The popularity of Helldivers 2 remains strong after more than a year, distinguishing it from many live-service games that have faded. The game’s dedicated community has grown even larger thanks to the most recent content patch, showing that the game is flourishing.
However, the “Into The Unjust” update for Helldivers 2 has introduced several frustrating bugs. Players are reporting crashes, reduced frame rates, and other problems. This update seems to have overloaded the system, leaving the Helldivers 2 player base searching for solutions.
Fortunately, Shams Jorjani, the CEO of Arrowhead and head of Helldivers 2, has returned to Discord to engage with the community and address their concerns. During these discussions, he shared insights on the underlying issues that have caused these problems, and detailed plans for future updates and patches aimed at preventing similar large-scale bug outbreaks in Helldivers 2.
Patching Helldivers 2’s One Step At A Time
Jorjani addressed the immediate problems and shared how hotfixes are implemented when “things get too bad,” acknowledging their inherent risks. However, in this instance, the urgency of the situation justified the potential risks, leading to the release of hotfixes to address issues from the latest update.
When questioned about the root causes of these issues, Jorjani explained that “technical debt is crippling” the development process. He assured players that “with the Xbox release behind us, we’ll be able to take a much better stab at it,” freeing up time for the team to focus on improvements.
Regarding PC crashes, the CEO stated that the development team’s hardware may not accurately replicate older hardware which creates a challenge in resolving bugs. The community is requesting a comprehensive stability and optimization update to deal with bugs that may be implemented in a future patch.
A comprehensive health update could address not only the recent bugs but also the game’s substantial file size, which on PC has ballooned to over 140GB, significantly exceeding its console counterpart by roughly 100GB.
Currently, fixing the bugs is described as a process of “whack-a-mole.” Luckily, most critical issues have been addressed if you are planning to play Helldivers 2 after the latest update.
Given the expansive growth of Helldivers 2 in the past year, the emergence of persistent issues isn’t entirely unexpected, as it’s a common occurrence in many games. To prevent such issues in the future, Jorjani emphasized the need to “improve existing systems AND build new ones.”
He shared how “every update is also a health update.” However, with the significant number of bugs this latest update has had, Arrohead isn’t dismissing a dedicated health update for the future that could potentially reduce the large PC download size.
The level of engagement that the CEO of Arrowhead has with the community is noteworthy. Even though the latest update sparked more conversations about bugs and issues than the new content itself, it is promising to see the developers are listening and working to ensure Helldivers 2 thrives in the long term.
Helldivers 2
- Released
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February 8, 2024
- ESRB
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M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Intense Violence
- Developer(s)
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Arrowhead Game Studios
- Publisher(s)
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Sony
- Engine
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bitsquid
- Multiplayer
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Online Co-Op