Helldivers 2 players are closing in on their first "permanent" win in the bug war, so surely nothing will go horribly wrong when game master Joel presses a big red button

In a confusing twist that's seen developer Arrowhead and Game Master Joel follow the will of the player base, Helldivers 2's new Major Order has put a bullseye on Malevelon Creek to free the controversial planet once and for all.

As the Helldivers 2 community formally piles into Malevelon Creek for a surprise Major Order following a failed operation, creative director and Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt says the studio is talking about ways to make such orders easier to understand.

Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Game Studios recently received a gift package from Alan Wake 2 and Control developer Remedy Games, and it came with a letter penned by none other than Alan Wake himself. It's a fun read, an in-character mix of two game worlds worth of lore, filtered through the persona of one gaming's most iconic writers, and spliced with the events of today's industry. Here's the letter in full: 

A new Helldivers 2 Major Order has upped the ante in the ongoing fight against the Automatons, sending players straight back to Malevelon Creek in a push to destroy a major bot factory. But this order has come amidst a suspiciously quiet moment on the western war front, and I'm more convinced than ever that we're just in the eye of the storm.

It all comes back to Malevelon Creek. Helldivers 2 players smashed the latest major order, and now a new one's come in to shut down an Automaton factory on planet Tibit, but we're going to have to punch through some other planets first, and the infamous Malevelon Creek is marked for liberation once again.

Helldivers 2 just got two new heavy weapons for democratic soldiers to bring to the ongoing fight against the Automatons, spurred by a new Major Order to liberate Troost and head off the bots' "Reclamation." The LAS-99 Quasar Cannon and MG-206 Heavy Machine Gun are now available "for immediate battlefield distribution," as developer Arrowhead Game Studios announced via Twitter today. 

A Helldivers 2 player by the in-game name of OkamiCheems sadly passed away earlier this month, as their friend Fine-Clothes-1209 recently informed the game's Reddit community, and has been sent off by tens of thousands of like-minded democracy enthusiasts in a bittersweet display of community support. 

The wrong kind of bug has thrown a wrench in Helldivers 2 right as players eagerly throw themselves at a daunting challenge from Game Master Joel. Developer Arrowhead has confirmed that, as players had begun to suspect after barely making any planetary progress today, democratic activities aren't being tracked properly, skewing progress in the warfront.

The finest democracy spreaders in Helldivers 2 have all but been dancing in the streets on the heels of a big win that saw six planets liberated, two defended, and two sectors captured, and game master Joel has turned up right on cue to put them straight back to work. A new major order has arrived, and it's a doozy. Players have 72 hours to liberate both Fori Prime and Zagon Prime, and they'll get 35 medals if they pull it off. 

Since launch in January, Palworld players have been begging for the survival game to add an essential colony sim feature: the ability to precisely assign workers to different tasks. In a new image posted to Discord by community manager Bucky, developer Pocketpair has teased just that. Have a look:

I'm struck by the fact that I've spent exactly half of my life, a full 15 years, waiting on a new anime adaptation for Spice and Wolf, and now it's finally airing next month via Crunchyroll. 

The undercurrent of propaganda that shapes Helldivers 2's obnoxiously yet endearingly democratic universe has truly boiled over in the wake of conflicting, definitely real reports from the game's community and developers alike.