Helldivers 2 has lost 90% of players since launch 

Helldivers 2's player numbers are far from awful, but the declining trend is definitely a bit concerning. The game has a great foundation, so I think players will come back to the game if the devs give them a reason to. I think it needs expansion-sized content additions, and I imagine that's going to take time. We'll see if the devs and future updates can revitilize this game. PATREON: www.patreon.com/yongyea TWITTER: twitter.com/yongyea INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/yong_yea TIKTOK: www.tiktok.com/@yongyea TOP PATRONS [BIG BOSS] - Devon B [BOSS] - Gerardo Andrade - Michael Redmond - Phil

The game is still blocked on 177 countries and they're wondering why it isn't resurging.

Well, Sony killed their golden goose.

For those who only know bout this game from news, not from playing it all the time: *The glory time* 1- Game launched and it was a bigger success than anyone expected; 2- Content creators and social media boosted the game through videos and memes; 3- Server issues + forced link to psn account for PC players (the colossal biggest share of the total player base) was turned off since it didnt even work correctly; 4- Servers expanded and the game grew really fast; *The Dev Problem* 1- Developers had a vision for the game, setting it up to be a parody of StarshipTroopers, which meant playing non-trained soldiers with garbage guns and and even worse armor sent to die in suicidal missions; 2- To enforce that vision they started to nerf every resource the player had in the game: Weapon DPS, Weapon TTK(time to kill), Ammo, Accuracy, Armor Penetration, Stratagems CD, Stratagem Quantity, etc. While also buffing every aspect of enemy units: AI behavior, armor, damage, increased critical hit rate, quantity, etc. 3- Every new patch would proceed to nerf and ruin whatever was most used by the community to enforce the sense of weakness and loser grunt life the developers intended as the theme of their game; *The Beggining of The End* 1- Content Creators, Guide Makers, Build Makers, Helldiver Mechanics Researchers on Reddit started to question why the developers were so hostile towards fun and viability in their game, they kept posting videos showcasing the decline of player options and the frustration generated by those nerfs while scrambling to offer players solutions to the problems imposed by the developers ways to succeed when everything was set to fail; 2- players started to get fed up with every patch nerfing their favorite weapons, builds and playstyles and hostility and toxicity started to spread across the game, when before anyone could just join in and have a good time now everyone is scrutinized before the mission even begins bout their off-meta gear choices, and how those players would be kicked and gate keeped off higher difficulty missions; *The Sony Situation* 1- Sony enforces the account link on PC players months post launch, a situation that would be normal for any PC player, except sony straight up doesnt work in certain regions of the world, so players who legaly purchased their game would suddenly lose access to it for reasons outside their control; 2- The sony situation explodes and a mass hate campaign begins, several players affected refund the game, other several players not affected but displeased with the dev problem also take this opportunity to refund the game, massively dropping active players on all difficulty missions; 3- The sony situation if partly solved, the account linking is suspended but the game remains restricted in hundreds of regions, blocking all players in those places from playing the game; *The Dev Redemption Arc* 1- CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of Arrowhead (Helldivers 2 Developers) decided to demote himself to CCO (Creative Chief Officer) to have more direct control over the game, he had spent months prior to the sony incident consuming RU-vid, Twitch, Reddit media and reflecting about the feedback given by the games Top Players, Content Creators, Promotes and Player Communities and decided that their original vision for the game, was murdering the game, he chose to personaly lead Developers, Designers and the Balancing Team in Arrowhead to shift their focus and vision from 'Disposable Loser Grunts' to 'Super Earth Elite Soldiers', focusing on empowering the players to allow more build diversity, less online toxicity and for fun to once again exist in Helldivers 2; 2- The biggest and most recent balance patch has partially fulfilled their promise and even though it hasnt fixed the game it, at least, has moved it towards a better state not seen in months; 3- New Content for the game has been slowed from once every 30 days to once every 60 days to give the devs more time to bug test and balance content; And here is where we are today, watching to learn if the devs will actually 'no man sky' this game back to life or if sony will murder it before they have the chance to fix it.

