Helldivers2 continues to make lemonade from its biggest blunder. Behind the "PSN-gate" fiasco, which saw the best-selling shooter smashed with negative Steam reviews, delisted from many countries (an ongoing problem) and its publisher Sony pressured to reverse the disruptive PSN sign-in requirements, Arrowhead is now making a cheeky cape to commemorate player protests.

A brief rewind: That same morning, Sony reversed last week's decision, and Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt shared a community post that threw a cape based on helldivers2's Steam review graph. No one was sure if he was taking the idea seriously, but that changed when he answered one fan saying Arrowhead was "talking about a good name for it now.

Two days ago, Pilestedt tweeted a teaser of the cape — a black fabric with a matte finish and two long red bars that, just visible in the corners, represent more than 200,000 negative steam reviews, many of which have since returned to positive ones. In addition to Cape's legitimacy is a recent reply from the community Manager Twinbeard On The Helldivers Discord:

"We already have a name," he said, referring to the review Bomb Cape, "hypothetically there should be a cape, it is.""

This will be the second cape made in response to the efforts of real-world players: In early May, Arrowhead released Maleveron Creek with a new in-game holiday and a memorial Cape for all.

It's nice that Arrowhead wants to acknowledge the review bomb protest that led to Sony's reversal. It is also inevitable and awkward. While the Maleveron Creek celebration was a good feeling for the community and a victory in fiction, PSN-gate is still locked out of a game that has been played for months, and then there's the unprecedented oddity of a studio that favours and celebrates its own game review bombing — a game that has been powerful but imperfect for many years. It has been proven to be a good thing — a few weeks after one of its community managers was fired for publicly endorsing its review bombing/refund as it was happening. It's never boring to keep up with Helldivers2.

The assumption is that the still unnamed Cape will be released for free sometime soon, probably around the next big war event, which could be any day now