Since its launch on February 8, 2024, Helldivers 2 has been a victim of its own success. The game has seen an influx of more and more players each week, causing servers to overload, leading to a slew of negative reviews.
When Arrowhead Game Studios released Helldivers 2, we’re almost certain it didn’t expect it to be the runaway success that it is. The game has broken concurrent player records for not only the series but 2024 as a whole, and now its reputation is suffering because of those records. After more players that the servers could cope with tried to get into the game during the weekends following its launch, many have taken to Steam to give it negative reviews over issues the developer didn’t believe it would ever have.
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Helldivers 2 Reduced to Mixed Rating on Steam Due to Influx of Negative Reviews
Helldivers 2 has quickly grown to see 500,000 players all logging in and attempting to spread glorious democracy across its worlds within a 24-hour period. The trouble is, the game’s servers weren’t ready for that many Helldivers. Considering the first game had a peak concurrent player count of 7,000, it’s fair for Arrowhead Game Studios to have lower sub-100,000 player expectations for the sequel.
However, last weekend saw fans take to Twitter to criticize the game, calling it broken because they couldn’t get in. After garnering a Mostly Positive review status on Steam, the game has now fallen to Mixed because players have taken to giving it negative reviews due to the fact that they can’t play it.
On the game’s Subreddit, the fan base is debating how fair this is. The discussions are difficult because everyone’s experience is so different. “I watched a stream on Saturday, one person got in right away, played a solo mission, and a second person was able to get in after that. Third person was in the black screen for an hour and a half, and the fourth person finally got into the game nearly 3 hours after waiting, and he maybe got an hour and a half of gaming in before they had to go to another lobby.”
Others believe they’re justified in their negative feelings towards the title despite acknowledging the developer probably couldn’t have predicted this situation. “Yeah it’s one hundred percent fair to be disappointed at this point. I’m not actively mad at the devs like I was with other games that turned out to be half baked trash with a highly pushed premium cosmetic shop, but I’m also withholding my “yes I would recommend this game” review on Steam until it actually works.”
Every step of the way, Arrowhead Game Studios has been open with the Helldivers 2 community. At first, it explained how the team needed to rest following the game’s launch, and that was the priority: not getting more servers running. Then, it offered additional rewards because of the server issues, which caused an influx of players and even more issues.
At the time of writing, Helldivers 2 has 101,421 reviews on Steam. All the early positive reviews are now mixed in with negative one-liners about its servers, though these points aren’t invalid. The situation won’t be resolved until the server capacity can be expanded to host every player who wants to jump into the game. The question is what that number should be because servers cost money, and player counts often drop within a few weeks after a game’s release.
