Shams Jorjani, the leading figure at Arrowhead Game Studios, the developers behind the popular game Helldivers 2, recently addressed growing concerns regarding game performance. These issues surfaced following the release of the “Into the Unjust” game update. In a statement made on Discord, Jorjani acknowledged the update fell short of expectations concerning game stability. He also noted the team’s recent work on the Xbox release is complete, which should now allow them to dedicate more attention to resolving performance obstacles.
Since the launch of the new “Terminid spelunking expedition-themed” update, players have reported a noticeable increase in game crashes. Arrowhead developers are actively investigating these reports to identify and implement fixes. Other issues raised by players include the growing game installation size on PC and various frustrating bugs, concerns voiced by many Helldivers fans online.
Responding to player concerns, Arrowhead CEO Jorjani engaged with the Helldivers 2 community on the game’s Discord server. During the discussion, he stated, “Performance is something we’ve talked about a TON today. It’s not good enough.” He also mentioned that they are preparing a fix for some of the most pressing issues.
In another communication, Jorjani emphasized that neither Arrowhead nor PlayStation are dismissing the problem. “We are talking about what to do differently – cus we really want to release content AND keep performance in line. With [the] Xbox release behind us more resources will be available.” He reiterated that the completion of the Xbox release will free up resources to address performance issues, which have been a recurring source of frustration for players, particularly after the latest update.
Jorjani explained that the performance issues are not directly caused by the update itself. Instead, he attributed the problems to accumulating “technical debt” within the game engine. He further explained in a follow-up, that the accumulated technical debt is hindering the game’s performance. “With the Xbox release behind us we’ll be able to take a much better stab at it. Like a double stab with a bigger knife.”
Jorjani expressed reservations about releasing a single, massive update dedicated solely to performance improvements. While he indicated Arrowhead would “prefer not to have to do” so, they will consider it if “needed”. He also clarified that simply reassigning all developers from creating new content, such as warbonds, to focus on fixing performance issues is not a straightforward solution. He noted: “if we could put every single soul on just performance/stability and significantly improve those we would – but not everyone can make an impact on performance and the issues that need to be fixed are complex and take time to work at.”
While personally experiencing no major problems during a brief session with the update, there is hope Arrowhead will provide some performance fixes soon. The CEO believes the current player dissatisfaction, despite the issues, is not as severe as what the game experienced after the Escalation of Freedom update last year. The studio at that time introduced a 60-day roadmap of improvements to regain player confidence.
Acknowledging “definitely some similarities” between the two situations, Jorjani mentioned that at least this time, player frustration isn’t compounded by problems with both game mechanics and performance. “Since then, I think it’s safe to say we’ve fixed one thing and kept wobbling on the other,” he stated. “I hope we proved back then that we won’t give up till we get it right.”