This is one of the only cases I've seen where i think the live service model could've worked. Instead Sony banned 177 countries from even participating, and Arrowhead blew their chances by failing to provide a fun experience, instead choosing to continuously nerf whatever players found worked well. Not too mention the game just needs more content desperately, we need the vehicles they've been in the game files since before release, we need the illuminate, and we definitely need the clan system. The game just released unfinished, in their own words, there was tons of cut or indefinitely delayed content.

Sony holding the murder weapon in-hand: I don't know how this could have happened.

People won't buy and play your games if you don't sell it in their countries. Can someone explain this to Sony?

Helldivers has had a mixed cocktail of major issues. -Sony PSN forcing -an us vs them mentality between players and devs, resulting in highly controversial patches and drama. -poor weapon balancing -lack of meaningful content -long lasting technical issues and bugs that negatively impact gameplay

The reason is, in every update, they developers take one step forward and 3 steps backwards

"If you're no longer playing Palworld, we still love you, and we hope you'll come back for round 2 when you're ready. Play lots of games, try different genres, and frequently flick through indie libraries to find hidden gems" - pokemon w/ guns dev

That is what happens when you block your own game for 177 countries just because they dont have PSN accounts

nerfing this shit out of all the good weapons is really frustrating as a player i wish they'd just leave them be , they seem to be more worried about people using the same guns than anything else it seems

After countless patches I simply can't play this game. It crashes constantly and I'm tired of keeping up with "the meta" for a game where all I want is to login and kill bugs or robots

40,000 people playing daily is still pretty good.

It's such a shame. It was slowly bleeding players the whole time and then you have one bad event after another and suddenly it was just the shove into the grave that broke the camel's back.

Sony's spring-loaded trap failed to catch the playerbase. Now folks are wary of said traps. Thanks Sony!

you can actually pinpoint the exact time the game sealed its own fate. The first major balance patch showed that the devs actually werent playing or playtesting their own game. That balance patch should be studied honestly, because I have never, NEVER, seen a balance patch literally rip a community in two from being a community of love and memes to a community of toxicity. It showed how balance was going to be handled going forward, and that the devs actively disliked that their game got big in the first place. At this point its future leaks bleek. The games technical debt is rising rapidly because they made it on an abandonded engine, the gameloop has become stale, and the balancing has become tedious and boring.

Sony: "Man thats a nice community. Would be a shame if something happened to it." 😂 Proceeds to destroy player relations

The 3 main reasons for this downfall. -Sony banning over 150 countries of playing -weapon/enemy balance making the game almost unplayable and punishes most builds -increasingly hostile communication with Devs

Everyone complains about the whole PSN account linking thing, but honestly if you've played the game you've felt the lack of content; the exhaustion of two factions. The constant teasing about a new faction. The crashing, the spawn rates. There are a lot of issues. But most hard core players don't pay attention.

The balancing drove me away, but it’s a multitude of factors. It really just isn’t the kind of game the average player grinds everyday. I think that’s perfectly OK, it’s still a great time with some friends every once in a while.

Well essentially 2-3 reasons. 1 - Sony is a Piece of S..t. 2 - Community Managers from Arrow Head are terrible. 3 - Too many unreasonable nerfs on a PVE game

Such a let down, a perfect game ruined by bad balancing, awful community management, and outright dumb decision making.

Another reason it's falling is because of how the war works. Players are constantly fighting on the same planets for months. Every few days, helldivers liberate a planet, and then next morning the planet is lost again and this repeates constantly. Like the terminid control towers making 4 planets secured for good and pushing the whole front forwards, then terminids came back even stronger and started to spread. There's hardly any point liberating planets that won't stay free, its getting stale.

Helldivers is such a tragic case study How to gain mass popularity over night, and how to immediately piss it away

"Destiny 2" "what a looter shooter should be" Oh boy. If this is supposed to be the peak I weep for this industry.

Sony shot it in the foot and then the balance team shot it in the other

Every time I play the game crashes at the very end of a 20 minute mission making me lose everything, that’s why I stopped playing.

Man, companies just don't want anything successful anymore.

Constantly nerfing fun weapons, buffing enemies when there are fewer players, and the psn requirement pushed me away.

Those 90 something countries that can't buy the game would really make a difference right now, wouldn't they?

