Helldivers 2 is in its self-care era. At least, that was the major takeaway from a frank Q&A with the game’s director Mikael Eriksson, where he discusses, among other things, a new schedule for patches that the team hopes will lighten Helldivers 2’s technical debt.
The critically acclaimed live-service shooter, which tasks players with grouping up and tackling hordes of alien foes in overwhelmingly hostile environments, has fallen on especially hard times lately. Frequent updates to the game since its launch in February of 2024–including fixes, balancing patches, and content drops–has caused Helldivers 2 to suffer from balance and performance issues and settle into an unsteady ebb and flow.
This instability has only hurt the game’s diehard playerbase, who have spent months now fighting against crashes, increasingly untenable performance issues, growing file sizes (at least, on PC) and more wonkiness than is generally acceptable of Helldivers 2’s sometimes slapstick action.