Some Helldivers 2 Players Suspect the Hand of Joel in Their Dramatic 11th-Hour Victory

ign.com:

Helldivers 2 players are celebrating a dramatic 11th-hour victory that saw hundreds of thousands of the digital soldiers unite to defend 10 worlds from the undemocratic grip of advancing bug-like Terminids, and soulless Automatons. However, some members of the community have found themselves wondering whether Arrowhead’s game master Joel may have stacked the odds in their favor to stave off defeat.

Developer Arrowhead Studios' smash multiplayer hit Helldivers 2 tasks four player squads of democratically enthused players to embark on PvE missions to wipe out enemies and complete objectives. Doing so directly contributes to a collective effort to liberate or defend a mass of disparate worlds arrayed around a galactic map, which has Super Earth at its center. The ebb and flow of this galactic war is dictated by an Arrowhead Studios employee known simply as Joel who, in the guise of Super Earth, hands out overarching missions called "major orders" that the players must work together to achieve, or suffer the consequences.

Now, the Helldivers community is good at a lot of things: killing bugs, slaying bots, theorizing about hitherto unannounced enemies, the list goes on. But coordination? Well, that’s proving to be something of a problem for the playerbase, despite the efforts of a dedicated group of players who have done their level best to strategize and direct the flow of frothing democracy in a meaningful way.

As such, when Super Earth command handed down a Major Order on April 19 to defend a spread of 10 planets from an overwhelming invasion, things didn’t get off to a hugely positive start. As time dragged on, the mission looked increasingly likely to fail, thanks in small part to the fact that one of the endangered worlds just so happened to be the aptly named Hellmire, where sudden immolation is an ever present threat.

Smash cut forward to April 25, and the Helldivers are jubilantly celebrating a down-to-the-wire victory that had seemingly stalled the advance of