Glimmer of hope for flagging Helldivers 2 as Escalation of Freedom lures back players

Soldiers of Super Earth are rallying to Helldivers 2, with the Escalation of Freedom update launching yesterday seeing the title crack 60,000 concurrent players for the first time in well over a month. The real question: How long will they fight the good fight?

Concurrent player counts hit 62,819 for the release of Helldivers 2’s Escalation of Freedom, according to stats site SteamDB. As far as historical numbers are concerned, it’s a drop in the bucket for the Arrowhead Game Studios title, but given Helldivers 2 hadn’t surpassed 37,000 concurrents through most of July, it’s given devs and long-time fans hope that new content for the game will keep others interested for longer.

The last time Helldivers 2 cracked the 60,000 mark was back in mid-June, about a month after Sony decided to enforce the need for a PlayStation Network account to play the title—thus making the game unavailable in 177 countries. Even though Sony backtracked on its decision, Helldivers 2’s playerbase has been in free-fall ever since, save for the June 13 Warbond release and gameplay update.

Just 12,000 players had logged in during the title’s downtime this past week as they flocked to new games like The First Descendant and Once Human, with many blaming Helldivers 2’s stale gameplay loop and constant bugs and glitches—some of which were fixed with the new update.

Escalation of Freedom also includes a new difficulty level, side missions, enemies to destroy, environmental changes, heaps of Stratagem and weapon balance changes, and much more. While it’s not Arrowhead’s last throw of the dice, should numbers fall to the pre-update level again, the devs will need to make drastic changes to its dwindling playerbase.

We’ll see whether a higher Helldivers 2 player count is achievable when the weekend arrives and more gamers deploy to fight enemies of Super Earth.