Helldivers 2’s Operation Clean Up Is a Community-Driven Major Order to Post Positive Steam User Reviews After PSN Backlash — and It’s Working

Helldivers 2 players failed to complete their latest Major Order, and apparently that means that the entire Galactic War is set to "escalate."

Gamers take a lot of unique and interesting names at face value, but there’s always an insightful origin story to be told. We spoke with Arrowhead Game Studios CEO Johan Pilestedt about how the name of the studio and Helldivers franchise came to be. Read on to learn how a translated last name, WWII airplane, and tongue-in-cheek humor played into these titles.

When they’re not banding together to take on Sony or attempting to reinstate fired community managers, it turns out that Helldivers 2 players just want to make sure everyone feels included. Included in the co-op game’s endless war of attrition to protect Super Earth from bugs, robots, and basic awareness of military propaganda, and included in just having mates. Enter player ‘dremskiy’, whose tragic booting from a private game in which they just wanted to make friends has resulted in so many friend requests that their Steam account won’t accept any more.

Helldivers 2’s ongoing meta-narrative took another twist this week after players failed the last Major Order and thus failed to unlock a promised new Stratagem.

Helldivers 2 is still being removed from sale on Steam in more countries, even after publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) scrapped its hugely controversial PSN mandate. 

Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has set the game’s community yet another challenge: kill 2 billion Automatons to unlock a new Stratagem.

Steam users are leaving positive reviews for Hi-Fi Rush following Microsoft’s shock decision to close its developer, Tango Gameworks.

The community has issued its own major order to help clean up the mass review bombing that the game has received recently. 's review scores plummeted on Steam following the announcement that players would have to link their accounts to the PlayStation Network to continue, something that some were reluctant to do, and also prevented entire regions from accessing the game.

Helldivers 2’s first patch since the PSN login debacle is out now, making some much-needed fixes to the game.

It’s been a tumultuous few days for Helldivers 2, as one of this year’s most beloved runaway hits managed to seemingly undo all of its goodwill and earn the ire of thousands of players in the blink of an eye.

Sony has walked back on its decision that mandated new and existing Helldivers 2 players on Steam to link their PlayStation Network accounts to Valve's service after severe backlash over the weekend. On Friday, Sony had announced that users would need to link their Steam account to their PSN account to continue playing Helldivers 2. The PlayStation parent and Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Game Studios received widespread criticism over the move, leading to the game being review bombed on Steam.

Helldivers 2 has had a hell of a few days. Sony announced last week that going forward, PC players would need to link their Steam accounts with PlayStation Network in order to be able to play Arrowhead Game Studios’ mega hit, and the decision was met with instant, widespread backlash. Over the last three days, the co-op shooter has accumulated over 230,000 user reviews on Steam, with its Recent Reviews average plummeting to Overwhelmingly Negative. That has also been accompanied by many users getting refunds issued for their purchase of the game.