One of the biggest issues with certain multiplayer-focused titles is keeping people playing over a long period of time. Over those first few weeks, players will be locked into the game because it’s fresh, new, and special. They’ll want to test themselves over that period to see just how far they can push the game, how much fun they can have with friends, and so on. However, as time passes, things will get more repetitive if the gameplay loop isn’t strong enough to encourage repeated play. Helldivers 2 was a game that suffered from this for a long time, but finally seems to be pulling itself out of its slump.
For those who don’t recall, Helldivers 2 came out last year and, almost out of nowhere, wowed everyone with just how good it was, especially with its 4-person co-op play. It was easy to jump into a mission, fight with your friends or other allies from Super-Earth, and stick it to the bug menace. Players loved the big guns, the insane difficulty at times if you didn’t play things the right way, and the overall hilarity of what the Helldivers themselves could do in the name of Super-Earth. But…then things got a bit tricky, as players started to shed off the game in massive numbers. It sold millions of units in its first month or so, and then, maybe 100K were playing it all told. That’s quite a drop.
The team over at Arrowhead, though, kept updating the game, tweaking things, and adding new weapons, armor, missions, enemies, and more to try and bring people back. It’s been a long haul, but we are seeing some meaningful results at last. As VideoGamer noted, some in the community saw a big boost in players via the new Warbond content, the release on Xbox, and more.
Over on Steam, the player count went from about a 50K average from last week to over 500K playing at the same time at one point! That’s a huge boost, so much so that even the dev team’s CEO was joking with players about not worrying anymore, in more graphic, memeable terms, of course, about the player count.
While this is a victory for the team and Super-Earth, it’s important that they do their best to keep this momentum rolling. They know better than most what it’s like to have all the momentum, and then have none of it. Now that people are playing again in good numbers, they’ll try to keep them around.
