Helldivers 2 devs in ‘crisis mode’ as players overload servers

Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Games admitted it was in “crisis mode” after server overloads led to numerous issues on launch day.

The sequel to the 2015 title of the same name was released on Feb. 8 and quickly attracted a wealth of attention, surging past the 50,00 concurrent players mark on Steam, but the success of Helldivers 2 has come alongside several issues.

Matchmaking in Helldivers 2 is experiencing the most significant issues, with the Quickplay feature not working as intended and some teething problems with crossplay between PlayStation and PC. Meanwhile, some players have experienced significant issues like crashes after completing the tutorial or a complete inability to launch on Steam.

While there are workarounds for some of those issues, Arrowhead Games CEO Johan Pilestedt conceded in the game’s official Discord channel that a patch will likely be required, and the team is operating in “crisis mode.”

Pilestedt promised the devs are “working as hard as we can” to resolve the issues and that “the volume of players exposed some shenanigans in the system that went past many hours of testing.” A backend fix has been attempted, but “it seems like” a patch is required to resolve the problem.

While matchmaking issues remain prevalent, multiplayer functionality is not down entirely. Pilestedt advises teaming up with members of the community to create squads as “joining friends works fine.”

No timeline for a patch has been detailed, and the issues may get worse before they get better. At the time of writing, over 60,000 concurrent players are active on Steam. That number will likely rise with each hour as people in other time zones wake up or finish work, but hopefully, the issues will be resolved quickly.