Helldivers 2’s Latest Update May Help With Long Queue Times

Highlights

• Arrowhead Game Studios has increased Helldivers 2 server capacity to 700,000, hopfully addressing player login issues during peak times.
• The game’s rapid growth caused server errors that were fixed in a recent patch, also addressing AFK player problems.
• While the new cap may be tested during the upcoming weekend, improvements aim to make login issues more manageable for fans.

Arrowhead Games Studios has finally managed to increase the server capacity to 700,000 in the latest Helldivers 2 update, hopefully relieving a lot of the issues related to logging in during peak times. It has been a bittersweet few weeks for Arrowhead Game Studios as its latest game, Helldivers 2, has become massively popular with exploding player counts. While that is something every studio would like to see when they release a game, the rapid growth of Helldivers 2 has also been a double-edged sword for the small developer.

The surge in popularity of Helldivers 2 has had a negative impact on the backend of the game, namely server capacity. The rising player numbers have caused quite a few errors and server instability issues that the team at Arrowhead have been attempting to resolve since the game launched earlier this month. Players have either seen long wait times to get in or other strange error messages, and while Arrowhead continues to release new updates addressing these issues, increasing the server capacity has been a major focus. Thankfully, the latest patch from Arrowhead has finally been able to do just that.

While the latest patch is a small one compared to other recent Helldivers 2 updates, this one may be the most significant for players as it makes a massive change to server capacity. The official patch notes are less specific, but the capacity increase was confirmed by Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt who indicated that the team has managed to raise the max CCU cap to 700,000. In addition, the update also fixes another issue where players may sometimes be stuck watching a cinematic for a much longer period of time than intended.

Helldivers 2 Recent Player Capacity Struggles

While the news is likely a welcome one, Pilestedt cautions fans that the studio fully expects to break this new mark as the weekend approaches. Last weekend, aided by a double XP and Requisitions bonus weekend, Helldivers 2 continued to break new concurrent playercount records, compounding the login and server capacity issues for players. At one point during the previous weekend, Helldivers 2 even exceeded Counter-Strike 2‘s player count on Steam, a major milestone considering how often CS is typically at the top of the charts. With continued improvements to the back end, fans are hopeful that the login problems, if they appear again, are not nearly as bad.

Alongside the increased server capacity, Arrowhead Game Studios also made another major tweak this past week, adding in a feature that automatically removes AFK players after 15 minutes of inactivity. The AFK problem in Helldivers 2 was a growing issue as many would cheat the system by never logging out of the game, holding their spot on the server and bypassing the login process completely. Unfortunately, this meant that there was one less spot for someone who actually wanted to play the game in that moment, leading to a logjam of AFK players keeping active players out.

Helldivers 2 Update 1.000.12 Patch Notes

Fixes

• We have raised the server cap!
• Fixed issue where some players would get stuck in cinematics for an extended period of time.

Known Issues

These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.

• No text is present for the Requisitions and Social Menu on the Player HUD
• PS5 players may encounter error code 10003001 on the login screen.
• Login rate limiting when many are logging in at the same time.
• Players can become disconnected during play.
• Rewards and other progress may be delayed or not attributed.
• Various UI issues may appear when the game interacts with servers.
• Pick-up of certain objects in-game may cause characters to freeze in place for an extended period of time.
• Some games would not be joinable by others for a short period of time during heavy load.
• Other unknown behaviors may occur.
• Japanese VO is missing from intro cutscene and Ship TV.
• Armor values for light/medium/heavy armor do not currently function as intended.