After a surprise last-minute delay, Helldivers 2's Redacted Regiment warbond is set to launch later this week

Helldivers 2 stealth armor sets — (Image credit: Arrowhead Game Studios)

The Helldivers 2 Redacted Regiment warbond that was delayed at the last minute last week has a new release date, and it's actually not too much of an added wait. Instead of arriving on January 20 as originally planned, Arrowhead Game Studios announced today that it will drop on January 22 instead.

"We were able to resolve the issue with Redacted Regiment and it will soon be available for release!" Arrowhead wrote today on X. "We will have a patch incoming Thursday 22nd January at 11 am CET (5 am ET) with Redacted Regiment going live at 2 pm CET (8 am ET) also on the 22nd."

Helldivers 2 – Redacted Regiment Warbond - YouTube

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What exactly went wrong to force the delay remains a mystery. Arrowhead said on January 16, a few days after Redacted Regiment was revealed, that "during final testing for the Warbond, we found a key issue that didn't meet our standards for a release."

Some fans have speculated that effectively working stealth into Helldivers 2—which in my experience is very much a not-stealthy game—may have proven more complicated than expected. Coming as close as it did to the warbond's release, though, I feel like the problem had to be fairly specific rather than broadly conceptual.

Despite being well known for the various types of orbital firepower players can call down on enemies (and each other), Redacted Regiment is all about doing the job quietly. As my PC Gamer news pal Lincoln Carpenter wrote last week, it brings a pair of new suppressed weapons to the fight along with a dart-firing pistol, two shadowy armor sets, and the Concealed Insertion booster perk that adds smokescreens to your Hellpod arrivals. There's also a new backpack with six sticky C4 charges, because sometimes noise is unavoidable, and when that happens you might as well get really noisy.

For what it's worth, Lincoln also informed me that it is possible to effectively employ stealth while completing Helldivers 2 missions: "You just need to be an irredeemable pervert instead of merely a casual one." I guess I need to up my game.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.

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