Helldivers 2 has been facing problems lately. Now the CEO has commented on the state of the game, explaining how things are going to proceed.
How is the crisis manifesting? The player numbers of Helldivers 2 on Steam have fallen from a peak of 458,208 in February 2024 to 65,585 in August 2024 – that was the highest number of logged-in players reached on Steam recently.
That is a loss of 86% in player numbers over 6 months.
Considering only the average player numbers, the losses are even higher: then 91% of the players on Steam have been lost.
What problems are we talking about? One of the biggest issues of Helldivers 2 is the balancing. Since its release, the game has repeatedly drawn attention with inconsistent balancing updates.
This has frequently led to frustration within the community, which was upset about weapon nerfs that were currently enjoyable.
The player numbers of Helldivers 2 have fallen from a peak of 458,208 in February 2024 to a maximum of 65,585 simultaneous active players on Steam in August 2024.
That is a loss of 86% in player numbers over 6 months.
The criticism has also reached the developers. The CEO of the developer studio “Arrowhead”, Shams Jorjani, has now commented on the current state of the game.
“We are trying to follow our own guiding stars”
What does the boss say? On the official Discord server of Helldivers 2, Jorjani answered some questions from the community.
One player asked if they wanted to take inspiration from other coop games in future updates, especially regarding balancing. Jorjani replied:
The short answer is that we are trying to do a better job while following our own guiding stars. We have veered off course a few times during the summer.
To get back on track, they recently promised to fix the game in 60 days. However, this is not intended to happen all at once, but rather in regular patches. The updates will therefore not be the “biggest of all time”, but are meant to push the game in the “right direction”, as Jorjani explains.
“We first need to improve quality”
Elsewhere, the discussion focused on the speed at which “Warbonds” are released. More frequent releases are currently not the focus.
The slower speed was not only for improving quality but also for addressing other fundamental issues.
We would like to increase the pace again – but we first need to improve quality.
Unlike the developer team itself, some players have addressed certain problems much more quickly. In “only” 10 hours, they developed a solution to the weapon balancing problem: Helldivers 2 has problems with weapon balance – players work nearly 10 hours on a solution: “This is how it should be”
