Well over one and a half years after the game's initial launch in February 2024, Arrowhead Game Studios' bombastic third-person co-op shooter Helldivers 2 remains one of the best and most popular multiplayer experiences in gaming — even as a variety of other shooters and co-op games continue to release.
Originally exclusive to PC and PS5, it's had quite a big 2025 between the colossal Battle for Super Earth in spring, last month's server-crashing launch on Xbox, an incredible Halo ODST x Helldivers 2 crossover Warbond, and the recent Into the Unjust update that introduced new Terminid enemies and kicked off a dangerous expedition into the bugs' Gloom-covered territory.
But while Helldivers 2 has been firing on all cylinders in terms of content and the game's ever-evolving Galactic War metanarrative, its stability has regressed substantially in recent months. As a result, many players across all platforms have experienced numerous performance issues, ranging from crashes and severe framerate drops to frequent stutters and the loss of in-game audio.
The release of Into the Unjust exacerbated the problem significantly, leading to more widespread complaints from fans and a community-wide push for Arrowhead to focus on the technical state of the game. Now, the developer has responded with a promise to release a major update next month, with larger performance patches coming at a later date.
"We’ve seen the feedback across Discord, forums, Reddit and our dashboards. You’ve been loud, clear, and absolutely right to expect better," wrote the studio in a post on X (Twitter). "We also recognise that our recent updates haven’t hit the mark, and our silence hasn’t helped. That’s on us. We read all of it and we are hard at work creating a roadmap to address this."
The road to recovery will begin "mid October-ish," with Arrowhead planning an update that will fix major crashing issues and the loss of weapon audio, implement a number of "long overdue" bugfixes like a solution for Charger footsteps being silent (thank Lady Liberty), make minor performance improvements, and give the shooter's gameplay a balancing pass.
The developers went on to explain that Helldivers 2's bigger performance issues will take time to fully resolve, so they're "working on a bigger development plan as to how we can address some of the larger concerns." While they could rush out an update to try and fix them sooner, "it would be duct tape where we need to solder" — potentially leading to further issues.
The developers went on to explain that Helldivers 2's bigger performance issues will take time to fully resolve, so they're "working on a bigger development plan as to how we can address some of the larger concerns."
"Short term, we think the above will make a noticeable improvement, and beyond that we’ll keep working on the top issues you keep raising," the post reads.
Arrowhead closed out the announcement by vowing to be more communicative about its plans and processes moving forward, and says it will have another post to share next week as part of that focus on greater transparency.
"TL;DR: We hear you, we want things to be in a better state, we are taking it very seriously, we will continue working and sharing," it said.
As someone who has nearly 600 hours played in Helldivers 2 at this point and has played the game frequently since its launch, I can confidently say that this renewed focus on polish was — and is — absolutely needed. I haven't experienced the worst problems like crashes, but I've run into big framerate drops fighting Terminids on max difficulty, as well as tons of instances of the aforementioned audio loss bugs.
With that in mind, I'm very happy to see that Arrowhead is getting down to business and working hard to resolve Helldivers 2's stability woes. It's unfortunate that we won't see solutions come for at least a few months, but hopefully October's patch and whatever small hotfixes come are impactful enough to make a significant difference until larger updates come.
It's unfortunate that we won't see solutions come for at least a few months, but hopefully October's patch and whatever small hotfixes come are impactful enough to make a significant difference until larger updates come.
Speaking of next month's update, it's likely that we'll see the Rupture Strain return to the game at the same time it's pushed live. The new sub-faction was pulled offline after strong player backlash, with fans angered by how frequently its enemies tunneled underground only to emerge with nigh-unavoidable attacks.
At the time, the developers noted the Rupture Strain would be deployed back into the Galactic War in five weeks; that timing lines up almost perfectly with the upcoming patch's "mid October-ish" release window, so I'm expecting Arrowhead to fold the faction's return into that update.
Helldivers 2 itself is available for $40 on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC (Steam), and PS5, though you can snag it for a cool $5 off thanks to a deal that brings it down to $34.69 at Loaded (formerly CDKeys).
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