Uh oh—Helldivers 2's state-owned missile platform players voted into existence is blowing them up, with Arrowhead giving players free shield generators while it figures out what happened

The Super Earth Spokesperson in Helldivers 2 looks very confused as a massive explosion rocks the earth behind him. — (Image credit: Arrowhead Games)

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Update: Arrowhead has applied an emergency patch, presumably while its devs figure out what the hell happened. While the barrages continue, the action in question also increases reinforcements by one per active squad member and gives everyone free shield generators. As a Discord message reads:

"High Command has authorized augmentations to Helldiver loadouts while the Planetary Bombardment Tactical Action is active, in order to ameliorate an unexpectedly steep increase in heroic sacrifices. This is a temporary change, while a full assessment of the optimal number of sacrifices is underway." Original story follows.

I said a lot of nice words about the Democracy Space Station added to Helldivers 2 yesterday, and I want to clarify two things. Firstly, I still think it's a really cool concept, but secondly, I also said that before players had bought any of the station's "actions", such as the planetary bombardment. Now the planetary bombardments are online, players are realising that they've just voted in a synthetic meteor shower that's killing them as often as it's killing bugs and bots.

"Two months for this," writes an incensed player on the game's subreddit, lamenting their recently blown-off limbs. "Wasn't this supposed to help us? This is honestly kind of insulting, we made a Super Weapon to kill ourselves. Who thought that randomly and frequently bombing where the players are at random would be a fun experience for the player? Is this a joke? What is this?" Democracy, I guess.

A fellow voter adds that, in one mission, "we lost probably 10 reinforcements from the DSS. It killed maybe like 2 robots. It aims at us when the closest robot is 120 metres away. Like actually what is the thought process behind this?"

In case you wanted some video proof, here's a clip one unfortunate player shared of a low-difficulty mission starting where they drop out of their pod, step into a beautiful desert to enchanting music, make it three steps, and are promptly struck clean into the underworld by the elected superweapon they themselves voted into power. It's a damned clean shot, too.

The Orbital Bombardment feels a bit counterproductive… from r/Helldivers

Luckily, Arrowhead Games is aware that something's wrong, as community manager Twinbeard states on the Helldivers 2 Discord server. A proper, official statement is still in the words, but in the meantime, he broadly reassures players that the dev team is working on it, as well as the testing procedures that got them into this position: "Testing was done," Twinbeard assures the server. "Now we need to test the testing to test whether it was properly tested. When we've tested that, we will likely test it some more next time."

A server message that reads: &quot;Testing was done. Now we we need to test the testing to test whether it was properly tested. When we've tested that, we will likely test it some more next time.&quot; — (Image credit: Helldivers 2 Discord)

It's a bit of a bump in the road that Arrowhead's otherwise been sailing down after its recent update fixed a ton of problems players had with the game. At the very least, it's hilariously appropriate to the nth degree—the super democracy of Helldivers 2 is a thin veil for a overtly oppressive regime that'll kill-slash-imprison you for saluting the flag wrong. Allowing soldiers to vote for a poorly-programmed missile system which doesn't care if they're friend or foe is completely lore-accurate, if annoying to play with. Here's hoping Super Earth's finest democracy officers find the pro-Automaton traitors behind these repeat betrayals and dispense justice soon.

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.