Helldivers 2 falls back to earth. After a meteoric riseand a long tenure at the top of the live service market, Arrowhead Game Studios’ player count for its co-op third-person shooter has been in a sustained free fall for the past few weeks. Now, player numbers are trending downward and Helldivers 2 must find a way forward.
Helldivers 2‘S Galactic War History– the metanarrative that primarily captivated its players and allowed them to roleplay as comically evil fascists – relied on its huge fanbase to get by and complete missions like fixing billions of bugs at once. A recent series of major missions with similar extraordinary requests failedand strategies promised to the community upon their completion have been appropriately held back, angering the dwindling player base, which currently stands at a respectable 66,000 players. According to EurogamerThis figure represents a decrease of almost 65 percent compared to the previous month.
Of course, this number is declining for a number of reasons. Live service games tend to see sharp declines after a honeymoon period and Helldivers 2 enjoyed a longer one than most. This was because the changing nature of the game seemed novel at first, with Arrowhead introducing new features, worlds, weaponsand enemies at an incredible and somewhat unprecedented rate. However, the awe eventually gave way to frustration as players felt that the balance of the game seemed to be shifting chaotically and a Number of errors on the way. Now the dust continues to settle after a PSN login request was withdrawn after a thoroughly harmful weekendand the picture is not particularly nice.
It is clear that Helldivers 2 encounters a nasty number problem. On the one hand, the narrative and the goals require that sometimes ridiculously large numbers be reached in order to progress. The game manages incredible story beats because it could let hundreds of thousands of players work together on invented problems, which helped popularize the game. On the other hand, there was once a dedicated player community that was more than happy to mobilize and try to meet the ridiculous demands, in part because the roleplaying made the whole affair a fun thing to do with other players. Now, however, the recent uproar, as well as several other
There are some obvious solutions to this, such as Arrowhead reducing the number of these large orders to match the fluctuating player count. This would be the simplest answer to Helldivers 2is the current situation and seems like a surefire way to alleviate the problems with the fanbase that is tearing itself apart at the moment, tearing the game to pieces in the process. However, it would be unprecedented as Helldivers 2 doesn’t give its players anything often, and there’s a risk that this will signal what the community already knows: membership numbers are declining. Had the studio been more lax about some of its goals in the past, such a tactic might have passed without a word, but now it needs to keep the players who have stuck with it.
Players on the Helldivers 2 Subreddit have posted some of their ordeals. One user has succinctly Meme of a vicious circle where the studio hides new content behind Grand Orders that then fail, which in turn leads to fewer players because there is less content, and goes back to the first point. In another subreddit, someone shared a post asking, “We’re really going to fail two Grand Orders in a row??” These Grand Orders are also just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Arrowhead’s ongoing problems, including the number of regions the game has yet to return to and its constantly changing balance, which has been irking players for months.
If the studio decides to wait, it’s not impossible to imagine the current major order not being completed either. However, players have the long holiday weekend to complete it, so it’s just as likely they’ll get through it with all that extra time, so it could really go either way. The completion or failure of this next major order could be a lucky sign for the times to come, or a grim omen. At the end of the day, the numbers will tell. Helldivers 2The future of… and I really hope they bring good news next week.
