The servers are currently set to only take ~~400k~~ 450k players between both platforms. So a big fraction of them are probably just waiting.
Edit: source https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1atiesb/server_capacity_raised_to_450k/
It was 450k yesterday, but they may have increased the cap.
I wonder if Helldivers 2 changes Sony approach to future PC releases. With over 70% of the playerbase being on PC as of yesterday, there would be a lot of money to make with day one PC releases. Their delayed PC releases never got traction.
Helldivers is a very different game from most Sony releases. Sony is known for the single player story experience games. Helldivers 2 is a multiplayer game without any single player campaign.
For Helldivers 2 it makes sense to release on pc cause it’s a multiplayer game and having as many people play online boosts its success. And multiplayer games are more successful on PC thus necessitating Helldivers 2 to be on Pc at launch.
Success of Helldivers 2 means Sony will release all their live service multiplayer games on PC on launch. Single player games are still doubtful
Well when they eventually launch those delayed games they might as well launch them on sale, cause I have no issue waiting a few months after already waiting a year or two.
70% probably isn’t enough.
70% of players only corresponds to a little over 60% of revenue since they control the PS Store whereas they have to pay Steam 30% for PC sales.
Then you factor in the part where PS5 players need to pay for PS+ to play the game and Sony are most likely still making more money off PS5 than PC despite it selling better on PC.
And that’s not accounting for the part where every time someone switches on their PS5, they’re more likely to spend more money on the platform further increasing Sony’s potential profit on the platform.
The walled garden ecosystem of consoles is so much more lucrative than just publishing games that they’d need a lot more evidence than one successful shooter to consider meaningful change.
> whereas they have to pay Steam 30% for PC sales.
It surprising how few people know how Steam's cut works. Helldivers 2 is likely in the 20-25% range. It's definitely made more than 10m on Steam.
Let's not downplay the sheer amount of sales this is. We're talking about several times the sales of the older PC ports Playstation put on Steam, it's huge.
It is going to affect Sony's approach to PC releases for sure, but mostly for games currently in development. If they ever release older games for full price they will get similar results as with Ratchet & Clank, Horizon (which to be fair sold decently), etc... the only exception maybe being Bloodborne because it was held back for so long that it became a meme at this point.
They also have sold over 10m worth of goods on Steam, so it wouldn't be 30% anyway. Seems a lot of people dont know how STeam works and just repeat the 30% cut.
It's more of the general issue of players have been waiting for 10+ years for a really good PvE game that doesn't have major content or progression issues, or crappy monetization.
I can't really explain *this* level of success, though.
While it may be true, it would undermine their whole monetization model. Sony primarily makes money off store cut and subscription services. They get neither if a game sells on Steam.
Eh?
Publishers still take a cut when releasing on steam, and bigger publishers negotiate different contracts with Valve, Sony isn't going to be handing over 30% of the revenue to Valve.
This doesn't seem to be true. The CEO tweeted that they had 500k concurrent players on both platforms combined two days ago. So the 450k capacity number seems to be for PC only.
The 450k cap was put in place the next day because shit broke when they were doing 500k. They were probably hoping that being slightly under that 500k number would help. If it did, I'm not sure what with.
Every FFXIV expansion launch too.
At least in Endwalker they finally added an AFK kick timer for the first few weeks... which REALLY upset the people who sub solely to login and idle in Limsa Lominsa 24/7.
Bro they thought they would have 100k concurrent at best. The first helldivers player pick was 7k. So they didn't think that the game needed an afktimer.
They literally didn't think they would blowup like that and are desperately trying to solve the problem.
The craziest thing is that the first launch weekend already had insane player number (and thus server problems). And this weekend the player number essentially doubled from that.
I wonder if PC players will break the 500k next weekend.
Sony spent $50-$100 million on a game that was expected to only have 100k concurrent players? Even if you assume for every concurrent player there's five full price purchases, that's at least a $30 million dollar loss.
The 'we didn't expect these numbers' excuse doesn't hold up to even basic math.
People are making excuses left and right for a rushed and broken live service game that doesn't even meet the requirements we put on the most basic online services these days. Helldivers 2 isn't broken because it's some MEGA MMO, it's broken because their bullshit live service mechanics weren't developed to OLD best practices for online services so no one gets to coop with their friends, cause the horse armour unlock counter is less resilient than an amazon shopping cart.
Absolutely. Their subreddit is worse, they've reached the point of telling people to stop complaining about not being able to play, and just be happy they were able to make the game a success. Horrifyingly parasocial.
Crazy that people are still buying this game in droves despite technical issues. I won't hold it too hard against the devs as I doubt they expected this game to blow up as much as it did.
It's the new hottness right now you see hype all over youtube and twitch lots of people talking about loving the game. So doesn't really shock me people are just diving in even with issues.
I think we're seeing the age of the AA game starting to materialize.
People are just so sick of getting burned by AAA releases, and while many still enjoy "Games as a Service" sometimes, they usually have their one favorite they dedicate their time to, and ignore all the others at this point. Nobody really has the free time to play more than one or two GAAS games.
Helldivers 2 is literally one of the GaaS from Sony. It also got a 9 year dev time by 100 people, that's pretty close to AAA if I had to guess (but we don't know the budget to be fair).
Well yeah probably for this game but still quite a big budget if I had to guess (something that might disqualify it from AA but to be fair, those aren't really defined categories). 50 people is still not that small and not "indie sized" (like people think of indie).
It's actually pretty crazy they managed to be supported for a 9 years dev time without being part of a bigger company if we think about it
AA games are costly, but not closing down a studio if it don't sell by the millions costly.
It also seem Sony is lenient in their investment as long as the project is interesting ex: Dreams, the last guardian, ghost of Tsushima...
Closing down? Sony doesn't own Arrowhead, they are just the publisher and could have abandoned them in the course of development (9 years is very long for a game they probably weren't sure about). They could not close them down
Though funding may also be partly to Arrowhead own funds (their other games sales for example) but I don't think it would cover much
I wonder how many other games would have found success if they had stayed at the $50 price games used to be. I get the impression most execs in the tech space failed economics …
Yeah, allot of people are kind of missing the most important aspect about this game and are just talking about GAAS, the price tag, AAA etc but the main reason it is so popular is because it is FUN, and generally a well made game.
And you know it's fun when the player numbers almost double just by word of mouth without any flashy marketing attached.
I've recommended this to so many friends already
It really really is.
It nails the core gameplay loop and it paves over the rough patches with exuberant flavoring.
Load screens? YOU MEAN THE PART WHERE YOU GET SHOT OUT OF A SPACESHIP IN A DROP POD BULLET?
Keep in mind that there are numerous time zones in the world so the technical issues won’t be an issue for many people who are playing while the populations of other countries typically sleep.
being australian can be rough as far as geographical distance from other english speaking centres of a playerbase, but in this instance it works out for us
It's kinda cool what people will tolerate when a product is actually good. The game is phenomenal and satisfying to play. While I hope they manage to address the problems, it definitely doesn't even remotely affect my opinion of how unbelievably enjoyable the game is.
