Helldivers 2 is Being Review Bombed Yet Again

Helldivers 2 is seeing yet another wave of negative reviews following a favorable response to its launch in February. While the reasons given for the recent negative reactions to Helldivers 2 vary among players, they seem to share a common thread of criticism for the multiplayer third-person shooter’s post-launch management.

Despite some login problems and matchmaking issues, the launch of Helldivers 2 went exceptionally well, selling nearly 3 million copies in its first 16 days and sporting big active player numbers. Within a day of launch, Helldivers 2 surpassed God of War as Sony’s most-played game ever on Steam.

But the journey hasn’t been without its ups and downs, and the game still seems to be facing backlash from changes made in the Escalation of Freedom update from earlier in August. Helldivers 2 still enjoys a mostly positive all-time review score on Steam, with a 72 percent approval rating, but recent reviews are skewed in the other direction, with just 39 percent giving the game a thumbs up. While the recent update diversified the enemy types by adding three Terminids and two Automatons, it also resulted in the nerfing of several popular weapons and strategems, a trend that seems to be the major complaint behind a lot of the negative recent reviews. Other complaints from recent reviewers include continuing crashing and disconnection issues, repetitive gameplay, and a lack of variety among enemies.

Review Bombs for Helldivers 2 are Becoming a Recurring Theme

That wasn’t even the first wave of review bombing to hit the game. Helldivers 2 reviews dipped into the mixed category a little over a week after launch, largely due to players being unable to get into matches because of servers being packed to the brim. However, the addition of more servers helped to quell that wave of criticism.

Helldivers 2 also received a lot of negative reviews in May, after developers required that all players be linked to the PlayStation Network in order to access the game. That included PC users playing the game on Steam, many of whom weren’t happy about having to link their accounts together, resulting in another big batch of negative reviews on the platform.

In spite of the recent criticism, developers seem aware of player concerns and are trying to address them. Game Director Mikael E made a post to Steam on August 13 laying out Arrowhead Games’ plans for the following 60 days, which include re-evalutaing balancing issues and making tweaks to the flamethrower, a weapon that’s previous nerfs have been the subject of a lot of the game’s recent negative reviews. Helldivers 2 developers have addressed controversy surrounding the game head-on in the past, such as Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt taking some of the blame for the PlayStation Network linking fallout.