Helldivers 2 steam reviews drop to mixed as CEO acknowledges “performance, stability and quality isn’t where it should be”

After being review bombed a year ago, Helldivers 2 Steam reviews have again dropped to mixed, but this time the flurry of negative reviews is understandable as even Arrowhead’s CEO has acknowledged that “performance, stability and quality isn’t where it should be”. A lot of exciting plans for HD2 have leaked such as a Superweapon equivalent to the Death Star from Star Wars and new Illuminate Cultists expected by the end of the year, but, while new content is tantalising, a lot of people desperately want the game’s performance to be improved. Arrowhead are working on improving the performance, but sadly there’s no magic bullet and Arrowhead will not be able to repeat significant improvements over the course of 60-days unlike last year.

Helldivers 2 Steam reviews drop to mixed

Recent Steam reviews for Helldivers 2 have dropped to mixed. Per Steam, this still means at least 69% of 14,782 user reviews in the last 30 days are positive, but the drop to mixed is an indicator that PC players are not thrilled. Recent negative reviews posted on September 24th say, “DO NOT BUY Game runs like absolute garbage,” and “Game is amazing and so is its lore & gameplay but right now it’s unplayable due to bugs, crashes and performance issues”.

Another damning review posted on September 24th says, “This game is a mess now, very buggy and full of crashes… When the game crashes it can full lockdown your PC at 100% load, and you have to force restart it”.

Judging by all the recent reviews, performance is the main source of discontent, and Arrowhead are fully aware that the game is not performing as it should be. On Discord, Arrowhead CEO, Shams Jorjani, acknowledged that the studio is “very aware performance, stability and quality isn’t where it should be” and the developers are “hard at work to improve things”.

Jorjani said the studio is “hard at work on reducing file size on PC,” which will be fantastic when it eventually happens as HD2 is stupidly 100GB bigger on PC compared to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. As for why the file size is so much bigger on PC, Jorjani isn’t entirely sure as he has to “check with engine peeps,” however, players uncovered a ridiculous amount of duplicated assets. Regarding this, Jorjani said, “Duplicating makes accessing files faster. But this clearly got out of hand”.

Unfortunately, while aware of the issues, Arrowhead will not be able to deliver a 60-day roadmap/patch unlike last year. Jorjani told players “There isn’t any equivalent to a 60 day patch to drastically change performance” and, while Arrowhead “will make some concrete improvements in the short term,” the reality is that fixing performance is “a long haul thing”.

Hopefully Arrowhead can eventually reduce the file size on PC and solve the majority of performance woes. The CEO has previously cited “crippling technical debt” and outdated hardware as part of the problem, but there is also the issue of the developers adding new content. While new content contributes to the performance getting worse, it puts Arrowhead in a pickle as they don’t want to slow down on new content as not all the developers can assist with performance and new content helps keep players around.

For more Helldivers 2, check out our guide to the best warbonds ranked, along with the best stratagems and best throwables. We also have a guide to the best weapons, and, if you’re coming back to HD2 for the first time in a long while, we have a bunch of tips and tricks to help you get reaccustomed to the battlefield.