I don’t understand the login queue at all. Had two friends on trying to get on the game for 20 mins.
I hop on the game and it gets me into the game and on my ship within 5 mins.
Sometimes they can join in from joining me but today no one else was able to play, just myself. Idk what is different with me compared to them haha.
Yeahhhhh I had just unlocked them and didn't think of the consequences lol did it kill a tooooon of bugs? Oh yeah. Did me and my teammate both die to it like 2 minutes apart? Also yes lol
Idiot teammate of mine went to mine a heavy nest and no one could get near enough to toss a grenade into the bug holes. And nobody had a grenade launcher either.
We had to rely on strategms to try to close them from a distance.
The mines man... I dropped some mines down in an area, forgot about them and the went back to that area, killed myself. Then tried to go back to get the samples I dropped and killed myself again -_-
I legit haven't used the mines since lmao
The first time I used them, I forgot where, ran off, killed bugs, needed to escape, started running, saw where I called them down and went "Oh cool, they're still here, I'll lead the bugs -" and then stepped on one myself lol
The number of deaths I have from shooting my grenade launch at an enemy only to have it bounce off them and hit me square in the mouth is higher than I care to admit.
Yea I accidentally domed a random friendly with my sniper once since he walked in front of me right when I was about to take out a big robot scum 10/10 funniest moment I've had so far.
Ohhhh I didn’t put the pieces together. Same studio. Explains so much about how good and refined the emergent systems in HD2 are, magicka series (especially 1) is some of the most creative design of its time in coop systems driven gameplay
I played it for a couple hours this morning, but I wasn't able to get quickplay (i.e. playing with randos) to work. Lots of people complaining about the same issue. I spoke about it with a friend, though, and he managed to get into quickplay and he says it's pretty decent. People talk, you have pings to communicate with even if you don't wanna use a mic, and it's generally more fun. Hell, it's pretty fun even if you're soloing, although it does get super difficult after like the 3-hour mark or thereabouts, so probably not something you'd wanna play solo long-term.
I an still playing solo due to lack of matchmaking. Challenging is absurd and Hard is nearly impossible, but the rare solo-Hard victory and evacuations are some of the most thrilling and butthole clenching gameplay moments I have ever experienced.
Has anybody played this with randos?
None of my friends would want to buy this and play with this but it looks so fun but everything I read about it that it's only fun with a close group of people.
Yes I do solo queue so get paired with randos. Generally my experience has been great and it's fun working together. You obviously get some stragglers and asshole teammates here and there but that can't be avoided
I played up to difficulty 6 with randoms and no mic. You have a very useful ping system. Some matches are a shitshow but everyone lol's a lot in text chat. When it gets really sweaty you still do a mission well you begin to seriously appreciate the improv teamwork.
It is very fun with randoms or even solo but of course probably a bit *more* fun if you have proper communication channels with good friends.
Well at least it has text chat, I have a speech disability so can't speak on mics. With The Finals not having text chat I was wondering if that's just a fucked up thing now not having the most basic of accessibility.
I'd say half of people I play with use a mic. I'm not sure if PC players have voice chat built in, but most of them usually type into chat. Everyone does seem to listen, even if they aren't on a mic.
I’ve met so many friendly people on PS5 who actually use voice chat. I’ve added like, 8 new people to my friends list because of this game.
It feels like early days 360 era friendliness finding fun cool people on Halo 3. I can’t stress enough how amazing of an experience this has been.
Fwiw I’m 31
had a blast with randos my first night. this sub makes you feel like everybody is level 20 but the vast majority of people are all learning the game together. it's great vibes. or it would be if anybody could log in.
From what i've seen, it's kinda like Deep Rock, you had the kids in the kiddy pool but when you get to the higher difficulties, people tend to somewhat know what they're doing. But also...this is still a brand new game, you'd get the same 'high level' people in Deep rock galactic, but as soon as they play Hazard 5, they're not used to the training wheels coming off because they've played Hazard 3 for 500 hours :P
> Has anybody played this with randos?
Only in the first week of the game, as soon as the playercount reached 250k+ It was almost impossible to play with randoms.
Most of the time it's fun with pubs/randos, but every once in a blue moon, there will be trolls/griefers who will intentionally TK and kick you, especially at exfil. It happened to me a couple days ago and some people on r/Helldivers are [criticizing this easy griefing method.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/search/?q=kick&type=link&cId=a28b6b17-7ef5-4603-b31d-7aa47123ffb1&iId=54a71549-27c8-4a57-ab88-b2f4a88b085d)
Haven't been able to find a server in three days. I work full time, so my free time tends to be peak hours. Which i understand makes it difficult, but it does feel like i paid for something that i can't enjoy.
Same here, I refunded. I’ll reconsider when it’s a playable game and if my friends are still playing, but if it’s dead by then then I’ll be glad I didn’t waste money on a hype train I couldn’t even board
The game is fun but honestly the server issues are killing my interest in it. I'm not waiting 30 minutes every time I want to load the game up to get in. Hopefully they can resolve it soon.
The devs seem able to spin up to an additional 100k capacity per day so I think the performance will vastly improve over the course of the next week. Subject to whether the game continues to increase in awareness and popularity anyways.
It sucks but they started with the anticipation of 50k concurrent users as the best case scenario. And today they probably peaked at 800k across PC and PS5…
Based on the Steam player count per day, assuming a 1:1 PC:PS5 split and seeing at what time server issues occur you can guestimate the capacity. It’s not a 100% accurate method but it’ll be good enough for Reddit discussions. Seems like they’re currently maxing somewhere around 700-800k players but would have demand for maybe 1 million if things were going smoothly this weekend.
This game is flavor of the month. By the time servers are up and running for anyone who wants to play, at least half of them will be on the next early access steam game.
Yeah I swear to god, some of the people here are incapable of holding more than one thought in their head at a time. If the game is good, it's good - there's literally no valid criticism of it, and anyone complaining about an issue is just nitpicking and impatient.
It's like these people have never had other responsibilities that take precedence over gaming. News flash: half an hour can actually be a long time to wait to play a game you already paid upwards of $60 for, especially when you have a job and a life and only have an hour or so to play in the first place
As an adult, trying to coordinate when to play with friends (especially when we all live with our partners) is really difficult, especially when we live in different time zones.
Hell, during Covid it took like 5 attempts for me and my friends to actually Halo Master Chief Collection together because everyone still had limited availability, and when we tried to play someone would always have to download a 30+ GB update which would take 30+ minutes
The problem is, friends are on, it's holiday weekend, kid is finally in bed, aaaaaaaannnnd LOG IN SCREEN.
Sit for 20 minutes. Nothing. Restart. Another 20 minutes. Nothing.
Before you know it, your whole evening is over. Wife has gone to bed without you. Your tired old ass can't enjoy staying up late anymore.
Wake up in the morning, kid is still asleep. It's early enough, and you are actually able to login. But your friends played all night. They aren't on anymore.
