Helldivers 2 heralds the flamethrower's return to its former glory, and will be releasing previews of its buff-filled September update every day until it drops

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"A buff a day keeps the bugs away."

helldivers 2 freedom's flame
(Image credit: Arrowhead Game Studios)

Helldivers 2 has been encountering a bit of turbulence since its absurdly popular release—community dramas, review bombs, its CEO stepping down to CCO to better respond to player feedback, in-game protests, and, finally, a promise of a 60-day update plan to help haul it out of the fire.

Complaints have been numerous and passionately argued, but to summarise, Helldivers 2 has a couple of issues with its balancing philosophy. Time-to-kill is still pretty high despite Johan Pilestedt highlighting it as a problem and yet, despite that, some popular weapons were nerfed. The flamethrower, for instance, had nerfs that capped both its actual usability and, for reasons beyond my ken, a significant downgrade in its visual effects.

"A buff a day keeps the bugs away … We've heard you loud and clear and Flamethrower damage [will be] increased by 33%," writes the studio on Twitter, sharing a video (seen below) of CCO Johan Pilestedt and design director Niklas Malmborg going over the changes in brief.

"We've done some major adjustments to all of the flame weapons," Pilestedt notes, as Malmborg clarifies: "Yeah, we just went back … there was some stuff to go through, but it was the right thing to do." In addition to that 33% damage boost, Pilestedt adds that the flamethrower has also had a "armour penetration increase", allowing players to finally scream 'get some' while hosing down a charger with fiery liberty, as democracy herself intended.

These informational videos for the eventual big update will be trickling in daily, which means a constant drip-feed of balance promises that—so far—seem to be delivering on players' desires. We know that Armour Penetration is getting a big ol' overhaul, for instance, and that Arrowhead is conducting closed beta tests to make sure its tweaks aren't pitchfork-grabbingly unpopular before they go live.

It all sounds like a march in the right direction for a game that has—both fairly and unfairly—taken a bit of a beating since its launch. I do broadly agree that a horde shooter shouldn't have heaps of enemies that are walking fortresses, and that certain choices like making the Charger's big, glowy bum not a weak spot are baffling. It's a videogame. You're meant to shoot the shiny red thing. That's just science.

Whether it's all enough to return to those Halcyon days of the Helldivers 2 launch is another question entirely. While I've banged the drum before that a very popular game going from 400,000+ gold rush to a stable 50,000 concurrents isn't a sign of failure, taking a peek at the SteamDB numbers does, alas, show a downward slope to a more humble 16,000 24-hour peak over the past handful of months.

That is, for emphasis, still not a dead game—people move on, and that's only normal and right. But it's clear that updates like The Escalation of Freedom haven't been the second wind Arrowhead Games was clearly hoping for. Quite frankly, I'm waiting for the Illuminate to spice things up myself, but given how much intergalactic democratising I got done on release, I'm rooting for Helldivers 2. Let's see if they've been cooking in that kitchen: The rebalancing update is planned to release September 17.

Harvey Randall
Harvey Randall
Staff Writer

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.