As a live game, Helldivers 2 constantly sees new content Warbonds drop while developer Arrowhead also delivers periodic fixes and updates. This is a hard balance to strike at the best of times, but the game’s colossal success and comparatively small team keep butting heads. The relationship between consistent monthly Warbonds and patches that fix ongoing issues or change weapon stats is an ongoing one, and now Arrowhead is exploring spacing out how often future patches are, with hopefully beneficial results.
Despite the Steam delistings and PSN fiasco, Helldivers 2 is still wildly successful. The co-op game has a dedicated team behind it, and this shows in how openly it communicates with players even with the recent major fumbles. To that end, Arrowhead is looking at spacing out how often it patches the game, starting with delaying one that usually drops any minute now.
“We want to take some more time for this one and potentially between future patches since we feel cadence has probably been a bit too high to be able to maintain the quality standard we want and you deserve,” community manager Thomas ‘Twinbeard’ Petersson says. “Patching a lot can easily disrupt workflow and takes more resources than you might think; it needs planning, implementing, monitoring, possible tweaking in hotfixes et cetera. For this one we prefer to stretch it out a little, hopefully with a good result.”
So while we don’t know when the next patch will drop, Petersson makes it clear that the team is experimenting with more time between updates to improve their overall quality. There’s no new timeframe locked in for patch cadence yet though.
“Nothing that detailed is decided,” Petersson says in response to one player, who asks if patches will be bi-weekly or, alternatively, monthly. “I’d say it’s something we have to try out and get a feel for. At the moment we feel a slightly lower cadence overall will benefit both us, you, and the game.”
I have nothing but respect for how often Arrowhead has been patching Helldivers 2 while still delivering monthly Warbonds, and don’t envy how new weapons, stratagems, and armor throw the entirety of the live game off balance. That said, I can see more space between patches being a good thing, especially if Arrowhead feels like it might be stretched too thin amid the game’s roaring success.
Even with the ongoing issues Helldivers 2 has survived as more than just a flavor-of-the-month game, and this is down to the game and community Arrowhead has built, and how the team maintained it over the last few months. Even with stumbles, the future is bright for the bug-squashing and robot-breaking shooter, and Arrowhead’s openness is a massive part of that.
With less frequent patches potentially on the horizon, you’ll want to remind yourself about the best Helldivers 2 weapons and Helldivers 2 armor for your next mission.
You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or grab our PCGN deals tracker to net yourself some bargains.
