Helldivers 2 is definitely real, and probably announcing soon

Helldivers art
(Image credit: Arrowhead Games)

Another Nvidia leak bears out: 12 seconds of footage from a Helldivers 2 trailer has leaked on Twitter ahead of an official announcement. As sequels go, Helldivers 2 shouldn't be a big surprise at this point: developer Arrowhead Game Studios (also the makers of Magicka) hasn't released a new game since Helldivers in 2015, and last October Arrowhead tweeted some cryptic binary code that seemed like a tease for an announcement that never materialized. In other words: it's about time.

The first Helldivers was published on PlayStation by Sony, and actually arrived on Steam under Sony's banner back in 2015. It was one of only three Sony-published games on Steam, all indies, until Horizon Zero Dawn kicked off the new era of PlayStation games on PC in 2020. Arrowhead kept supporting Helldivers for years, which perhaps explains why the sequel has been so long in coming.

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There's not much to take away from the Helldivers 2 trailer, which includes only a couple lines of dialogue: "The aliens are at our doorstep" and "Democracy herself hangs in the balance." A bit of disclaimer text does confirm the game is coming to PlayStation 5, and there's no mention of PC in the brief snippet that made its way to Twitter. If Sony follows its recent playbook we'll likely see Helldivers 2 on PC, but we might be waiting awhile for a port.

PC Gamer's Morgan Park was a big fan of the co-op shooting in Helldivers, especially its supply drop system that required punching in d-pad codes mid-fight to call down ammo and powerups. You could also instantly squash your teammates with airdrops if they weren't paying attention, something he hopes Helldivers 2 maintains.

Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.


When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).