Summary
The developers behindHelldivers 2, Arrowhead Studio, have admitted in a statement that its latest update was a mistake and revealed that it has a 60-day plan to get things back on track.
Although Helldivers 2 is nowhere near the surprise hit of the year that it was at the beginning of 2024, it still has avery dedicated community that hasbeen looking forward to almost every major update that has dropped. It’s fair to say that not all of the patches have been well-received, however,as the recent Escalation of Freedom update has proven over the past few weeks.
Although most of Escalation of Freedom’s additions were viewed positively,it was all a bit overshadowed by the changes that it made to the meta, including nerfing the FLAM-40 flamethrowerand making it much less effective against the dreaded Chargers. Helldivers players have made it clear for a while that they don’t like these balance updates,but Escalation of Freedom was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Ever since the update launched, Helldivers 2 players have been making their annoyances about the constant changes known, and it seems those complaints have finally reached Arrowhead.As reported by Eurogamer, an official statement from the game’s director, Mikael E,was posted to the Helldivers 2 subreddit that admits the update went too far.
The statement begins with Mikael admitting that Arrowhead “didn’t hit our target” with the latest update and that all of the problems are on it, something that it’s going to own. The game director promised more than just words however, and revealed a 60-day plan that the team has to get things back on track.
In short, we didn’t hit our target with the latest update. Some things we just didn’t get right - and other more fundamental inconsistencies in our approach to game balance and game direction. All of that is on us and we are going to own that. As many of you have pointed out, and we agree, what matters most now is action. Not talk.
The main focus of Helldivers 2’s upcoming updates will be to “re-examine our approach to balance” so that it’s focused more on fun. That includes updating the fire damage mechanic to improve the flamethrower’s effectiveness, reworking gameplay to prevent “excessive ragdolling”, and rethinking how primary weapons are designed so that combat is more engaging.
Beyond that, Arrowhead has also promised that it’s going to reprioritise bug fixes for the more immediate issues as well as reworking Chargers and improving Helldivers 2’s in-game performance. In the future, Arrowhead is also exploring an opt-in beta-test environment so that it can workshop its updates, as well as offering regular player surveys to get more feedback from the community.
