“It feels as if we’ve fought our way back”: with Helldivers 2’s recent updates having turned around player sentiment, the mood at Arrowhead is “much, much better”

Helldivers 2’s most recent patch helped trigger a nice turnaround in player feeling towards the game, as well as an uptick in player numbers. As you might expect, this been a boon for Arrowhead’s devs, with one saying morale at the studio has been “much, much better” lately.

Previously, Arrowhead CCO Johan Pilestedt had described the difficulties of keeping the spirit at the studio positive while it was facing criticism from players over the direction it had gone with its changes to the game, writing: “It’s a tricky situation. The criticism is valid, but it causes low morale, and low morale causes slow development speed. Talk about negative spiral.”

Thankfully things sound much rosier in a recent response Arrowhead community manager Twinbeard provided to one player asking about the subject on Helldivers 2’s Discord server, writing that morale following the latest patch and Chemical Agents Warbond arriving is “much, much better”.

“A lot of colleagues have felt sad or frustrated by either rushing things or not being able to cater to player base feedback well enough, which is of course understandable,” they wrote, “Personally, but I think a lot of Arrowhead colleagues would agree, it feels as if we’ve fought our way back and have been give a rare opportunity to continue doing great stuff and develop the game from where we are now, not where we were mid-August.

“Is there still crunch-like stuff going on in the context of the things we’ve comitted to? Sure. We’re in a much better place now game-wise though, and long term I hope the things we’re doing and work we put in now will help us, the game and all of its players.”

They then added in a separate post: “It’s honestly, like really, with sugar on top, good to feel as well. I’m and we’re still stressed, not denying that, but again, we’re on a better path now in a lot of ways long-term (if short-term, things are still hectic).”

So, there you go. It’s not just the players laying the groundwork from that new space station who’re feeling better about Helldivers 2.