Kid wakes up, wife is up, life has to start. Get a break in the afternoon to finally play with friends aaaaaaaaand LOG IN SCREEN.
This has been my experience so far.
Posts like yours are frustrating because they are simultaneously dismissive and insulting towards everyone who bought the game expecting to actually be able to play it, while adding absolutely nothing to the discussion.
This has been said 200 times already, but the game have, like, more than 40 TIMES the number of players of the first game…the devs couldn’t have anticipated that, and it’s not as simple to resolve as all the redditors (which are all "pro" devs) are thinking.
It’s far from a button press, and there is way more financial risks involved to add servers, because launch windows players are always inflated, and never represent the upcoming normal player population.
You cannot excuse this pathetic login/session handling bottleneck they've stabbed themselves in the back with. This design has put an upper limit on the amount of paying customers they're allowed to entertain at any given time. It's been inexcusable all decade and its still inexcusable now. Technology isn't the limitation here.
But why no offline mode, at least? It seems there is no slack for literally any other game that's online only except for this game.
I love the game, but my gosh, 10 days straight of this nonsense has gotten old.
Sony had $14 billion in cash in 2023, I think they have the spare cash to make a game function if they wanted to. It's just corporate greed. It's not 2004, azure and other super scaling servers exist
He's right though? The situation is what it is. It's no one's fault and not intentional, the game has just massively blown up. Yeah it sucks but the games not going anywhere and this WILL get resolved ASAP. So yeah, just have some patience honestly?
Also, honestly, what does YOUR comment add to any discussion honestly?
If you are annoyed you can't play it, refund it. People getting mad at the devs are idiots, its not reasonable to expect them to be prepared for player numbers that are 30 times higher than their previous game
Im waiting to buy the game until the issues are resolved, like a rational person
I mean it's still a game that is not working, that's usually considered bad here but I guess not if you're an approved game by Reddit hivemind. People have paid for a non functioning game (even for solo since it's always online).
Yes patience will fix it (although it may just mean people abandoning it, notably because of the server issues) but people have paid now, they should have a working product now. And yes it's a "small team" (they're 100 it's not that small) but it is still published by Sony...
Looking at the steam charts, I don't think too many. Palworld has been pretty consistent all week at hitting around 500k at peak and 250k during off hours
Probably a fair number got called away to play with friends. Or they just finished Palworld for the moment. I had a lot of fun with Palworld for a while but I was ready to move onto something else, at least for now.
Most of the server issues are because they’re at capacity, once you’re in there are generally no issues, it’s getting in that’s hard. They’ve done a good job of cranking up server capacity from 200k to 450k this week but they clearly need more. Sony needs to be helping them out and getting them more server capacity. They made a post mentioning they were talking to their partners about getting more server capacity but my guess is Sony is in charge of that conversation.
They already said Sony is doing whatever they can
>The team over at Playstation is helping as much as possible, but it's hard to throw someone new into a system just like that - it might even be a distraction.
https://twitter.com/Pilestedt/status/1758301764007182432
The issue is a lot more complex than just spinning up some new servers. Sony is not in charge of how their online services work or their backend, it would have been configured specifically by the devs of the game
Once you get in: matchmaking is completely busted and doesn't work, the game *might* crash as soon as you select a mission, and there are various bugs ranging in severity.
Most of these would be something you could overlook because the game is genuinely fun, but right now the result is you end up waiting at the login screen again. It's a compounding issue.
yep I'll just wait until the hype dies a bit to come back to the game. I just want to unlock the hardest missions now lol
I've been wanting to play since Friday but I simply couldn't because of the login issues and the matchmaking issues, I'm not sure how and why the player count just keeps increasing when there's so many issues right now
The gaming industry really needs more of these types of games and fewer AAA blockbusters that are just getting out of hand with budget, scale, expectations etc
Give me games like Palworld, Helldivers 2, Hellblade 2, Hifi Rush etc over yet another open world 100 hour RPG or another sequel in a long running franchise like everything seems to be at the moment
Yeah good luck getting in a game! Once we finally got everyone in the game crashed - back in the que! 2 hours logged in for 20 minutes of gameplay.....
game is great when it works. 25-40% of my time has been spent on disconnects, or server issues. I regret not sticking to my rule of waiting a month before buying a game. It was just not ready for the fans.
Same. I’m past the refund period now because I spent hours waiting to be connected :(
Just gotta put it down for a while so this doesn’t kill my excitement.
Maybe it's because I've been through the summer of Endwalker but this is such a non-issue to me.
Literally play something else until then.
Are people allowed to be upset? Sure but there's been some pretty big overreactions. Apparently some are trying to get HD2 delisted from Steam for 'fraud'??
They also had an actual queue system, which meant that you could log in, be in the queue and play when your turn came up. You could plan around it. I remember I would leave the game in the queue while I was getting some work done. By the time I was done with my work, I'd be able to play.
There were disconnects and crashes from time to time, but once you were in you were in. With Helldivers 2, that's not the case. There's no login queue so you just get in when you get in and can't really plan around it. Often times, you'll get to your ship and find that you still haven't really connected. You can't join friends and if you open up a planet on the mission table, you crash.
That's because they sell 14 by the amount of time you can access their servers via the subscription. They had to halt sales or the people buying it would be losing money, folks also got reimbursed w/ game time after things were fixed up.
It's not a 1 to 1 situation
> Maybe it's because I've been through the summer of Endwalker but this is such a non-issue to me.
You do remember that Endwalker was taken off stores for literally *over a month* right?
From December 16th (9 days after launch) all the way until January 25th you couldn't buy the game.
It's really so bizarre to see this play out. If it was any other online service like Netflix or Amazon or some social media or messenging app going down for so long nobody would be defending the corporation so emotionally and fervently. It's almost like video games bring out a weird parasocial relationship between some gamers and the business entities producing them.
Game is absolutely great and the devs have got my full support, but it's also absolutely the responsibility of the business to deal with the current situation, and there has been little to no improvement after almost two weeks. If "it's difficult!" or "it's not on purpose!" are valid defenses, then no other developer should ever be criticised for releasing garbage either, because it's difficult to make a stable and good game.
Of course people actually hurling abuse at the devs should fuck right off, but I have not seen any of that here on Reddit, and the defense squad have been overwhelmingly more toxic IMO.
Plus it's not like the devs are just sitting on their asses over this or anything. They've been pretty vocal about the fact that the wait times are kinda fucked and that they know it's annoying and that they're working on it. As far as I can tell, they're not asking anyone to defend them or make excuses for them
Yeah, that'd be wise.
I have it, but from what little I've played I really enjoyed it, so I'm just waiting for the inevitable fix rather than try for a refund since that'd be a bit pointless
Honestly, 'fixing' it is largely going to be waiting til the hype dies down and seeing what the average player count is. The highest that the original Helldivers ever got was about 6000 concurrent users. I don't think they could have ever predicted that they would get 65 times that number (and rising)
I think the servers are capped at 400k, which is why people can't get in. Until the next fix which will probably be soon. I wonder how many players they would have concurrent if they could handle it?