Multiplayer games are cyclical. “Live service” is a myth in games. Investors are wasting their money chasing a unicorn while developers miss great opportunities of creating amazing experiences.

90% of the players were brutally executed by Sony for an extremely odd reason is a more accurate description tbh. It's still an event that baffles me

Thanos snapping half the player base will do that

This game still has too many bugs and annoyances. Stuck in loading screen, sos beacon not working and no one joining before hellpod dive, weapons not always working consistently, weak spots inconsistent, climbing inconsistent. And im waiting for a pay to win armor but before it back in the store I probably already quit playing.

As someone who plays helldivers 2 a lot a lot, the PlayStation stuff that happened I feel did impact some players, but as the steam chart shows it’s not really that massive. The main thing I can say that is hurting the player base is the stability issues and bugs. Right now in game you cannot add friends whatsoever, that is a massive bug that directly hurts players. Also another issue is loading errors in games you can frequently crash when in hellpod loading. Lastly as young said it’s like we been killing bugs and bots we need another faction so we can mix it up. But first fix the bugs like adding friends and stop the crashing when loading in games.

I BLAME SONY

Went from 300,000 players to 30,000 players after that stupid psn requirement. Now I can’t play it anymore unless I want to give the number 1 leaker my info

Not decreasing the price for the Steam Summer Sale is also a stupid move tbh. Everyone is playing the games on sale. There is no reason to buy Helldivers when there are games 90% off

What sucks is that the devs didn't expect such a huge player bass at launch. Thinking it would be smaller numbers, now it will be but at the hand of Sony wanting stupid account statistics.

1. The small bit of weapons that actually function feel weak 2. There is little to no end game content or anything to do after maxing 3. Spawns are still egregiously bad when playing less than 4 players 4. The Discord is a cesspool echochamber like Reddit

What a goddamn tragedy. Helldivers 2 was one of the most fun games I've played in AGES and Sony just couldn't take the W. They HAD to go and fuck shit up. Damn.

I just saw Inside Out 2 with my daughter and noticed you voice acted Lance Slashblade. That is huge! Congratulations on that!

I left because they kept nuking weapons left and right without buffing anything and I realized that I was wasting my time.

I remember when everyone thought we were taking down the automatons, there was almost 800K players playing.. The average was about 600K around that time from what I seen. Made me and my friends want to play a lot seeing how many other Helldivers was doing their part. Now the average everytime I get on the game is about 50K… Honestly it just demoralizes me into not wanting to play seeing how the entire fan base is gone because of their stupid decisions. Flopping this hard should be studied. Like how the hell they expect to gain back these peak numbers if 170+ countries are STILL LOCKED out of the game?? Whole situation was completely avoidable. Could’ve easily been a legendary game with almost 1 milllon current players if Sony didn’t get involved.

A shitload of the player base came for the trend. Look at how many people buy popular games, but never finish them. This is normal...and nothing out of the ordinary for any game type/genre.

They blocked 177 out of 195 countries, and they wonder why the number drops. Also the “balancing” Hard for me to have a full team like we used to these days.

This is the problem with every fucking game under the sun being a live service. Games used to be played and beaten, then you go and play and beat another game. But now every game is a god damn live service game that expects you to keep playing. Its literally an unsustainable model. It makes no sense. There's no such thing as infinite growth on a world with finite resources and people. If helldivers 2 were a regular game it'd be amazing that it lasted this long, along with every other live service. This is the most unsurprising thing ever. Its going to happen to every live service game and people are going to view that in a negative light which is fucked up. Because in any other normal metric this would be a complete win.

If Sony is reading this, the drop in player numbers did not have to be this bad. If you had not required a PSN account, this would have allowed players in hundreds of nations to play.

Helldivers Devs: Nerf everything. Cod Devs: Hold my beer.

It's just sad that Arrowheads success is hindered and limited by Sony and their greed.

Divers started to Sympathize with the Bugs

As a helldiver 2 player, it’s even more sad that they give major orders and they can’t be completed because the player base has dwindled. It’s like they don’t even recognize the amount of players lost. For it being live service, the amount of content being released is pretty barren now.

