There’s a danger to making certain kinds of video games; one of the biggest ones is that if the game relies on a heavy online component, and that component is tested by both other players and the servers themselves, you run the risk of hitting major performance issues. Such an issue is hitting Arrowhead Game Studios with their title, Helldivers 2. You might recall that this game came out of the gate hot and boasted impressive results on both PC and PS5, to the point where Sony almost nuked it on Steam because of its account requirements. However, now it faces a much more personal threat.
Specifically, gamers have noticed in recent weeks that despite there being multiple updates made by Arrowhead and numerous in-game events trying to bring people back into the fold, including creating a black hole where a planet used to be, the game on Steam is a buggy mess. On Reddit, one person even listed out all the issues that were going on in Helldivers 2, and it was indeed substantial. Everything from minor bugs to the game crashing in the middle of a mission was there. That’s a quick way to lose a player base, and, in fact, that’s exactly what’s happening in the game right now.
However, the team at Arrowhead claims that there are performance fixes on the way, with one of the team noting that one is aiming to arrive later this week:
To see the game fall, at least on PC, so fast after being hailed as one of the best games around is sad. It also highlights just how hard it is for things to stay even keel if you’re not constantly adjusting and fixing things to keep it balanced and running good. One could argue that Arrowhead got a little too inflated with its success and didn’t focus on keeping things smooth versus looking ahead to what they could add to make their game even more robust.
Given that Arrowhead is a small company, they are likely to do their best to crank out the fixes needed, but it’s not a guarantee given recent player complaints. They’ve noted that the issues have been getting worse BECAUSE of the updates that were put out by the dev team.
It would be truly tragic to see this game spiral after having such a magnificent start to life. Let’s all hope that the dev team bounces back in a big way.