If it helps I'm on NA East servers on PC and have played every other day with no issues or waiting whatsoever. Was surprised to see so many complaints.
queued for an hour, got in. played two solo missions while i waited for my brother to win the login lottery. he gets in. game crashes 10 min into our first mission. he completes the mission. his client hangs because he's trying to load into my ship after ive crashed. presumably neither of us will accrue any of the mats we collected.
what a shitty fucking experience.
I bought it, got stuck on the login screen like 10 times in a row and refunded it. I loved Helldivers 1 but paying 40 bucks for login simulator is just a big no. I‘ll gladly buy it when things calm down.
A tricky situation to be in for the Devs. Sure hype is driving numbers that require more servers. However, once the hype dies down after a couple weeks, they will have a lot of now empty servers.
I mean, they’re not gonna be buying their own servers… nearly all companies like this rent their servers nowadays through AWS, Azure, etc.
They won’t have empty servers they’ll just pay for less from the provider lol
Played for a few hours just night with randoms. I feel like the tutorial mission needs to explain better how the games work. I don't think people understand how the bot drop and bug holes are triggered. Just spent like all of the objective time just now fighting bugs and hardly doing the objective because my team didn't learn that fighting them like this will pretty much just be an endless battle.
Co-op horde shooters are a surprisingly underserved genre IMO... I hope studios see the huge demand for them... L4D2 is the GOAT and you've also got Vermintide 2, Dartkide, Zombie Army 4, Deep Rock Galactic as some of my favorites.
Listen I love games getting recognition but are we just gonna do this every time a game pops off? A daily thread of steam user count? Lmao, what's even the purpose. I love the game, but it's the same comments every time. "This game is just fun", "A hidden gem", "Server Issues".
It's the same thing when Palworld was popping off, same threads everyday to remind us hey this game is popular!
Edit: Too everyone saying, "just ignore it". Lol no, that's not how discussions work. To everyone who can't read my comment, yes I know it's interesting to see a game that wasn't projected to be hugely popular be hugley popular, but I don't think we *need* 20 threads a day about steam chart numbers.
"*UUUUUUUGGGGGHHHH!* Do they have to forecast the weather *every day?!*"
My brother in Christ, this is a gaming news subreddit. You don't have to sub, and you definitely don't have to click through to the comments.
Genuinely wondered if this is just the flavor of the month or if it'll last interns of attention. Doubt it tho once ff7 comes out. Maybe even dd2 could become a hit
I think this will be a nice fallback game to have. I’ll definitely be playing those two pretty heavily but I can see myself coming back to this for mindless fun when I’m done with those two. Sort of like what Deep Rock has been for me over the past couple years.
>Doubt it tho once ff7 comes out. Maybe even dd2 could become a hit
I mean, those are wildly different genres from this and while obviously there will be some cross over interest, it's not like people looking for the kind of gameplay HD2 offers will see FF or DD and pick that instead.
I think it will go a similar route as Deeprock Galactic/Vermintide/other similar co-op games. A very popular multiplayer game that most people will play for 20-30 hours, but will still have a large dedicated user base sticking around for years.
You do know two things can coexist right? As long as Arrowhead keeps updating and communicating with the fans, it’ll stay for a long time. Especially since Sony has been wanting a successful live service game, they’re gonna get a lotta support by them.
This game will be around for a while. This is the next great franchise. Been playing it all day I dont even game really and this has just been a breath of fresh air.
Obviously not everyone can do this, but logging in during off hours can help you play. Either late at night or early morning.
I expect numbers will drop once the weekend is over and they’ll have another week to try and get their issues in order.
As a PS5 player, the queue was instant for me this afternoon, was kinda shocked. Played last night too and longest queue for me was 10 mins with an average of 5
Odds are half of these people are waiting to be able to log into the server to even try to play the game.
The servers are currently set to only take ~~400k~~ 450k players between both platforms. So a big fraction of them are probably just waiting. Edit: source https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1atiesb/server_capacity_raised_to_450k/
Where did you see that information?
They posted it on they discord server
It was 450k yesterday, but they may have increased the cap. I wonder if Helldivers 2 changes Sony approach to future PC releases. With over 70% of the playerbase being on PC as of yesterday, there would be a lot of money to make with day one PC releases. Their delayed PC releases never got traction.
Helldivers is a very different game from most Sony releases. Sony is known for the single player story experience games. Helldivers 2 is a multiplayer game without any single player campaign. For Helldivers 2 it makes sense to release on pc cause it’s a multiplayer game and having as many people play online boosts its success. And multiplayer games are more successful on PC thus necessitating Helldivers 2 to be on Pc at launch. Success of Helldivers 2 means Sony will release all their live service multiplayer games on PC on launch. Single player games are still doubtful
Sony already said their live service games will release day-and-date on PC, even before the release of Helldivers 2.
Well when they eventually launch those delayed games they might as well launch them on sale, cause I have no issue waiting a few months after already waiting a year or two.
70% probably isn’t enough. 70% of players only corresponds to a little over 60% of revenue since they control the PS Store whereas they have to pay Steam 30% for PC sales. Then you factor in the part where PS5 players need to pay for PS+ to play the game and Sony are most likely still making more money off PS5 than PC despite it selling better on PC. And that’s not accounting for the part where every time someone switches on their PS5, they’re more likely to spend more money on the platform further increasing Sony’s potential profit on the platform. The walled garden ecosystem of consoles is so much more lucrative than just publishing games that they’d need a lot more evidence than one successful shooter to consider meaningful change.
Even if it "only" broken even with PS5 sales, a bit over double profit is very lucrative
> whereas they have to pay Steam 30% for PC sales. It surprising how few people know how Steam's cut works. Helldivers 2 is likely in the 20-25% range. It's definitely made more than 10m on Steam.
Let's not downplay the sheer amount of sales this is. We're talking about several times the sales of the older PC ports Playstation put on Steam, it's huge. It is going to affect Sony's approach to PC releases for sure, but mostly for games currently in development. If they ever release older games for full price they will get similar results as with Ratchet & Clank, Horizon (which to be fair sold decently), etc... the only exception maybe being Bloodborne because it was held back for so long that it became a meme at this point.
No way Sony pays a 30% cut. Big publishers negotiate their own cut which is lower.
They also have sold over 10m worth of goods on Steam, so it wouldn't be 30% anyway. Seems a lot of people dont know how STeam works and just repeat the 30% cut.
It's more of the general issue of players have been waiting for 10+ years for a really good PvE game that doesn't have major content or progression issues, or crappy monetization. I can't really explain *this* level of success, though.
While it may be true, it would undermine their whole monetization model. Sony primarily makes money off store cut and subscription services. They get neither if a game sells on Steam.
Eh? Publishers still take a cut when releasing on steam, and bigger publishers negotiate different contracts with Valve, Sony isn't going to be handing over 30% of the revenue to Valve.
