The Helldivers 2 community has hit a rough patch, as players and developers have clashed following the game’s first balance patch.
Since its launch on February 8, everything about Helldivers 2 basically went perfectly. It became an unexpected sensation, everyone who plays it loves the game and the community was fun, engaging and supportive, despite issues around launch. But the inevitable happened and things got ugly. After the first balance patch, things escalated quickly between devs and fans, and the perfect Cinderella story had to deal with its first knock.
Players were upset about a new patch and the matter quickly got out of control, as the game’s subreddit was flooded with negative posts and complaints. This became too much to ignore for some developers of the game, who responded to the controversy by clapping back, saying they were deliberately “feeding the rage” and provoking players with sarcastic comments, adding even more fuel to the fire.
Trouble In Paradise
To recap what happened: Developer Arrowhead released a first balance patch, introducing some new features and, most importantly, nerfing and buffing certain weapons and items. Among the ones that were knocked down a peg, players were shocked to find some tools that were considered the game’s meta, mainly the Railgun, the Breaker shotgun and the Shield Backpack.
Other parts of the game have also changed, apparently without the patch notes really saying so. For example have spawn rates for enemies been noticeably increased. All of this has resulted in the game becoming harder overall, especially with some of the most popular strategies. And for a sizeable part of the community, this took a lot of the fun away.
As you might imagine, the kind people of Reddit didn’t deal with this in the most diplomatic of ways. The game’s official subreddit was full of posts and comments, lamenting the state of the game post-patch, saying the game is basically doomed now, earnestly bemoaning some (very fair) issues that have arisen since the changes, or straight up whining. No, of course not every complaint or piece of criticism is to be ridiculed, but a lot of the posts definitely are.
The responses from some developers and mods didn’t go down well in the community, with one popular post describing these actions as “gaslighting and demeaning the playerbase”. And hey, that probably wasn’t nice to hear, but it’s only human to want to lash out against people who are being annoying to your face, right?
The devs were 100% right and absolutely shouldn't be forced to apologize. It's their game, they're allowed to be passionate and a little bit cranky about weird nerds coming out of nowhere and telling them how to run it.Let game devs be human. https://t.co/pfbu0l6VMG
— Dominic Tarason (@DominicTarason) March 8, 2024
Before everything got a bit too messy, everyone’s hero stepped up to save the day. Johan Pilestedt, (Arrowhead CEO, Helldivers 2 director and general hero of the people), responded to this internal conflict by apologizing and trying to calm things down.
In multiple posts, he called the comments “inexcusable behavior” and announced that the studio has “taken action internally to educate our developers on how to represent the organization”.
Pilestedt responses to the dev comments by u/Worried-Point-1858 in Helldivers
The developers in question have subsequently apologized, which should hopefully be the end of this messy story. Arrowhead has also promised a hotfix to address the incessant spawn rate of harder enemies since the patch, which should fix one of the community’s biggest issues with the patch.