Helldivers 2 servers are getting crushed under the onslaught of mechs

After a long stretch of teasing, mechs have finally arrived in Helldivers 2, providing players the opportunity to stomp around the battlefield in heavily-armored style. Unfortunately, with that good news comes a bit of bad: The arrival of the heavy-duty war machines has brought with it a renewed round of server errors.

"We are aware of an issue with players not being able to get into the game," an Arrowhead developer said earlier today on the Helldivers Discord. "This happened when the Combat Walkers became available. People rushed to get it and it overwhelmed our backend. We are working to fix it as soon as we can. We want you to enjoy the Mech as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience!"

Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt said the issue is "intermittent," and luck may still get you in the door: PC Gamer Helldiver-in-Chief Morgan Park is in the game at this very moment, and has been for some time now, because I guess he just gets to do that kind of thing on a Friday. I, however, have been stuck at a "failed to connect to server" message for the past 20 minutes.

(Honestly compels me to admit that Morgan is actually playing Helldivers 2 for a work thing, which you will likely be reading about soon.)

At this point there's no indication as to when servers will be back to normal. "Service will be restored eventually," Pilestedt tweeted, "but for now I ask for patience."

So far, just as they did when Helldivers 2 launched and ran face-first into a brick wall of server problems, players seem inclined to roll with it. There's some understandable impatience and frustration, but no real wailing and gnashing of teeth on display—although I get the feeling that this guy, who actually got into the game, came pretty close:

I found a mech. It didn't last long. from r/Helldivers

That may be the saddest sound I've heard all year.

A greater concern at this point seems to be the failure of mission rewards to register on the completion of missions, including from the most recent major order, which led up to the mech rollout. This too is apparently part of the backend overload: A Helldivers 2 developer on Discord said the problem "is a visual bug due to the backend part of the server (basically player loot/data) being overworked," and that everyone will get their rewards and samples eventually.