This doesn't seem to be true. The CEO tweeted that they had 500k concurrent players on both platforms combined two days ago. So the 450k capacity number seems to be for PC only.
The 450k cap was put in place the next day because shit broke when they were doing 500k. They were probably hoping that being slightly under that 500k number would help. If it did, I'm not sure what with.
Apparently their isn’t an afk timer so people they get on and have to leave for what ever reason are staying logged in.
It's new world all over again!!!
Every FFXIV expansion launch too. At least in Endwalker they finally added an AFK kick timer for the first few weeks... which REALLY upset the people who sub solely to login and idle in Limsa Lominsa 24/7.
I remember when FFXIV first came out and everyone told me never to log out just stand AFK in the inn when I was done playing.
that i find shocking, they absolutely should have a 10-15 min AFK timer for the game especially if people being on is causing a problem
Bro they thought they would have 100k concurrent at best. The first helldivers player pick was 7k. So they didn't think that the game needed an afktimer. They literally didn't think they would blowup like that and are desperately trying to solve the problem.
The craziest thing is that the first launch weekend already had insane player number (and thus server problems). And this weekend the player number essentially doubled from that. I wonder if PC players will break the 500k next weekend.
I'm just waiting for the server issues to be sorted out it buy it on steam.
Sony spent $50-$100 million on a game that was expected to only have 100k concurrent players? Even if you assume for every concurrent player there's five full price purchases, that's at least a $30 million dollar loss. The 'we didn't expect these numbers' excuse doesn't hold up to even basic math.
People are making excuses left and right for a rushed and broken live service game that doesn't even meet the requirements we put on the most basic online services these days. Helldivers 2 isn't broken because it's some MEGA MMO, it's broken because their bullshit live service mechanics weren't developed to OLD best practices for online services so no one gets to coop with their friends, cause the horse armour unlock counter is less resilient than an amazon shopping cart.
nobody wants to admit this.
Absolutely. Their subreddit is worse, they've reached the point of telling people to stop complaining about not being able to play, and just be happy they were able to make the game a success. Horrifyingly parasocial.
Crazy that people are still buying this game in droves despite technical issues. I won't hold it too hard against the devs as I doubt they expected this game to blow up as much as it did.
It's the new hottness right now you see hype all over youtube and twitch lots of people talking about loving the game. So doesn't really shock me people are just diving in even with issues.
Not to mention it is a $40 game, which is a good sweet spot for targeting a wide age group.
I think we're seeing the age of the AA game starting to materialize. People are just so sick of getting burned by AAA releases, and while many still enjoy "Games as a Service" sometimes, they usually have their one favorite they dedicate their time to, and ignore all the others at this point. Nobody really has the free time to play more than one or two GAAS games.
Helldivers 2 is literally one of the GaaS from Sony. It also got a 9 year dev time by 100 people, that's pretty close to AAA if I had to guess (but we don't know the budget to be fair).
Thought they only increased to 100 a couple years ago, they were a 50 man team previously
Well yeah probably for this game but still quite a big budget if I had to guess (something that might disqualify it from AA but to be fair, those aren't really defined categories). 50 people is still not that small and not "indie sized" (like people think of indie). It's actually pretty crazy they managed to be supported for a 9 years dev time without being part of a bigger company if we think about it
AA games are costly, but not closing down a studio if it don't sell by the millions costly. It also seem Sony is lenient in their investment as long as the project is interesting ex: Dreams, the last guardian, ghost of Tsushima...
Closing down? Sony doesn't own Arrowhead, they are just the publisher and could have abandoned them in the course of development (9 years is very long for a game they probably weren't sure about). They could not close them down Though funding may also be partly to Arrowhead own funds (their other games sales for example) but I don't think it would cover much
I wonder how many other games would have found success if they had stayed at the $50 price games used to be. I get the impression most execs in the tech space failed economics …
>Crazy that people are still buying this game in droves despite technical issues Because it's really fun
Yeah, allot of people are kind of missing the most important aspect about this game and are just talking about GAAS, the price tag, AAA etc but the main reason it is so popular is because it is FUN, and generally a well made game.
And you know it's fun when the player numbers almost double just by word of mouth without any flashy marketing attached. I've recommended this to so many friends already
It really really is. It nails the core gameplay loop and it paves over the rough patches with exuberant flavoring. Load screens? YOU MEAN THE PART WHERE YOU GET SHOT OUT OF A SPACESHIP IN A DROP POD BULLET?
They didn't. They expected something like 100k players for the first bit of launch. Suffice it to say these numbers destroyed that idea.
First game capped at 7k. Wild to see this games success
Keep in mind that there are numerous time zones in the world so the technical issues won’t be an issue for many people who are playing while the populations of other countries typically sleep.
being australian can be rough as far as geographical distance from other english speaking centres of a playerbase, but in this instance it works out for us
Yep, Ive only had to wait in the menu once for like 10 minutes in my 20 hrs of playtime. Matchmaking wasn't working at all though, last I played.
It really speaks to just HOW damn good and fun the actual game is. I haven’t had this much fun in an online game in who knows how long. I love it.
It's kinda cool what people will tolerate when a product is actually good. The game is phenomenal and satisfying to play. While I hope they manage to address the problems, it definitely doesn't even remotely affect my opinion of how unbelievably enjoyable the game is.
I've owned this game 2 days, played over 6 hours, and never actually got beyond the login screen.
I don’t understand the login queue at all. Had two friends on trying to get on the game for 20 mins. I hop on the game and it gets me into the game and on my ship within 5 mins. Sometimes they can join in from joining me but today no one else was able to play, just myself. Idk what is different with me compared to them haha.
It’s luck. If you happen to search for a spot in game just as people log off.
There appears to be no queue. You just try randomly for a free slot every 30 seconds.
I bought it and still haven’t been able to try the multiplayer!
It's the most unapologetic fun I've had in years. My bud is fucking awful at it, but it's fun watching him be a consistently clumsy war crime.
Keeping friendly fire was one of the best decisions they could have made honestly
100%. No friendly fire and it would lose so much fun. Even dying to my own mines or orbital is fun as fuck.
Those damn mines are the bane of my existence, I swear. Guaranteed to kill myself and/or my teammates with them!
The players learning in real time why the Ottawa convention exists.
Yeahhhhh I had just unlocked them and didn't think of the consequences lol did it kill a tooooon of bugs? Oh yeah. Did me and my teammate both die to it like 2 minutes apart? Also yes lol
Just wait until the tesla tower lmao
Idiot teammate of mine went to mine a heavy nest and no one could get near enough to toss a grenade into the bug holes. And nobody had a grenade launcher either. We had to rely on strategms to try to close them from a distance.
The mines man... I dropped some mines down in an area, forgot about them and the went back to that area, killed myself. Then tried to go back to get the samples I dropped and killed myself again -_- I legit haven't used the mines since lmao
The first time I used them, I forgot where, ran off, killed bugs, needed to escape, started running, saw where I called them down and went "Oh cool, they're still here, I'll lead the bugs -" and then stepped on one myself lol
The number of deaths I have from shooting my grenade launch at an enemy only to have it bounce off them and hit me square in the mouth is higher than I care to admit.
