Helldivers 2
One of my concerns with the downward-trending numbers of Helldivers 2 is that every update for the game had not really moved the needle upward again, and in fact, most of its updates were being poorly received by fans. I said the only moment that may reverse things a bit would be finally dropping the Illuminate aliens into the game and now, after The Game Awards, here we are.
The arrival of the Illuminate was a segment on that show, and the update went live right at that moment. Normally, Helldivers 2 might just quietly drop this into the game and wait for fans to discover it, but I think The Game Awards was worth breaking kayfabe to get players back. And it has very much worked.
The update has been widely well-received by players with new enemies to fight and new city-based zones to fight in. The result has been the largest playercount spike the game has seen, in terms of where the playercount was and where it is now.
Helldivers 2
At the start of the month, Helldivers 2 was capping out at around 30,000 concurrent players a night on Steam, and when the update hit, that went up 500% to 150,000 concurrents. This is the highest playercount in the game has been since April 2024, and a third of its all-time high at launch. There is also console to consider as well, though PC numbers for Helldivers have been higher than PS5 since the start.
Helldivers 2 continues to show that its dynamic, changing galaxy has a lot of potential for long-term success. No, it’s almost certainly never going to reach its launch highs, but that’s hardly unusual, and if an update can spike the playerbase this much, that’s a good sign they can produce more content like that in the future in quasi-“expansion” form. You’re not going to see this happen with patches that add a few new zones or guns or enemies, but if they can keep building on this, sure, there’s no reason to think Helldivers 2 can’t have a worthwhile future ahead, avoiding the grave of so many other dead multiplayer titles.
There’s still no real way to know what Sony’s original expectations for Helldivers 2 actually were, given that its massive release far surpassed anything they had in mind, no doubt. But given that Sony has struggled to produce live service hits, with Concord a generation-defining disaster and projects like The Last of Us factions cancelled, it certainly should keep devoting resources to making Helldivers 2 live as long as possible, and this expansion is a great look at how that should happen going forward.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.