HELLDIVERS™ 2 News

Helldivers 2 players are so unhappy with the Escalation of Freedom update, they're doing the unthinkable: letting the Automatons win

Escalation of Freedom, Helldivers 2's latest update, hasn't gone down well with fans, so much so that players are protesting by letting the Automatons win.

Last week, Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead released one of the game's biggest updates in a while, and quickly players felt unhappy with the nerfs, resulting in the game sliding down to a mixed rating on Steam. Even Arrowhead's CEO says a lot of the devs themselves are unhappy with how things have gone down. And while those Steam reviews are obviously one way players are expressing their frustration, as spotted by GamesRadar, there's another, possibly even more drastic tactic being taken up. Evidenced by a popular post on the game's subreddit, and the unofficial Helldivers 2 galaxy map, many players are simply refusing to take down any Automatons, and now the robot baddies are getting worryingly close to Super Earth.

"Though it takes the last drop of my blood, I will see the galaxy freed once more and if I can not save it from your failure Managed Democracy, then let the galaxy burn!" wrote a user in Reddit, obviously still trying to stay in character as many players have down since the game launched earlier this year. Another user even notes that players refusing to play resulting in the bots in the bots encroachment towards Super Earth is actually quite "realistic" because of the nerfs, saying "Sucky guns and outclassed artilery lose wars! So, we can't defend Super Earth because our enemies have better weapons than us and Super Earth can only produce crap for us to fight with."

The Helldivers 2 Escalation of Freedom update is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's Arrowhead's biggest content drop to date, with new enemies, objectives, and difficulty options. On the other, fire damage has been nerfed, enemy time to kill is higher than ever, and the hardest difficulty option is proving unbalanced. Arrowhead's CEO is aware of these concerns, and while they promise fixes are coming, they also express disappointment in how Escalation of Freedom turned out and how players have reacted.

Read the rest of the story...

It's not just Helldivers 2 players that're disappointed with how the Escalation of Freedom update's played out, Arrowhead's CEO says many devs are too

Helldivers 2 studio Arrowhead’s CEO has revealed that it basically seems like close to no one - players or developers - involved with the game has been left happy following the deployment of the Escalation of Freedom update and the backlash that’s followed.

If you’re out of the loop, the inclusion of some nerfs to fire damage in the update’s changes well and truly reignited the discourse as to whether Arrowhead’s going in the right direction when it comes to its tweaks. Amid all the debate about limiting meta weapons vs just letting people have fun with them, the game’s recent Steam reviews dropped to “mixed” last week, and currently still sit at that mark.

Вчера Helldivers 2 получила крупнейшее обновление с релиза под названием Escalation of Freedom. Несмотря на обильное количество свежего контента, геймеры остались недовольны апдейтом, что отразилось в Steam — шутер получил больше 2 тысяч негативных отзывов.

Helldivers 2's recent Steam reviews slide down to mixed amid nerf backlash, and Arrowhead's "having a lot of internal discussions about the best course of action"

Following the weapon balancing changes that arrived alongside Helldivers 2’s Escalation of Freedom earlier this week, a pretty big backlash from players to some fire damage nerfs has ensued, and, well, it’s now led the game’s recent Steam reviews to dip from “mostly positive” to “mixed”.

Arrowhead, to be fair, definitely hasn’t responded to the criticism from folks who think the tweaks to fire-based weaponry has made the game less fun in a fashion they’ve previously indicated they’re not fans of by burying its head in the sand.

First, if you take a look at the game’s Steam page, while its overall reviews are still mostly positive, the recent ones are now mixed, thanks to over 2,000 fresh negative ones having rolled in since August 6.