Game dev praises the recent Helldivers 2 update calling it “absolutely fascinating”

The Helldivers series went from a fairly niche release that very few people had heard of to a global juggernaut seemingly overnight following the release of Helldivers 2. Despite a very dedicated development team and engaged community, it has been seeing its share of problems in recent weeks for a variety of reasons. Arrowhead Game Studios still has a lot of good standing in the gaming community, but it does feel like the game is walking on a tightrope at the minute and the team must navigate these next few months carefully if it wants Helldivers 2 to remain a success. 

U/Ebicat took to Reddit to discuss the recent Helldivers 2 01.000.400 update, as well as Arrowhead Game Studios’ future plans. They also note that they are a game developer and have shipped over 20 games of varying quality and success, which does give a unique insight into the mindset of a developer that we don’t often get to hear when looking from an outside perspective. 

They start the post by saying that “the newest patch brought some initial relief only for that to wear off quickly. As an example, no ship module was touched in the last patch but Supply Packing broke… meanwhile, new features have been released for months but have never once worked, looking at your improved defense against rockets for sentries. The list goes on and on as you are all aware.”

According to the developer, this is likely caused by the choice of engine, which is the discontinued Autodesk Stingray that was used for the original Helldivers game, as well as Helldivers 2, and three Warhammer titles. The engine was discontinued back in 2018. 

The developer continues by saying “The first game was made on this engine, and that’s likely why they chose it for the second game but I’m pretty sure that was a huge mistake. When you use something like Unity, Unreal, etc… you’re a part of a community of people solving problems together, You gain a lot from having an actively developed engine. I’m going to bet this is one of the biggest reasons for the mess they’re in now.”

Engines such as Unreal Engine and Unity have become two of the most popular choices for game developers and thousands of games have been created using them from small one-developer projects to major AAA releases including the likes of Fortnite, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Tekken 8, Sea of Thieves, Pokémon Go, Genshin Impact, and many more. These engines have an incredibly dedicated community behind them, and more importantly, are actively worked on by their creators. It does seem like an odd choice to stick with a sub-par discontinued engine and it could explain a lot regarding the technical issues that Helldivers 2 continues to be plagued by. 

The developer signs off the post by saying “I hope they can sort their problems out, cause they’re running out of community patience. This last patch should have come out with only fixes, and no regressions, but it’s just not the case, including things like performance and crashes. I also hope they do a major post-mortem into their processes and choices on this.”

The developer doesn’t confirm what titles they have worked on, to allow for anonymity, but they do note that some of the games they have worked on have shipped “10-25+ million copies.” Much of this post does echo many of the community’s opinions and thoughts regarding the state of the game. But, the team has used the engine for a decade now, so despite its limitations, they are perhaps the most experienced team there is when it comes to using Stingray. 

With Johan Pilestedt now shifting his focus to the development of the game it does seem to be going in the right direction, if the recent update and Viper Commandos Warbond is anything to go by. With so much changing in the game over the past week, we highly recommend checking out our Helldivers 2 best weapons guide and best armor guide so you can keep your loadout up to date to ensure maximum Liber-tea is served to the Automatons and Terminids.