Helldivers 2 has gotten off to a pretty strong start after launching yesterday/last night, managing to rocket up to the #2 spot on Steam for revenue and seeing a pretty healthy concurrent player base on PC in the early hours (though we don’t have a very good idea of the comparison on PS5).
Along with that success did come some unfortunate teething issues though, with players experiencing troubles with matchmaking and crashes as servers seemingly buckled under the flood of players coming in for the first time. Developer Arrowhead Game Studios has been quick to jump in and start working on patching it up, with Steam already seeing some hotfixes and PS5 hopefully not far behind.
The tweet from Game Director Mikael Eriksson reads:
“Hey everyone! Mikael here again. I want to give you an update on the issues we’ve experienced today. I’m happy to say that we’ve now improved matchmaking and the most frequent crashes.
“We’ve made a patch, and are about to start playing alongside you to check it works as intended. If it’s a success, we’ll trigger a hotfix and get it out to the Steam community first, then roll it out to PS5 players as quickly as we can.
“Thank you – seriously – for your patience. We really want you all to have a blast playing this game. Bear with us, we’re almost there. See you on the battlefield soon!”
A message to the HELLDIVERS 2 community from Game Director Mikael Eriksson: pic.twitter.com/LC38UgcSQV
— Arrowhead Game Studios (@ArrowheadGS) February 8, 2024
A subsequent update arrived not long after to let fans know that a patch had been uploaded to Steam which should improve matchmaking on PC and solve some other crash fixes, with more on the way.
Also on PC, some users have been quick to point out that Helldivers 2 uses the slightly-controversial nProtect Gameguard anti-cheat software, which is a particularly intense bit of software that has access to users’ PCs at a very deep level to dig for any files that might be used for cheating.
The reception to the game itself though has been hugely positive, with many praising the game’s fun, multiplayer action, humour and relative lack of predatory monetisation. Kinda Funny has already published a review-in-progress video which shows the crew having an absolute blast with the game. You can watch that below:
Helldivers 2 is out now on PS5 and PC and features cross-play between both platforms. You can pick up the physical version on Amazon here for $59 or grab the game digitally on the PlayStation Store here or on Steam here.
