Helldivers 2 is currently in the middle of a renaissance. After weeks of criticism, review bombings, and players abandoning ship, developer Arrowhead Studios appears to have got the message and has been gradually announcing upcoming buffs that are getting players back on board. Today was the day for the update to drop, and saying that players are excited would be an understatement.
We need to stop using the term for games that simply don't deserve it.
It was pretty clear that the direction that Arrowhead was going in with Helldivers 2 was driving a significant number of players away, and that has been proven by the sheer number of players now returning to the game following these exciting buffs. On the game's SteamDB charts, you can see that Helldivers 2 managed to set a peak player count of 59,181 today, a number not seen since the game's botched Escalation of Freedom update.
In fact, yesterday's peak player count for Helldivers 2 sat at 23,960 players, meaning the game's player count on Steam almost tripled following the release of this new update. While the game will almost certainly never eclipse the peak player count it set at launch, that's still an...
