Death Threats Kill Helldivers 2's $1K Charity Challenge

Someone offered a thousand dollars to charity. In return, they got death threats sent to their workplace and messages flooding the horse sanctuary where they volunteer. That's the full arc of the Helldivers 2 D10 Dev Challenge, and it took less than a week to collapse.

The challenge itself was straightforward. On February 28, a player posted on r/Helldivers with what they called a serious offer: $1,000 to the charity of Arrowhead's choosing, provided four developers could upload a video of themselves completing an entire operation on Oshaune, the game's toughest planet, on difficulty 10, the maximum setting. Other community members piled on with additional pledges, and Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani shared images of himself and other devs attempting the challenge in the official Discord. The whole thing had the energy of a fun community moment. Then it didn't.

Within days, the challenge creator was fielding what they described as dozens upon dozens of hateful messages. Their post pulling out of the event reads like someone who has genuinely had enough: "For my own wellbeing 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 confirmed their wife had been targeted, and that harassers had tracked down the horse sanctuary where they volunteer and were sending messages there too.

Who Was Behind It

The motivation behind the harassment is murky, but posts on r/HelldiversSodium point toward a faction the community calls "Glazedivers", a bloc of players so fervently pro-Arrowhead that they apparently read the charity challenge as an attack on the developers' skill rather than a fun community event. Piecing together exactly what happened has been difficult because, according to one Reddit post, the main r/Helldivers subreddit went into "full totalitarian censorship mode", with moderators deleting the majority of posts referencing the situation.

Arrowhead and Sony issued a joint statement on the official Helldivers 2 Discord on March 5. It names the D10 challenge directly and doesn't soften the language: "We do not tolerate threats of violence, harassment, or doxxing toward anyone: players, creators, developers, moderators, or our teams in any community spaces. This kind of toxic behaviour is unacceptable and not something we will ever condone." Jorjani had already signalled where he stood days earlier when a player informed him about the doxxing in Discord. His response was four words: "Helldivers treat other Helldivers with respect."

The statement also takes a pointed swing at the r/Helldivers moderation situation, noting that while the subreddit is community-owned and operated, it "should be a safe and welcoming place for all people to voice their opinions and frustrations in a productive and respectful way." Arrowhead and Sony say they are continuing to monitor the situation internally and with external partners, which leaves the door open for further action, though what form that takes is unclear.

A top comment on the Reddit thread reacting to the statement, sitting close to 3,000 upvotes, called for those involved in the harassment to be tracked down and permanently banned from the game. That's probably the right instinct. A charity was supposed to get a thousand dollars out of this. Instead, someone's wife got harassed and a horse sanctuary had to deal with hate messages from people who were angry that a video game developer was challenged to play their own game.

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