Is Helldivers 2 dying?

No one could have predicted Helldivers 2’s meteoric rise when it was released in early February. It was booming with players far beyond the servers’ capacity, a positive headache for Arrowhead Game Studios. But now that time has passed, how has the game faired, and is Helldivers 2 dying?

Many will conclude Helldivers 2 is dead simply because it is not pulling in the 400,000 concurrent players it once did. But that is to be expected; Helldivers 2 saw many big streamers in the gaming space trying it out at launch, which certainly boosted the numbers beyond the marketing from Sony. On top of that, this is a great live service game that promises more room for growth later down the line.

Significant decline in Helldivers 2 player count

While there is no hard statistic for how the game performs on the PS5, let’s look at its performance on the Steam Charts.

The numbers from month to month do not look promising for Helldivers 2, as the game consistently loses players as time passes. Over the last 30 days the game has averaged just over 25,000 players, almost a 40% loss from June to July.

While the loss is significant, was this to be expected? Sony shot themselves in the foot by requiring PC players to link their PlayStation account to play the game. This problem affected over 100 countries, with less than 70 available to play Helldivers 2 at the time. The delisting of Helldivers 2 in many regions means a significant number of players who would love to play the game simply cannot because of the game’s delisting on the Steam market. Sony is backtracking on the problem they caused, but has left damaging effects on a portion of the player base who were alienated.

While crossplay is not the be-all and end-all of games, Helldivers 2’s crossplay initially left much to be desired. PC players had a horrid time connecting to players on PS5 and vice versa, with many opting to turn the feature off for a smoother matchmaking experience. As with many early-game problems, Arrowhead is ironing out these issues with updates to the game to improve the crossplay capabilities, which is a good thing for their upcoming expansion.

Will Escalation of Freedom bring back players?

Arrowhead recently announced Helldivers 2’s biggest update yet, the Escalation of Freedom expansion. This major update will introduce new enemies, territories, and more as the developers “reflect on the six months since launch.” The update also addresses grief kicking, a problem since launch, where a player is unfairly kicked because a party voted them out. While Helldivers 2 initially hit it big, these figures should be considered the norm.

Even in larger titles like Destiny 2, players will come and go, especially when a new expansion is released. The lower figures should help Arrowhead focus on the community it has rather than trying to recall hundreds of thousands of players.