The Helldivers 2 devs are fixing the game — but they also need to sleep

The toughest enemies in often take the game's best weapons to defeat, but one clever trick can accomplish the same job for less investment. One of the best things about s gameplay is the numerous ways to handle missions. Stealth can shorten missions while limiting the number of enemies fought, or Helldivers can opt to go in loud and destroy all enemies of Super Earth. In the latter course, many different weapons and strategies can accomplish this.

Live-service games can feel like a blight on the video game industry sometimes, but if proves anything, it's that the situation is a little more complicated than that. As a third-person, bigger budget sequel to an acclaimed top-down shooterpacks a lot of interesting action and strategic gameplay into an online co-op experience. It's also had a bit of a problematic launch, with overburdened servers, optimization issues, and way too many error codes making it difficult to actually play the game — but it's still managed to quickly attract a community of ardent fans.

Pseudoregalia, a 3D Metroidvania released last summer for just $6, ended up being one of the best and biggest surprise hits of the year. As lead developer Rittz told me in an interview in September 2023, he made most of the game himself in about four months after getting into game dev as a self-taught newcomer. As of today, which has yielded a chunky map update for the game, Pseudoregalia has passed 100,000 copies sold, and Rittz is "still having trouble processing." 

The timing couldn’t be better. Just days after the Helldivers 2 community mourned the loss of fan-favourite map Malevelon Creek, it has emerged there is a single developer at Arrowhead pulling the strings of the galactic war like a D&D dungeon master.

Though Helldivers 2 has been a hit, its launch has been anything but smooth. Various bugs, glitches, and server issues forced Arrowhead Games to temporarily cap the possible number of concurrent players.

The developers behind the Life is Strange remaster, spin-offs Before the Storm and True Colors, and The Expanse: A Telltale Series, Deck Nine, have laid off 20% of the studio’s staff due to “the game industry’s worsening market conditions”. The latest job losses are the second wave of layoffs at the company in the last 12 months.

After the Helldivers 2 community had rounded on farmers for negatively impacting the game’s galaxy-wide war against alien bugs and bots, developer Arrowhead has clarified their traitorous actions are in fact harmless.

Some games take weeks to find an audience. Some take months. And then there's Helldivers 2, which has become an instant hit, surpassing more than 1 million copies sold in its first three days of launch. So, what's next?

Arrowhead has teased “exciting” plans for Helldivers 2 after seemingly resolving the game’s server issues.

Helldivers 2 players are running into a wide variety of cheats while playing the popular co-op shooter, including one that automatically gifts non-cheating squadmates massive amounts of Samples. This is an important form of in-game currency withinHelldivers 2 that dictates certain kinds of progression.

What the Car? is a zany racing game in which you are a car with legs that must race around various courses to get the best time possible. Except sometimes you’re not just a car with legs, you’re also a car with a jetpack. Or with wings. Or swimming. Or singing. It’s from the folks behind the similarly absurd What the Golf?, and it’s coming to Steam this year.

It took just over two weeks and some loss of sleep, but Helldivers 2, the smash hit co-op shooter from PlayStation and Sweden’s Arrowhead Game Studio, now actually works. Which is to say, the game cruised through peak play hours over its third weekend with minimal login issues, and with the majority of players able to get online and work together to save managed democracy, eliminating one bug (or robot) at a time.