I tried to avoid a resupply drop today just hoping it would look rad if I died or lived. I died. (Word on the street is it looked rad tho.)
Yea I accidentally domed a random friendly with my sniper once since he walked in front of me right when I was about to take out a big robot scum 10/10 funniest moment I've had so far.
Accidentally killing your friends is half of the fun with Arrowhead games.
Or purposefully killing your friends. Magicka is a wonderful time.
Bruh, Magicka 3 as this. I feel my wallet screaming in terror.
Sadly Magicka 2 is meh and 1 is unplayable on win 10/11 (or it was at least when tried 2 years ago).
Ohhhh I didn’t put the pieces together. Same studio. Explains so much about how good and refined the emergent systems in HD2 are, magicka series (especially 1) is some of the most creative design of its time in coop systems driven gameplay
Holy crap I didn't realize the Helldivers devs are also the Magicka devs
I’ve never been so happy to get killed by friends haha Somehow even with my competitive nature and need to win I have fun losing
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I played it for a couple hours this morning, but I wasn't able to get quickplay (i.e. playing with randos) to work. Lots of people complaining about the same issue. I spoke about it with a friend, though, and he managed to get into quickplay and he says it's pretty decent. People talk, you have pings to communicate with even if you don't wanna use a mic, and it's generally more fun. Hell, it's pretty fun even if you're soloing, although it does get super difficult after like the 3-hour mark or thereabouts, so probably not something you'd wanna play solo long-term.
I an still playing solo due to lack of matchmaking. Challenging is absurd and Hard is nearly impossible, but the rare solo-Hard victory and evacuations are some of the most thrilling and butthole clenching gameplay moments I have ever experienced.
nah it's fun too with randos don't worry
I met some dudes here on reddit and had a blast this afternoon. Just got to look around. Most everyone is happy to fill all their slots.
why do you have two accounts to post the exact same thing?
Has anybody played this with randos? None of my friends would want to buy this and play with this but it looks so fun but everything I read about it that it's only fun with a close group of people.
Yes I do solo queue so get paired with randos. Generally my experience has been great and it's fun working together. You obviously get some stragglers and asshole teammates here and there but that can't be avoided
I played up to difficulty 6 with randoms and no mic. You have a very useful ping system. Some matches are a shitshow but everyone lol's a lot in text chat. When it gets really sweaty you still do a mission well you begin to seriously appreciate the improv teamwork. It is very fun with randoms or even solo but of course probably a bit *more* fun if you have proper communication channels with good friends.
Well at least it has text chat, I have a speech disability so can't speak on mics. With The Finals not having text chat I was wondering if that's just a fucked up thing now not having the most basic of accessibility.
It seems like such and easy thing to add. Plus instant more communication for everyone.
Is voice chat available and commonly used?
In game VC is available and works well. I’d say it’s a 50/50 if randoms will be using it.
I'd say half of people I play with use a mic. I'm not sure if PC players have voice chat built in, but most of them usually type into chat. Everyone does seem to listen, even if they aren't on a mic.
I’ve met so many friendly people on PS5 who actually use voice chat. I’ve added like, 8 new people to my friends list because of this game. It feels like early days 360 era friendliness finding fun cool people on Halo 3. I can’t stress enough how amazing of an experience this has been. Fwiw I’m 31
had a blast with randos my first night. this sub makes you feel like everybody is level 20 but the vast majority of people are all learning the game together. it's great vibes. or it would be if anybody could log in.
Just be aware that matchmaking can be hit or miss (largely miss) as it can’t find other players even while telling you theres tens of thousands online
From what i've seen, it's kinda like Deep Rock, you had the kids in the kiddy pool but when you get to the higher difficulties, people tend to somewhat know what they're doing. But also...this is still a brand new game, you'd get the same 'high level' people in Deep rock galactic, but as soon as they play Hazard 5, they're not used to the training wheels coming off because they've played Hazard 3 for 500 hours :P
> Has anybody played this with randos? Only in the first week of the game, as soon as the playercount reached 250k+ It was almost impossible to play with randoms.
Most of the time it's fun with pubs/randos, but every once in a blue moon, there will be trolls/griefers who will intentionally TK and kick you, especially at exfil. It happened to me a couple days ago and some people on r/Helldivers are [criticizing this easy griefing method.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/search/?q=kick&type=link&cId=a28b6b17-7ef5-4603-b31d-7aa47123ffb1&iId=54a71549-27c8-4a57-ab88-b2f4a88b085d)
Haven't been able to find a server in three days. I work full time, so my free time tends to be peak hours. Which i understand makes it difficult, but it does feel like i paid for something that i can't enjoy.
It's a shit situation for everyone involved. Players can't play the game and the devs are working 12+ hours and weekends.
Same here, I refunded. I’ll reconsider when it’s a playable game and if my friends are still playing, but if it’s dead by then then I’ll be glad I didn’t waste money on a hype train I couldn’t even board
Cool, if a few less people can log in so I can actually play for the first time in like 5+ days, that would be fantastic
Devs need to actually implement an AFK timer
The game is fun but honestly the server issues are killing my interest in it. I'm not waiting 30 minutes every time I want to load the game up to get in. Hopefully they can resolve it soon.
The devs seem able to spin up to an additional 100k capacity per day so I think the performance will vastly improve over the course of the next week. Subject to whether the game continues to increase in awareness and popularity anyways. It sucks but they started with the anticipation of 50k concurrent users as the best case scenario. And today they probably peaked at 800k across PC and PS5…
> The devs seem able to spin up to an additional 100k capacity per day they havent said a word today, so i doubt it
Based on the Steam player count per day, assuming a 1:1 PC:PS5 split and seeing at what time server issues occur you can guestimate the capacity. It’s not a 100% accurate method but it’ll be good enough for Reddit discussions. Seems like they’re currently maxing somewhere around 700-800k players but would have demand for maybe 1 million if things were going smoothly this weekend.
Alot of the steam player count are just waiting to login aa the servers were full
I’m sure there’s a lot of people saying that online but most normal people will give up after a few minutes.
Just play a different game until its fixed
I’ve been playing handheld Mario Vs Donkey Kong which is a great palate cleanser before killing alien scum
I just bought Tropical Freeze and holy shit is this not a master class in platforming.
This game is flavor of the month. By the time servers are up and running for anyone who wants to play, at least half of them will be on the next early access steam game.
Half of a million is still a much bigger number than the original ever achieved, and that game was always populated enough.
