Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has revealed it’s putting a temporary pause on content updates while it works on improving performance.
In an interview on the official Helldivers YouTube channel, director Mikael Eriksson admitted the game’s most recent big update, Into the Unjust, had “more issues than [the team] were comfortable with,” which is why the studio has now decided “to push some of our content and feature updates a little bit into the future.”
Recent reviews for Helldivers 2 on Steam are ‘mixed,’ with most of the complaints revolving around performance trouble. The ‘most helpful review’ penned over the last 30 days is a negative one from a player with over 500 hours in-game. They called Helldivers 2’s performance “inexcusable,” pointing to stuttering and freezing during gameplay and crashes.
“Arrowhead, Sony, PLEASE put less focus on new content and live service updates,” they pleased. “PLEASE stop nerfing loadouts that are already underpowered or underused with the guise of ‘realism’ or ‘balance.’ It’s a PvE game; no one cares if people are cheesing hulks with a flag. The game needs to be fun and PLAYABLE before you can rake in the cash with a new warbond.
“FIX THE GAME <3”
Now, Arrowhead has addressed those complaints. “After the last big update, Into the Unjust, we experienced more issues than what we were comfortable with,” Eriksson said, as spotted by Eurogamer. “Players felt it, we felt it, and I would say the feedback that we’ve got has been very justified.
“We’re taking this very seriously and we are focusing way more now on addressing these issues to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again,” he added. “We have made the decision to push some of our content and feature updates a little bit into the future while we’re addressing these things to make sure that we can get to a much more stable state that we can believe in.
“We are already making really big improvements and I’m confident that we will get there and we will be able to talk in more detail about this hopefully quite soon.”
Last week, developer Arrowhead Studios said it still didn’t have a solution for the shooter’s groaning installation size on PC, but did confirm it was working on it. In an update posted to Steam, Arrowhead’s deputy technical director, Brendan Armstrong, penned the first in a series of posts in which the engineering team talks about the “technical health” of the game, as well as the “technical challenges we’re working through.” Admitting that the installation size “seems to be a hot topic right now” — at 150GB, Helldivers 2 takes up three times the space on PC than it does on console — the developer revealed that one of the reasons the PC size is so much bigger is because of data duplication and mechanical hard drives.
Check out IGN’s review of Helldivers 2 on Xbox Series X and S to see what we think of the game as it is today. Arrowhead has also revealed it has no plans for Helldivers 3 right now. Instead, it wants Helldivers 2 to keep going for years and years, like veteran MMO RuneScape.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
