Tremendous Earth’s warriors are again to cleanse the universe of area bugs and robots as Helldivers 2‘s participant rely triples after its latest replace.
After the sport’s newest patch, participant numbers have reached a post-release peak of 68k concurrent gamers— 44k as of writing.
The precise patch particulars may be discovered right here as they’re too intensive to checklist out. Surprisingly, the preferred replace did not add new maps, enemies, or weapons, it merely buffed weapons and nerfed enemies.
Participant comebacks like this one are uncommon, if not unparalleled, for essentially the most half. Usually, when a recreation loses steam after launch resulting from some meta-breaking replace, the participant rely drops and stays across the new common, hardly ever growing.
Solely giants like Minecraft, Future, and Warcraft have managed to carry gamers again persistently.
Arrowhead, the sport’s studio, might need simply pulled off one of many biggest participant rebounds in gaming historical past.
They lastly realized why avid gamers liked Helldivers 2: it is everybody’s energy fantasy to slay countless hordes of aliens and declare humanity’s superiority.
A Love-Hate Dev-Participant Relationship
The Helldivers 2 group has had a difficult time with the sport’s studio.
Again in Could, writer Sony tried to pressure gamers to create PSN accounts to play the sport— seemingly carried out to artificially enhance PlayStation numbers. This alteration netted the sport 200k detrimental critiques and a participant drop rely.
The choice was backtracked alongside an apology, nevertheless it set the tone for this tumultuous player-dev relationship.
August marked the true turning level with the controversial “Escalation of Freedom Replace.” Whereas there have been some welcomed new areas and enemy sorts, that is the place the positives ended.
Nerfed weapons and the overall erosion of the beloved sense of overpowering would possibly each helldiver craved made gamers flip to previous trustworthy, assessment bombing.
Nevertheless, in a transfer paying homage to recreation studios of previous, Arrowhead took this criticism in stride and did higher. In a Reddit submit, the devs responded to gamers’ issues and outlined a 60-day plan to repair every little thing.
Most significantly, and possibly why so many gamers got here again, they put the creation of a “beta-test surroundings” and “common participant surveys” as chief objectives. This ensured that future adjustments could be player-focused and examined.
It is actually a shock that gamers return after what they requested for is applied. Who is aware of, possibly the success of Helldivers 2 and the goodwill Arrowhead has cultivated will transfer different studios to be as clear.
Whereas this replace is promising, and the fanbase’s suggestions is overwhelmingly doable, it stays to be seen if Arrowhead will keep its momentum into the longer term and preserve the sport afloat.