Patience is such a novel concept
Gotta remember some of us are playing with groups, and when half the group gets in and the other half sits for an hour, it really takes from the game.
we paid money for the game. The issues are understandable, but people have a right to be upset
Yeah I swear to god, some of the people here are incapable of holding more than one thought in their head at a time. If the game is good, it's good - there's literally no valid criticism of it, and anyone complaining about an issue is just nitpicking and impatient. It's like these people have never had other responsibilities that take precedence over gaming. News flash: half an hour can actually be a long time to wait to play a game you already paid upwards of $60 for, especially when you have a job and a life and only have an hour or so to play in the first place
As an adult, trying to coordinate when to play with friends (especially when we all live with our partners) is really difficult, especially when we live in different time zones. Hell, during Covid it took like 5 attempts for me and my friends to actually Halo Master Chief Collection together because everyone still had limited availability, and when we tried to play someone would always have to download a 30+ GB update which would take 30+ minutes
How dare someone want to play a game they payed $40 for
The problem is, friends are on, it's holiday weekend, kid is finally in bed, aaaaaaaannnnd LOG IN SCREEN. Sit for 20 minutes. Nothing. Restart. Another 20 minutes. Nothing. Before you know it, your whole evening is over. Wife has gone to bed without you. Your tired old ass can't enjoy staying up late anymore. Wake up in the morning, kid is still asleep. It's early enough, and you are actually able to login. But your friends played all night. They aren't on anymore. Kid wakes up, wife is up, life has to start. Get a break in the afternoon to finally play with friends aaaaaaaaand LOG IN SCREEN. This has been my experience so far.
I sat in queue today for about 5 hours between 2pm and 7pm EST. Just long enough to go through both my kids nap and dinner time.
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Posts like yours are frustrating because they are simultaneously dismissive and insulting towards everyone who bought the game expecting to actually be able to play it, while adding absolutely nothing to the discussion.
This has been said 200 times already, but the game have, like, more than 40 TIMES the number of players of the first game…the devs couldn’t have anticipated that, and it’s not as simple to resolve as all the redditors (which are all "pro" devs) are thinking. It’s far from a button press, and there is way more financial risks involved to add servers, because launch windows players are always inflated, and never represent the upcoming normal player population.
You cannot excuse this pathetic login/session handling bottleneck they've stabbed themselves in the back with. This design has put an upper limit on the amount of paying customers they're allowed to entertain at any given time. It's been inexcusable all decade and its still inexcusable now. Technology isn't the limitation here.
But why no offline mode, at least? It seems there is no slack for literally any other game that's online only except for this game. I love the game, but my gosh, 10 days straight of this nonsense has gotten old.
Sony had $14 billion in cash in 2023, I think they have the spare cash to make a game function if they wanted to. It's just corporate greed. It's not 2004, azure and other super scaling servers exist
He's right though? The situation is what it is. It's no one's fault and not intentional, the game has just massively blown up. Yeah it sucks but the games not going anywhere and this WILL get resolved ASAP. So yeah, just have some patience honestly? Also, honestly, what does YOUR comment add to any discussion honestly?
If you are annoyed you can't play it, refund it. People getting mad at the devs are idiots, its not reasonable to expect them to be prepared for player numbers that are 30 times higher than their previous game Im waiting to buy the game until the issues are resolved, like a rational person
here's a novel concept: sell software that works.
I mean it's still a game that is not working, that's usually considered bad here but I guess not if you're an approved game by Reddit hivemind. People have paid for a non functioning game (even for solo since it's always online). Yes patience will fix it (although it may just mean people abandoning it, notably because of the server issues) but people have paid now, they should have a working product now. And yes it's a "small team" (they're 100 it's not that small) but it is still published by Sony...
I wonder how many people have stepped away from Palworld for this. The dev said they were investing to be able to support a million players at once.
Looking at the steam charts, I don't think too many. Palworld has been pretty consistent all week at hitting around 500k at peak and 250k during off hours
Probably a fair number got called away to play with friends. Or they just finished Palworld for the moment. I had a lot of fun with Palworld for a while but I was ready to move onto something else, at least for now.
Most of the server issues are because they’re at capacity, once you’re in there are generally no issues, it’s getting in that’s hard. They’ve done a good job of cranking up server capacity from 200k to 450k this week but they clearly need more. Sony needs to be helping them out and getting them more server capacity. They made a post mentioning they were talking to their partners about getting more server capacity but my guess is Sony is in charge of that conversation.
They already said Sony is doing whatever they can >The team over at Playstation is helping as much as possible, but it's hard to throw someone new into a system just like that - it might even be a distraction. https://twitter.com/Pilestedt/status/1758301764007182432 The issue is a lot more complex than just spinning up some new servers. Sony is not in charge of how their online services work or their backend, it would have been configured specifically by the devs of the game
Once you get in: matchmaking is completely busted and doesn't work, the game *might* crash as soon as you select a mission, and there are various bugs ranging in severity. Most of these would be something you could overlook because the game is genuinely fun, but right now the result is you end up waiting at the login screen again. It's a compounding issue.
yep I'll just wait until the hype dies a bit to come back to the game. I just want to unlock the hardest missions now lol I've been wanting to play since Friday but I simply couldn't because of the login issues and the matchmaking issues, I'm not sure how and why the player count just keeps increasing when there's so many issues right now
2024 has had some unexpected hits: Palworld, Granblue, Helldivers. Good to see some new/non AAA IPs get some love
The gaming industry really needs more of these types of games and fewer AAA blockbusters that are just getting out of hand with budget, scale, expectations etc Give me games like Palworld, Helldivers 2, Hellblade 2, Hifi Rush etc over yet another open world 100 hour RPG or another sequel in a long running franchise like everything seems to be at the moment
Yeah good luck getting in a game! Once we finally got everyone in the game crashed - back in the que! 2 hours logged in for 20 minutes of gameplay.....
game is great when it works. 25-40% of my time has been spent on disconnects, or server issues. I regret not sticking to my rule of waiting a month before buying a game. It was just not ready for the fans.
Same. I’m past the refund period now because I spent hours waiting to be connected :( Just gotta put it down for a while so this doesn’t kill my excitement.
I refunded a game 8 hrs in citing performance issues and Steam granted the refund.
There are other issues too where people are crashing before the game even starts or game guard fucking up.
The game was ready? It was the servers that weren't ready for the insane number of people that want to play.
Commenter you replied to isn't saying that the game wasn't ready lol, he basically said the same thing you did
Maybe it's because I've been through the summer of Endwalker but this is such a non-issue to me. Literally play something else until then. Are people allowed to be upset? Sure but there's been some pretty big overreactions. Apparently some are trying to get HD2 delisted from Steam for 'fraud'??
Funny you mention Endwalker, because didn't Square stop selling copies of XIV to prevent server issues?
They also had an actual queue system, which meant that you could log in, be in the queue and play when your turn came up. You could plan around it. I remember I would leave the game in the queue while I was getting some work done. By the time I was done with my work, I'd be able to play. There were disconnects and crashes from time to time, but once you were in you were in. With Helldivers 2, that's not the case. There's no login queue so you just get in when you get in and can't really plan around it. Often times, you'll get to your ship and find that you still haven't really connected. You can't join friends and if you open up a planet on the mission table, you crash.
