Helldivers 2 devs promise big changes after admitting they misunderstood “what players want”

The Helldivers 2 developers, otherwise known as Arrowhead Games Studios haven’t been the most popular since the game was released, and are now promising to make major changes to how they run the game.

When Helldivers 2 was first released back in February, it took over the gaming world. The player count hit an all time peak of 458,709 on Steam, and thousands were praising its addictive gameplay, difficult enemies, and variety of weapons. That was until Arrowhead began rapidly nerfing the guns, buffing the enemies, and causing mass community frustration through forced PlayStation sign-ups.

Following the controversy, thousands stopped playing the game, and many of those that were still playing felt aggrieved by the changes, and demanded the devs do something to make Helldivers 2 more balanced.

Arrowhead Game Studios

Weapons were the largest element impacted by various changes and nerfs in recent updates.

Now, Arrowhead have acknowledged their mistakes in a post on the Helldivers 2 Discord, where the community manager, Thomas Petersson explained: “I believe there’s been a disconnect between parts of the team and its player base, and that we acted too late on certain things. Player feedback wasn’t listened to enough.”

He went on to add that “Now we’re making adjustments trying to improve and adjust, and that takes time as we don’t want to repeat the same mistake again and do too much balancing too quickly.”

Those changes come shortly after the devs revealed one of their biggest updates yet which is happening on September 17. The update will completely alter many of the quick balancing issues mentioned by Petersson and aims to fix that “disconnect” previously highlighted.

Petersson also added that “the one thing that trumps all at the moment is that we want to make the game more fun for a larger percentage of the player base. That’s number one. It has to be. Having fun with your friends is what the game is all about.”

It’s clear Arrowhead are in the middle of a massive push to make amends for their previous mistakes. After all, they’ve highlighted their 60-day action plan to help bring players back into the adventure for good.

Currently as part of this action plan and the upcoming patch, we know the Railgun and Flamethrower will be receiving major changes, but be sure to check out our early patch notes for all the details.