Helldivers 2 Dev Apologises for Login Issues as Hundreds of Thousands Flood Servers

ign.com:

Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Game Studios has issued an apology to players for login and progression issues that have blighted the game’s launch.

Helldivers 2 launched on PlayStation 5 and PC last week and soon saw a concurrent peak in the hundreds of thousands, blowing past Arrowhead’s expectations for the Sony Interactive Entertainment-published co-op shooter. In fact, Helldivers 2 is Sony's biggest Steam launch ever, with a peak concurrent player count of 155,926 on Valve's platform.

But as the player count hit greater heights, so did the servers struggle, with login problems compounded by progression failing to track. For a game that lacks offline play and in which progression is tied to your ability to succeed on the battlefield, Helldivers 2 endured a tough weekend.

Now, Arrowhead boss Johan Pilestedt has issued a statement explaining what went wrong. The long and short of it is that as Arrowhead worked to increase Helldivers 2’s rate limiter for its servers, the number of players logging on surpassed the limit. Even when the total capacity was increased from 250,000 to 360,000 total, the player count jumped to 360,000 after just five and a half minutes, Pilestedt said.

Pilestedt issued an apology, and said Arrowhead was working as hard as it could to sort the server problems out. Here’s his statement in full, posted to the Helldivers 2 Discord:

Despite the server issues, Helldivers 2 is going down well with players. After an initial ‘mixed’ user review rating on Steam, Helldivers 2 is now up to ‘mostly positive’. IGN’s Helldivers 2 Review in Progress was equally enthusiastic. Check out IGN’s Helldivers 2 tips and tricks for getting started if you’re jumping in.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.