HELLDIVERS™ 2 News

Helldivers 2 is still missing the best part of the original

I love Helldivers 2. While Balatro and Last Epoch might have stolen slightly more hours of my time so far this year, Arrowhead Game Studios' bombastic co-op game repeatedly delivers these incredible moments of tension, panic, wonder, and elation; the kind of moments that make my brain shout, "This is the best game ever made." Yet, for all its masterful execution and an ever-expanding arsenal including the recent arrival of mechs, my favorite thing from the original Helldivers is still absent.

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Helldivers 2 is selling "well ahead of expectations" having potentially hit 8 million in sales

With all of the server issues the game has had, you likely won't be surprised to hear that Helldivers 2 has (probably) sold exceptionally well.

Helldivers 2 has obviously been the surprise hit of the year, with developer Arrowhead constantly having to limit how many people can actually play the game within its first few weeks of launch, and scores of players working together to unlock things like mechs and more. Now, as reported by Bloomberg, we should have a better idea of just how well the game is doing. According to TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz, Helldivers 2 is estimated to have sold as many as eight million copies, with numbers continuing to grow every week. "We believe the game has performed well ahead of expectations," Creutz wrote in a note last week.

That number is hardly surprising, given that the game has hit a concurrent player count peak of 458,709 on Steam alone, not even counting how many players have been attempting to liberate the galaxy on PlayStation. Sony and Arrowhead are yet to release any kind of figures, though when you have a hit like this it's surely only a matter of time before the PlayStation manufacturer comes out with gloating about how well the game is doing - that, or if the game hasn't actually hit eight million units sold it'll just let this report do the talking.

In support of the Spring Steam Sale, Valve has released its official Steam Deck Top 100 list based on playtime from March 2023 until now. While there are plenty of familiar faces that have previously dominated the monthly playtime charts, Helldivers 2 has found itself well ahead of long-standing favorites.

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There's a Helldivers 2 expert helping to save the galaxy by playing rock, paper, scissors with newbies

If you’re playing Helldivers 2 and you run into difficulty, firing out an SOS beacon can sometimes be a worthwhile gambit, even if the help it should summon might not always arrive on time, or at all. However, if you’re a low level player, there’s a chance that you might end up getting a huge helping hand from someone who loves a good game of rock, paper, scissors.

Look, I know probably you think of yourself as a hardened defender of Super Earth who can liberate planets and defeat armies of definitely real flying bugs single-handedly, but sometimes we can all use a bit of backup. Especially if you’re a newbie and fancy being charmed by someone’s ability to wrap paper around your rock before teaching you how to drop stuff.

Helldivers 2's Cutting Edge Premium warbond, aka DLC battle pass, is now available to buy in-game, and it is chock-full of oddball gadgetry such as lightning shotguns, burst-fire laser rifles and experimental armour. As with the Arc Thrower stratagem, the lightning shotgun fires arcs of electricity that conduct between players and enemies alike, but there's a fresh armour perk, Electrical Conduit, which reduces arc damage by 95%, allowing close-knit teams of Helldivers to roll around the battlefield frazzling themselves without much penalty.

Still, I think the real star pick here is surely the Localization Confusion booster, which extends the time between enemy spawns, allowing weirdo solo players such as myself to disentangle from a dragged-out gunfight a little more gracefully.