I tend to play for variety, and using equipment most people overlook. That unfortunately means my tactic of sneaking behind the hulk ends up being slower than the guy using ORBITAL LASER, or I aim my grenade pistol at the hatch of the factory but someone beats me to it with the ORBITAL LASER, or I try to block shots from the rocket devastator with my shield and 50% explosive resistance, and I instead die in one hit because of “physics” and poor game balancing. Most people aren’t looking up optimal meta builds, nor are those fun. It may lead to some people bouncing off.

I think there are just fewer people because the gameplay loop gets stale after a while. I have a few friends who were really into the game and then after maybe a month of playing it, they stopped playing it because they got bored. Because they stopped playing, I stopped playing as I find the game much more enjoyable with friends. I get they have added more stuff to the game but unfortunately, I don't think it is enough to get people to play the game again. Also, there are two other live service games that are doing great right now, Fortnite and Destiny 2. I'm on my Fortnite grind currently.

Yikes to think it was seemingly unstoppable at one point

No major update since launch 80% of stuff in war bonds is useless Every good weapon gets hit with the nerf hammer while the useless shit stays useless Too little variation between objectives and most of them play the same Basic feature like weapon leveling is still missing. Not to mention how basic the progression system is

I’m still frequently playing Helldivers 2 with my buddies as much as we can as time permits, and we’re part of the still blocked 177 countries. Really hope Sony just rolls out PSN support to our regions so more people can play as it’s still great fun with friends.

For Context: Right now, according to Steam Charts, some random game called "Governor of Poker 3" has more players online currently than Helldivers 2. Stardew Valley has double the current player count online right now. 7 Days to Die has more players online right now than Helldiver's 2 average player numbers over the past month.

Maybe it’s time to release the fuuuuuucking next faction. Bugs and bots can only keep people going for so long and I’m actively waiting for the Illuminate to hop back on

The main thing is that the content is so ridiculously shallow. There's a lot of griping amongst the players that remain about the misguided balance direction, but the people that have left because they got tired of the content all left silently. I still play it sometimes and I do generally find the balance complaints valid but ultimately not as big of an issue as the lack of content.

there was no way it was gonna stay consistent with 400k players every week lmao

So what's the end game goal for Helldivers 2? Does it have an ending to work towards? Someone fill me in.

Missing huge bits in the story... The CEO of Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Game Studios, Johan Pilestedt, is stepping down from the role so he can spend even more time working on the game and remaining close to the community. He's still with the company but not leading it. SONY's shortsighted push to attach published games to an account has spilled over to other games. It should be optional. Still, the game is doing better than Sushi Squad on it's bad day.

It's a combination of the Sony shitshow, the terrible way the Discord Mods have handled things, and a lot of players like me just waiting for the Illuminate update.

People arguing about PSN account is easy to make. And here i am refusing even EA launcher on my pc.

I mean it gets boring after 150 hours and no real progress. When the bots were defeated and magically returned the next day holding more planets than before they lost me

To be fair, 40K-60K is pretty good for a live service. It could’ve been much worse, just look at Suicide Squad, Anthem and Battleborn.

The railgun nerf was the signal flare that the game was going to lose a lot of its playerbase because they were looking at what guns/stratagems are being used the most and then they nerfed it. Instead of buffing other equipment to have more variety or choices, the balance team made it so that everyone felt weak. Another big hit that made it feel like it wasnt worth playing is the % of planets losing or winning the defensive missions because it wasn't necessarily fun to defend 4+ planets and never having a break after defending them. A lot of people want to blame Sony for a lot of issues that happened but it was entirely the dev team not understanding that its okay to let players have fun and be reasonable in their playtime.

