Helldivers 2 is Getting Review Bombed Again, This Time for Being an Unplayable Mess

Well, here we go again. It seems the Helldivers have pointed their orbital cannons at a new target: Arrowhead's own technical department.

The game that took the world by storm has once again dropped to a "Mixed" recent review score on Steam. This time, it's not about mandatory PSN accounts or controversial weapon nerfs. This time, it’s far simpler: players are fed up because, for many, the game is a stuttering, crashing, borderline unplayable mess.

A War on Two Fronts

The latest wave of negative reviews paints a grim picture of the game's performance on PC. Players are reporting a laundry list of issues, including severe stuttering, hard freezes that require a full system reboot, frequent disconnects, and audio cutting out entirely. As one Steam review cleverly put it, "Hey uhm, Arrowhead? Why are we facing the bugs on two fronts?".

Many players claim the performance has gotten progressively worse with each new content drop, a real kick in the teeth when the game is already taking up a ludicrous 140GB of storage space. "I love the game, but right now it is in an almost unplayable state," one user writes. "In a few months, it went from being able to run max settings to stuttering and freezing on low". Another simply said the game now "tries to brick my PC whenever I launch".

Mixed Messages from High Command

What's really pouring salt in the wound is the confusing communication from Arrowhead's leadership. Back in June, CEO Shams Jorjani stated the team was "focusing 100% on bug fixing and optimisation," admitting that "the game isn't in tip-top shape".

Fast forward to August, however, and the tune changed dramatically. Jorjani stated that they are not "planning any dedicated only performances update" and that they "won't fix everything". That's a hell of a thing to hear when your player base is flooding the forums with cries of "Fix your game".

The Cost of Neglect

The consequences of these technical issues are starting to show. The game's peak player count has plummeted by 100,000 in the last 30 days alone. The real tragedy here is that even the angriest reviews are filled with people who fundamentally love the game. I said in my own review that it's a glorious clusterfuck of fun, and that still holds true; when it works.

Jorjani has mentioned a "mountain of tech debt" that makes fixing these problems difficult, which is understandable. But at a certain point, excuses don't matter. The community has proven before that this kind of unified feedback campaign works.

A great game that no one can play is just a 140GB paperweight. The ball is in your court, Arrowhead.