Sony Interactive Entertainment and Arrowhead Game Studios have issued an official statement on the Helldivers 2 Discord, after the user credited with creating what they called the D10 Dev Challenge charity event reported being targeted with death threats and being doxxed at their place of work.
The challenge offered devs the chance to earn a donation to the charity of their choice if they could complete a difficult in-game task. The message on the Helldivers Official Discord server addressing the drama that has followed that initial post states that both Arrowhead and Sony are still “tracking the situation currently unfolding surrounding the Dev D10 challenge,” but felt that they needed to directly address the “hostility in the community” due to the recent events. “We do not tolerate threats of violence, harassment, or doxxing toward anyone: players, creators, developers, moderators, or our teams in any community spaces. While we understand that /r/Helldivers is a community-owned and operated channel, it should be a safe and welcoming place for all people to voice their opinions and frustrations in a productive and respectful way.”
The original creator of the D10 Dev Challenge, who has since pulled out from the charity event, revealed that they’d been subject to death threats in a follow-up post on Reddit. “I’ve received dozens upon dozens of messages like this since I first issued the challenge. For my own well being I’ll be stepping off reddit and the community as a whole. Stop trying to contact me. The challenge is officially over on my part.”
They also stated in several separate comments that their wife had also been targeted, as had the animal sanctuary at which they volunteer. “I just learned they somehow got a hold of the horse sanctuary I volunteer at and they are sending messages there too. So yeah, this is it.”
The reasoning behind the death threats is somewhat murky, although several posts on the r/HelldiversSodium subreddit reference a vitriolic section of the community they refer to as “Glazedivers.” The posts imply that some members of this fervently pro-Arrowhead group perceived the challenge as being issued against the devs for a presumed lack of skill and took offense at the perceived insult. The difficulty in verifying any of this information has been exacerbated by what one poster calls the “full totalitarian censorship mode” in the main r/Helldivers subreddit, as the majority of posts referencing the situation have reportedly been deleted by the moderation team.
What is the Helldivers 2 D10 Dev Challenge?
The original challenge was issued to the Helldivers 2 development team on February 28, in a post on the r/Helldivers subreddit. D10 in this context refers to Super Helldive difficulty, the hardest difficulty level in Helldivers 2.
The initial post offered $1,000 to a charity of Arrowhead’s choosing, provided that the studio could upload a video of four of their developers “playing an entire operation on Oshaune on difficulty 10 and completing all objectives on all three missions on the current MO.”
News of the challenge immediately snowballed, with several Helldivers 2 content creators and community members offering extra money to the cause. Shams Jorjani, Arrowhead Game Studios’ CEO, also shared images of Arrowhead devs, including himself, attempting the challenge in the Helldivers Discord server.
It’s currently unclear if the D10 Challenge is still set to go ahead. Arrowhead Game Studios stated in the Discord announcement that it is “continuing to monitor and review this situation internally and with our external partners.”