The appearance at the Game Awards 2024 has done Helldivers 2 a lot of good. On Steam, the online shooter can look forward to an enormous increase in player numbers.
Why was Helldivers 2 at the Game Awards? The developers announced the largest and probably most important update for the popular co-op shooter. In a new trailer, which you can find further down, the Illuminati were confirmed as the third enemy faction.
The Illuminati are a highly developed, extraterrestrial civilization that will fight against the players in Helldivers 2 as opponents of the Over-Earth and will attack from the lower part of the galaxy map. The fight against the Illuminati is said to fundamentally differ from battles against the bugs and robots, as you will be fighting in the cities of the various colonies.
You can see the new Helldivers 2 trailer from the Game Awards here:
Comeback in the Top 15 on Steam
How does the announcement affect things? Well, obviously the trailer and the announcement have sparked many fans’ desire to log back into the co-op shooter. Shortly after the Game Awards, the number of simultaneous active players rose to over 72,000 (via Reddit). Over the weekend, the number even climbed to 150,169 simultaneous active players (via steamdb.info).
By comparison: In the days before the event, there were fewer than 25,000 players online at the same time. Comparable high numbers were last seen in April 2024, nearly two months after launch. The all-time high still stands at 458,709 simultaneous active players.
How does the community react to the new peak?
- TheSuspectIsHere writes on Reddit: “Don’t you guys have to work tomorrow?”
- Hangulman was live at the event (via Reddit): “It took all my self-control to log off for the night. I played an Illuminate flag-raising mission. When the mission started, there were less than 30k people online. When I finished the mission, there were over 100k and more.”
- darkyaegavor states on Reddit the simple reason for the increase: “Democracy calls.” RandomRon005 adds on Reddit: “The Helldivers are responding.”
- The player increase on PS5 is also shown by the Reddit post from Eliminator12727, which shows 156,069 active Helldivers.
Helldivers 2 underscores that it belongs among the best games of 2024. At the Game Awards 2024, the game rightfully won the awards for “Best Ongoing Game” and “Best Multiplayer Game.” You can find all nominations and winners of the Game Awards 2024 in our overview.
