Just days after the arrival of Easy Anti Cheat into Helldivers 2, clever modders have already found a way to crack the iconic multiplayer game to bring back its most ambitious mods.
Following the game’s recent 7.2 update, Helldivers 2 has been hit with a wave of negative review bombs from fans due to the arrival of a new anti-cheat solution. Fans with hundreds of hours in the PvE shooter dropped negative reviews on the game’s Steam page in response to the changes.
While the newer ant-cheat solution did successfully block out cheaters, which were not much of an issue for the game, it also broke many mods. Cosmetic mods were left alone, but anything that used scripting or changed the UI, such as allowing players to click on scroll bars instead of manually scrolling through, was broken.
This meant that some of the game’s most ambitious mods were also broken. Custom Galactic War, a beloved mod that introduces multi-faction battles, new units, and other additions to the game, was made completely unplayable with modders unsure how to continue developing the project.
While the Helldivers 2 update did seem to be doom and gloom for the modding community, it only took a few days for modders to crack Easy Anti Cheat in the game. Modder VeganSquid, who also created a mod to turn on your Diver’s helmet lights (very cool), dropped two mods that make it possible to bring scripting mods back into HD2 mere days after they were blocked.
Boot Mod Loader, which is available here, replaces the game’s boot script to enable Lua scripting mods to work on Helldivers 2. Without this mod, any mods that use scripting would crash the game on startup, forcing them to be removed before play.
The modder explained that only “mods that use only the game’s Lua API, which is still there: units, lights, lines, on-screen text, keys and the game’s network fields” will boot. Mods that make use of LuaJIT, mods that “reads or writes game memory” do not work at the time of writing as the “game now runs PUC-Rio Lua 5.1, built into the game itself. LuaJIT is gone”.
VeganSquid also released a second companion mod alongside Boot Mod Loader, HD2 Mod Setting GUI. This mod, available here, opens a “small window outside the game for changing Helldivers 2 mods’ settings and keybindings while you play: mods that support it apply each change within a second”.
While this does bring back scripting and UI mods back to Helldivers 2, there is still an issue. As many ambitious mods made use of LuaJIT, this means that many mods will have to be partially rewritten for the new version. Additionally, it seems that the majority of mods still have to be updated for the new version.
Nevertheless, where there is a will, there is a way, and VeganSquid has already done the work to bring back scripting mods to Arrowhead’s PvE game. While mods will have to be updated to support the new game version, and likely will need to with every update, there’s still a way forward.