Already knew the game wasnt going to last when it first launched. Gameplay doesnt have long lasting replay value

It's absolutely devastating that this glorious gorgeous game was just struck down by a bunch of corporate bigwigs that have no idea that they're stupid decision would kill one of the best games they had

Only has access for 69 countries. Bad balances. Bad updates. Bad community managers. Bounded to happen.

performance issues are a main issue for most people, every update introduces new bugs or even re-introduces old bugs and the game crashes way more than it should on top of a constantly worsening frame rate balance problems are pretty bad too but those are slowly improving (admittedly too slowly), but performance is imo the main killer edit: also obviously the Sony situation cutting off some players entirely, just want to point out that it isnt ALL Sony here, Arrowhead has dropped the ball a lot now

Sony, don't ask others why this happened. Instead, ask yourself whether the restrictions you put was worth it

Discord moderators and community managers (aka the former reddit moderators /facepalm) aren't helping this either, making playerbase even more hostile with all cringe and stupid sht they do. It seems the devs doesn't care about this, which isn't a good thing either.

Sony management are the perfect example of people "getting promoted to the point of incompetence".

Sony absolutely squandered it.

Love/hate how we can all agree that Sony's the reason for the mega-downward spiral, the game deserves a bigger chance than it's currently getting

That graph is entirely 100% expected, the first game had about the same playerbase. The onrush of people was always considered to be temporary "CoD crowd" by pretty much everyone on Helldivers discords and reddit.

"It's not crashing and burning." Ohhh boi, it crashes A LOT

Sony: "We demand you give us all your info, so that we can lose it when we get hacked again."

It's no surprise, with Sony trying to milk the game for monetization and messing with sign-ups and playability, this is clearly internal sabotage.

I whole heartedly blame the balance team behind this game for their inability to give us anything that wasn't mediocre at best while hard nerfing anything that was actually worth while into the dirt.

When I left the game they nerfed the guns and buffed monsters so much that it became 'common sense' to not attack monsters. To avoid them at all costs and try to stealth missions and get out. Which makes sense as you go higher up in difficulties but i you're a casual on the middle settings, the options to play any way you want was slowly widdled away from changes to make the game less fun.

This is not a video about having low player count. It is about having lost most of its daily player count

I 100%'d the first 4 season passes but the constant 'balance' updates ruined the fun for me so I moved on. Not to mention all the drama with the CM and CEO..

Blocking a game in 100+ countries played a large role; Sony knows it but refuses to take their head out of their rear.

Due to repeated weapon nerfs your kinda forced to run the auto cannon every mission otherwise you just don't have the ability to fight shit without blowing half your ammo every 45 seconds.

Ofcoure it lost many players. Sony and their idiot executives decided to ban sales and access of the game in countries that do not have a PC PSN store account creation. In the Philippines Ghost of Tsushima and Helldivers 2 are not available in Steam, sorry not sorry but if they continue this we will just have to "borrow" the game with torrents.

Happens to most Live-services these days, especially if it's PvE only.

The key thing to keep in mind is that the current player base is still higher than they expected to have at their all time peak. If I remember right, they expected to only have 9k - 15k regular players and a peak of 30k. Based on that forecast, the game is still doing way better than they ever budgeted for.

PSN debacle, anti-fun balancing and the worst discord server for a big game I've had the displeasure of joining have contributed to Helldivers 2's decline.

Blocked in over 170 countries clearly contributing to that in a big way. The idiocy of Sony.

Yeah with an anti-cheat system that can not only brick your windows but actually destroy your hardware, all while not stopping a single cheater, it's no wonder people aren't interested in buying the game.

Helldivers 2 still have more active players that games like Fortnite and Warzone. There was a LOT of hype at first, but the hype has worn off, new games have been released, and people get upset and leave over things not going their way.

Everything would have been fine if Sony didn't fuck it up.

Helldivers 2 had a massively successful live service launch but Shadow of the Erdtree players peaked at almost double, at 780k. A testament once again to how single player is by no means dead, and any such talk is ridiculous!

Kinda happens when you show you're willing to block millions of players from the game they bought because you want them to buy another unrelated service just to play what they already have been playing just time up until that point.

"A game for everyone is a game for no-one." Is was the developers response every time we brought up issues with the game. Well it turns out that a game for no-on is also a game for no-one.

I was one of those that refunded when the news came out because I would no longer be able to play. I know they changed it, but sony made this choice knowing some people would be forced off the game. I don't want to play a game published by people that willingly tried to throw me away, even if they changed their mind. I have other 4-player co-op games I can play with my friends that DON'T need community wide protests to ensure I can actually play the thing.