Helldivers 2 Player Cap Increased To 700,000, Still Expected To Fill Up

thegamer.com:

Helldivers 2's huge player base is both a blessing and a curse for developer Arrowhead. On the one hand, having hundreds of thousands of fans is great for business. On the other, the studio has to cram them all into online servers, a task that's proving to be incredibly difficult for the devs, and frustrating for fans.

Now, as we approach what is bound to be yet another busy weekend, Helldivers 2's player capacity is being increased to 700,000, allowing for the highest amount of users to log in at once since launch. The game's lead developer says that this should make wait times "much more bearable", but warns that it won't fix the issue entirely.

"We have updated the max CCU [concurrent users] cap to 700,000," says Johan Pilestedt, lead developer on Helldivers 2 and CEO of Arrowhead. "Unfortunately, we expect the CCU to reach that level. We believe that the wait times will be much more bearable."

This isn't the only measure that Arrowhead has put in place to (hopefully) reduce wait times this weekend. It's also introduced an AFK timer, stopping players from leaving the game running even if they're not playing, so they can keep their place in the server. Now, much like other live services, being inactive long enough will boot you from the game, giving your space to someone who wants to play.

It remains to be seen if this is enough to address player concerns. While the game is reviewing extremely well with fans and critics alike, players have become increasingly frustrated with how long it takes to get into the game. It was enough to make its Steam reviews briefly fall into the "mixed" range, although it has since risen to "mostly positive" once more.

Taking a look at the player count on Steam, Arrowhead already has its work cut out for itself. In the past 24 hours, the player count peaked at 422,935, not far off its all-time high of 457,649, a record set just three days ago. When you combine this with the player count over on PS5, it's likely that the new 700,000