After Contentious Clashes Between Devs & Players, ‘Helldivers 2’ CEO Apologizes To Fans
by Michael Betar IV
'Helldivers 2' (Image: Arrowhead)
After releasing a month ago, on February 8, Arrowhead Game Studios’ Helldivers 2 has been seen as a massive success with over eight million estimated units being sold across platforms within its first month. The cooperative third-person shooter is a sequel to the 2015 top-down shooter, Helldivers, which was positively received with it the game-winning “Handheld Game of the Year” at the 19th annual D.I.C.E. awards.
After its first month of release, the studio launched its first balance patch, patch 01.000.100, which had added weather elements to the gameplay that players will have work around as they fight the monsters within the game. The difficulty that these elements had brought to the game was not taken well by fans with many of them taking to the internet to address the game’s increased difficulty in light of the new patch.
Other adjustments made in this patch such as some weapons like the “Energy Shield Backpack” had made them less effective in gameplay, causing some player’s builds to be much weaker than they had been before. There has also been an issue with the increased number of enemies spawning in gameplay due to Arrowhead trying to prevent players from leaving their teams early after completing objectives that only require players to eradicate the bug monsters on the map.
As Players took to Reddit and Discord to address their complaints, there have been reports that some of the developers on the game’s Discord have written back to players in responses some have taken to be aggressive in tone. Some of these messages were seen by fans as mocking as well as antagonizing players with some of the team telling players that they just “needed to get better” at the game.
With these concerns and arguments coming to light, the game’s director, Johan Pilestedt, responded to a few posts on Reddit addressing the conflict as not being intentional “from a studio perspective.” He states that although he is open to communication between developers and fans, he does understand the “risks of miscommunication or heated arguments” that he hopes to discuss more with his team regarding keeping a good relationship between the studio and fans.
Helldivers 2 is available on PlayStation 5 and PC through Steam with modes for single-player and multiplayer campaigns.
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