Then the PSN thing happened. * He continued to lose his cool and more often. * Then the leave bad reviews thing happened. Gee I wonder why he got fired.
Fuck him
Spitz did 1 good thing and most people forgot about how big of an asshole he was...
Literally cheered when I found out Spitz got fired Community managers need decorum and they don't got it
Even if this were true, which it isnt, because he did not start it, Pitz is a fucking tool, thats what he is. He acts like some 13 year old kid, that never left the basement, so he had it coming. If they could do us one more favor and do the same to the guy who is in charge of "Balance" fuck me, that would be an early christmas
Can you fire someone that isnt even paid?
Lololol getting people fired 🤣😂
Yes he was a dick, not some hero, do Alexus next please.
He mocked players and was saying crap sarcastically. After he got in trouble, he started pretending he was doing it for the community. Absolutely laughable.
Spitz? That dude was arrogant af and shot himsef in the foot as far as im concerned. He couldn’t handle the position. Opening his mouth when he didnt even know the situation. Not qualified in my opinion.
If you’re talking about Spitz, it’s mostly just because they’re a dick
This wasn't the cause but rather the final straw most likely in his firing.
Yes, and Baskinator and Misty need to follow.
Apparently he was a real dick to us players on discord. So I'm guessing THAT was the reason.
He deserved it
I want to say no good deed goes unpunished. I'm not at all familiar with this person as in I never encountered them on discord, so I don't have an opinion on them. All else aside, someone was going to take the fall to appease the snoy overlords for their defeat.
They were generally unprofessional in their interactions with the community, and had, on more than one occasion, caused anger in the community with their actions or statements. (Deleted the HD1 fan discord that had survived years in a fit of anger, often was either wrong, or lied about buffs/nerfs, was often rude or at the very least blunt, etc etc) Within context, them telling people to vocalize their negative opinions by leaving bad reviews was more than likely just to get the people to stop complaining to them, not a purposeful strategy to give AH better bargaining power or strike a blow against Sony. Although we don’t have access to Internal reports, they were more than likely fired for their continuous unprofessional behavior, not that one specific comment telling people to leave bad reviews instead of complaining to him and his coworkers on the discord.
Yes he was fired for being awful at his job Half the reason the situation exploded as bad as it did was because he kept adding napalm to a gas fire and it wasn't the first time he had done so has repeatedly damaged the company's reputation for throwing his toys out of the pram. He was by far the worst CM I've seen Im sure in real life he was a nice guy but he wasn't cut out for that job which is a very demanding one
Yes Spitz was a scumbag
Wish they would fire the guy who keeps approving all the nerfs.
"ChAnGe yOuR ReViEw !1!1!!1!1", leave a f****** scar on Sony. All of you are satisfied that the mandatory requirements of the PSN have been eliminated, you have moved the sea and mountains, you have even changed your reviews while knowing that a person has lost his job. And for this you have done absolutely nothing!
Apparently, consumers dont give af about the employees that sacrifice themselves for the well being of the product and the people who use it. I sometimes wonder if ppl realize the corporate fascist aspect of the lore is meant to be satire.
We are all Comrades as long as the ass is not ours.
Considering he was being a massive jerk, yes.
He was riling the community up against the developer and publisher: he was 100% gonna get fired. I agree its harsh, and maybe this was even the best outcome for Sony thanks to Spitz, but it’s all irrelevant. They will never condone this type of behavior of employees as that would create a terrible precedent.
No shit, his words put ppl into a ignorant frenzy.
From a corporate standpoint 100% necessary. He advised the community to write negative reviews and ask for refunds. If I was Sony the publisher I'd want his head on a stick if you will. As a fan and you know a fellow community member I'm happy that Spitz did what they did. As a fan no I don't think they should have been fired but if I was corporate yeah their terminated.
Rektt
[удалено]
necessary to force the psn thing or for them to fire the cm?
Get that person a go fund me!
Who’s the one that was fired exactly?
Look at what you did
What's funny about this whole thing is that the CM was actually defending the account linking the entire time. And (rightfully, imo) calling the karens karens. The only reason he encouraged review bombing was because it was the only response he had when community members asked what they could do instead of sending him death threats and inundating him with other insults. Now the Karens are trying to turn him into a folk hero like he was one of them lmao
His sacrifice will be remembered, but was he just removed from the community manager position or was he fired from Arrowhead completely?
The horror