Gamers Are Not Happy With Helldivers 2 Server Capacity
Helldivers 2
Helldivers 2 keeps breaking records and that’s bad news for its developer, in a good way. The third-person shooter recently became PlayStation’s biggest PC launch title, and with more players joining the game over the weekend, developer Arrowhead Studios has a new problem: the servers just can’t keep up with the demand.
As of the time of writing, Helldivers 2 has crossed Destiny 2 and GTA 5 with its peak concurrent player numbers, which blew past 400,000 active players over the weekend. Arrowhead saw this coming, which is why the game was rewarding players with 50% extra XP. Even then, players were unable to log in to the game for most of the two-day event.
Helldivers 2 servers are now capped at around 450k players to further improve server stability, according to the official Helldivers 2 Discord pic.twitter.com/Z4zRzRGl8n
— Wario64 (@Wario64) February 18, 2024
Since then, Arrowhead Studios has announced that Helldivers 2’s server capacity has been capped at 450,000 players for “server stability”. In a post on X/Twitter, Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt said the team was “completely exhausted by the success” of the game, which is warranted as nobody saw this coming. However, with the news of no PlayStation franchise sequels releasing this year, perhaps the team should have anticipated an inflated player count.
With so many players flocking to Helldivers 2, it now has a higher player count than all of PlayStation’s prior PC ports combined. In a response to fans asking about the game’s live-service roadmap, Pilestedt said that there have been significant changes to it, so expect a new roadmap in the coming weeks.
Arrowhead Game Studios
Helldivers 2 has sold over 1 million units since its release, with sales divided roughly equally between PC and PS5. While it still has a ways to go before reaching the massive numbers of Palworld, it certainly makes for an interesting start to 2024 with two “smaller” games reaching a mass audience. Both the Standard Edition and Super Citizen Edition of the game are sitting in the top 3 positions of Steam's sales charts. The game enjoys a "Mostly Positive" rating based on over 80,000 reviews, with a respectable Metacritic score of 83.
Helldivers 2 is out now for PC and PS5.
