In the abstract sense, bugs are the “enemy” of most game developers. After all, if there’s a bug or glitch in a title, it can lead to something unexpected happening that could restrict gameplay or cause frustration among players. To that end, “game-breaking bugs” are the worst of the lot, as they ensure that the game cannot continue, and no one wants to launch something with that. However, for titles like Helldivers 2, and basically any game that Bethesda releases, the bugs can sometimes be frustrating but also funny. In fact, gamers go onto places like Reddit in an attempt to highlight some of the insane bugs they find.
Case in point, one fighter for Super Earth went onto Reddit to post a video about how they were doing some simple fighting on one of the game’s worlds, only to get killed…by a pole. No, really, they got killed by a pole due to them glitching into it during a dive and then “spasming” to death. They posted it below, and the comments have been both hilarious and enlightening.
What might surprise people the most is that director Johan Pilestedt went onto Reddit to talk about the bug and made it clear that they weren’t going to fix it despite the “lack of realism” it showcases:
“Hahah, nah. The balance/realism can suck it. This is a perfect storm of unfortunate physics jitters and impact calculations. While a bug, [I don’t know] if [it’s] worth fixing due to how hilarious it is.”
If you think about it, he’s not wrong. Sure, they COULD fix it, but it’s also a scenario where it’s a truly random circumstance that has to be done in a specific way, or else nothing will happen. In this case, you go to this particular planet, dive at the pole, and then have it “react” to you in that particular way.
While Arrowhead has been trying to improve Helldivers 2 as much as possible since launch, and truly values player feedback, this will be one that isn’t likely to “catch on.” Besides, the team has much bigger problems when you look at how things have gone since its February launch. Specifically, the game has gone from having millions of players due to millions of buys, making it one of the best launches of the year, to losing about 90% of its player base!
The team is trying to bring them back, but it’s been a struggle. So, spending time trying to fix this particular bug will likely detract from more necessary things that must be fixed.
