Helldivers 2 is making milestones in the war against server load. While its latest patch was just to prepare for its unexpected playerbase, I can at least personally report that my quickplay and public games issues have been fixed—no more trawling the Discord for fellow soldiers to deploy with.
Meanwhile, Arrowhead Games’ Johan Pilestedt has continued to be uncharacteristically—and refreshingly—outspoken on Twitter/X for a CEO, replying to fans with a mixture of reassurance and sassy remarks. To his credit, however, he’s aware that the situation isn’t exactly ideal.
To one player mourning an empty wallet in the face of players’ rave reviews, Pilestedt replied: “If you have no cash, get it later. While we made a really fun game it’s worth waiting until the servers can support the capacity … As a CEO I of course want the game to be as profitable as possible, but if you spent your last $ and got stuck in server queues I’d be [heartbroken].”
In a separate comment, he confirms that Sony has been sending engineers to help with the back-end. However: “It takes time away from our engineers to onboard new ones” says Pilestedt—which tracks. Online games are complex beasts, each holding their own unique server infrastructure with its own quirks.
As noted on Monday by Christina Pollock (a writer and game developer who recounted Dauntless’ turbulent debut) the slightest breeze can knock the whole house of cards down unexpectedly, and in multiple ways.
Any engineers currently working on Helldivers 2 would need to train up their new peers, even if they’re the brightest minds in the back-end trenches. Unfortunately, expanding server capacity is a little more complicated than gunning down Automatons.
Pilestedt also gave a “massive shout-out” to his team’s engineers—a group of four people—as they’ve been working on expanding the server’s capacity by “[five times] the max of what they designed for in one week, and are now looking to go beyond. I don’t think you understand what a massive feat this is. It’s like tuning a Vespa to compete in F1.”
We’ll have to see whether their tinkering will have the Helldivers 2 servers running laps around the competition or crash them into a barricade—but I’ve got my fingers crossed. Mostly because I’ve been having a blast with the game, and the Creek needs me.