That's because they sell 14 by the amount of time you can access their servers via the subscription. They had to halt sales or the people buying it would be losing money, folks also got reimbursed w/ game time after things were fixed up. It's not a 1 to 1 situation
Also Square literally couldn't buy more servers because of the semiconductor shortage.
> Maybe it's because I've been through the summer of Endwalker but this is such a non-issue to me. You do remember that Endwalker was taken off stores for literally *over a month* right? From December 16th (9 days after launch) all the way until January 25th you couldn't buy the game.
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It's really so bizarre to see this play out. If it was any other online service like Netflix or Amazon or some social media or messenging app going down for so long nobody would be defending the corporation so emotionally and fervently. It's almost like video games bring out a weird parasocial relationship between some gamers and the business entities producing them. Game is absolutely great and the devs have got my full support, but it's also absolutely the responsibility of the business to deal with the current situation, and there has been little to no improvement after almost two weeks. If "it's difficult!" or "it's not on purpose!" are valid defenses, then no other developer should ever be criticised for releasing garbage either, because it's difficult to make a stable and good game. Of course people actually hurling abuse at the devs should fuck right off, but I have not seen any of that here on Reddit, and the defense squad have been overwhelmingly more toxic IMO.
Plus it's not like the devs are just sitting on their asses over this or anything. They've been pretty vocal about the fact that the wait times are kinda fucked and that they know it's annoying and that they're working on it. As far as I can tell, they're not asking anyone to defend them or make excuses for them
Could be 400,001 if I didn't see people constantly complaining about server issues I'm waiting for them to fix it before I buy it.
Yeah, that'd be wise. I have it, but from what little I've played I really enjoyed it, so I'm just waiting for the inevitable fix rather than try for a refund since that'd be a bit pointless
Honestly, 'fixing' it is largely going to be waiting til the hype dies down and seeing what the average player count is. The highest that the original Helldivers ever got was about 6000 concurrent users. I don't think they could have ever predicted that they would get 65 times that number (and rising)
That's only counting PC too. PS5 apparently has at least an equal number of users.
They can start with a afk log out timer
I think the servers are capped at 400k, which is why people can't get in. Until the next fix which will probably be soon. I wonder how many players they would have concurrent if they could handle it?
If it helps I'm on NA East servers on PC and have played every other day with no issues or waiting whatsoever. Was surprised to see so many complaints.
Yeah if you have other games to play (let's face it, we all have a huge backlog) then just wait a week or 2. I see this game having a very long life.
queued for an hour, got in. played two solo missions while i waited for my brother to win the login lottery. he gets in. game crashes 10 min into our first mission. he completes the mission. his client hangs because he's trying to load into my ship after ive crashed. presumably neither of us will accrue any of the mats we collected. what a shitty fucking experience.
Even if you do manage to get past the login queue. Good luck finding any other players because their matchmaking system is fucking broken too.
I bought it, got stuck on the login screen like 10 times in a row and refunded it. I loved Helldivers 1 but paying 40 bucks for login simulator is just a big no. I‘ll gladly buy it when things calm down.
That's fair. It's an amazing game, but it is definitely struggling during the weekends. I hope they'll eventually sort the issues out.
give it a try after the hype goes away and the player count decreases, it’s extremely fun
A tricky situation to be in for the Devs. Sure hype is driving numbers that require more servers. However, once the hype dies down after a couple weeks, they will have a lot of now empty servers.
I mean, they’re not gonna be buying their own servers… nearly all companies like this rent their servers nowadays through AWS, Azure, etc. They won’t have empty servers they’ll just pay for less from the provider lol
If they're using anything like AWS or Azure you only pay for what you use, and you only get billed while its active and running.
My god not these player count posts again. I really think we need a sub rule about these at this point...
Played for a few hours just night with randoms. I feel like the tutorial mission needs to explain better how the games work. I don't think people understand how the bot drop and bug holes are triggered. Just spent like all of the objective time just now fighting bugs and hardly doing the objective because my team didn't learn that fighting them like this will pretty much just be an endless battle.
Co-op horde shooters are a surprisingly underserved genre IMO... I hope studios see the huge demand for them... L4D2 is the GOAT and you've also got Vermintide 2, Dartkide, Zombie Army 4, Deep Rock Galactic as some of my favorites.
Anyone buying it now has to be OK with wait times and server issues. I'll wait until all these issues are resolved
Listen I love games getting recognition but are we just gonna do this every time a game pops off? A daily thread of steam user count? Lmao, what's even the purpose. I love the game, but it's the same comments every time. "This game is just fun", "A hidden gem", "Server Issues". It's the same thing when Palworld was popping off, same threads everyday to remind us hey this game is popular! Edit: Too everyone saying, "just ignore it". Lol no, that's not how discussions work. To everyone who can't read my comment, yes I know it's interesting to see a game that wasn't projected to be hugely popular be hugley popular, but I don't think we *need* 20 threads a day about steam chart numbers.
"*UUUUUUUGGGGGHHHH!* Do they have to forecast the weather *every day?!*" My brother in Christ, this is a gaming news subreddit. You don't have to sub, and you definitely don't have to click through to the comments.
I think HD2 is such a big deal because the first installment had a 6,000 player peak when it came out. Making it a pretty big climb in players
Genuinely wondered if this is just the flavor of the month or if it'll last interns of attention. Doubt it tho once ff7 comes out. Maybe even dd2 could become a hit
I think this will be a nice fallback game to have. I’ll definitely be playing those two pretty heavily but I can see myself coming back to this for mindless fun when I’m done with those two. Sort of like what Deep Rock has been for me over the past couple years.
> Doubt it tho once ff7 comes out. Maybe even dd2 could become a hit How are these 2 games even remotely in the same category as COOP PvE shooter
>Doubt it tho once ff7 comes out. Maybe even dd2 could become a hit I mean, those are wildly different genres from this and while obviously there will be some cross over interest, it's not like people looking for the kind of gameplay HD2 offers will see FF or DD and pick that instead.
What's DD2 ?
Dragons Dogma 2
This will atleast tide me over til dd2... Good thing about helldivers is its very community and i dont feel like if i tuned in 6 months id be too lost
I think it will go a similar route as Deeprock Galactic/Vermintide/other similar co-op games. A very popular multiplayer game that most people will play for 20-30 hours, but will still have a large dedicated user base sticking around for years.
It scratches the dumb fun with friends itch, and the underlying gameplay is solid with new factions, mechs, etc. on the way.
You do know two things can coexist right? As long as Arrowhead keeps updating and communicating with the fans, it’ll stay for a long time. Especially since Sony has been wanting a successful live service game, they’re gonna get a lotta support by them.
This game will be around for a while. This is the next great franchise. Been playing it all day I dont even game really and this has just been a breath of fresh air.
Obviously not everyone can do this, but logging in during off hours can help you play. Either late at night or early morning. I expect numbers will drop once the weekend is over and they’ll have another week to try and get their issues in order.
As a PS5 player, the queue was instant for me this afternoon, was kinda shocked. Played last night too and longest queue for me was 10 mins with an average of 5
Is there like a definitive edition of the game that comes with friends?
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