Helldivers 2 is in the "it's so over!" part of the chart again, unfortunately. Despite its latest patch being a ton of fun, the entire engine is also buckling and groaning under the weight of extreme technical debt.
Crashes, bugs, terrible performance, and an ever-balooning file size are all starting to get the game a Mixed recent review score on Steam at the time of writing—although just barely. Currently, 69% (nice) of all reviews in the last 30 days are positive.
Well, Arrowhead has noticed your concerns. In a recent post to the Helldivers 2 Discord, community manager Baskinator relays: "We know many of you have been experiencing issues, including performance drops, stability hiccups, freezes, and the annoying audio bugs.
"We’ve seen the feedback across Discord, forums, Reddit and our dashboards. You’ve been loud, clear, and absolutely right to expect better. We also recognise that our recent updates haven’t hit the mark, and our silence hasn’t helped. That’s on us. We read all of it, and we are hard at work creating a roadmap to address this."
The developer then states there'll be a mid-October patch that should address some of the woes, including landing on caves, crash fixes, and some "minor performance improvements". If that feels like a bit of a slow roll, then that's because Arrowhead's really gonna take some time to knuckle down and ensure this doesn't continue.
"For some of the bigger performance pieces, unfortunately, we can’t wave a ‘short-turnaround-magic-wand’, nor would a 60-day patch fix them fully (rather it would be duct tape where we need to solder); so we’re working on a bigger development plan as to how we can address some of the larger concerns.
"Short term, we think the above will make a noticeable improvement, and beyond that, we’ll keep working on the top issues you keep raising."
The developer also states that it'll be making an active effort to communicate more—admitting that its radio silence hasn't quite helped: "In the future, we’re planning more transparency and more talk! We’re looking to share more about the processes, performance and how we got here, plus further improvements and evolution. For starters, expect another post next week to kick that off."
I do feel a little for Arrowhead here—the Helldivers 2 playerbase is, uh, let's call them vocal, and direct communication hasn't exactly worked out smoothly in the past. But I meant it when I said that Helldivers 2 goes through a cycle of "it's so over" to "we're so back", to the point where you can set your watch by it.
Or, as I did, write an article back at the end of 2024 documenting the game's repeated ups and downs. Nothing's certain but death, taxes, and Arrowhead kinda-fumbling a patch and then making up for it later.
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