Arrowhead Game Studio’s Helldivers 2 is one of the best co-op games of all time, despite the game’s increasing instability over time. As the tech debt has bloated to an unavoidable state, Arrowhead is currently focused on major performance improvements, bug fixes and plans to decrease the game’s massive file size on Steam.
Nevertheless, fans are still clamouring for more features to be added into Helldivers 2 as Arrowhead works on shaping the game up to an acceptable level of performance. (Thankfully, even in its worst state, HD2 is still extremely fun.)
Speaking to fans on Discord, Arrowhead Game Studios CEO Shams Jorjani responded to numerous calls to increase the game’s co-op squad size from 4-player squads to 8 or 16-player groups. This is far from the first time that fans have called for larger lobbies with many believing the arrival of the Democracy Space Station last year would bring more players and a social system, the latter of which is planned for an eventual Helldivers 3.
When asked “how impossible [it is] from [a] scale [of] 1 to ten” it would be to increase the player size of Helldivers 2, Jorjani simply responded: “My man, we’re trying to fix performance. Not kill it.”
Responding to a follow-up question on why players can’t have both, Jorjani explained: “I can give you 16-player lobbies tomorrow, and 16 fps. Want it?” The CEO later explained to everyone that they couldn’t do that in a single day. “This was a joke. Plz don’t quote me.” (Sorry.)
Jorjani later joked that increasing the team size in Helldivers 2 would be as simple as changing a config file from “players = 4” to “players = 16”, which immediately had players questioning if that would actually work. No. It doesn’t. Come on.
While Helldivers 2 isn’t in a great place right now in a technical state, the gameplay is still as fun as ever. The current technical state of the game comes after the release of the Into the Unjust update which allows players to go inside Termanid nests and take the fight to the bugs in a whole new way… even if that way does result in a number of annoying glitches.
Nevertheless, Arrowhead has reiterated its commitment to improving Helldivers 2 and using the game as a platform for many more years to come. In the past, Jorjani explained that Arrowhead can “keep expanding it for a long time” as “PlayStation is super supportive” of the multiplayer game. After all, there is an official movie on the way.
