Those who preached that live-service gaming was a dead affair must find another game to scapegoat their theories onto because Helldivers 2 has shown that it is alive and well.
According to the player charts in SteamDB, the game posted a peak of 150,169 today. This is the first time since May when the bug and robot exterminator game has crossed the 100,000 players mark.
The spike in player count since Friday came after the franchise made a bombastic display at The Game Awards, introducing the Illuminate as a third hostile faction.
The Illuminate Cult is a group of humanoid squid-like chaps who are technologically advanced, intelligent and have a knack for enslaving Super Earth citizens.
These evil enemies of democracy debuted in the first Helldivers game in 2015, when the title was a tough top-down shooter with a relatively small but loyal player base.
When Gamers Get Too Good
Most players who have sunk a couple of months into Helldivers 2 have gotten extremely comfortable fighting Terminids and Automatons.
Helldivers are so competent at this that it has spurred Arrowhead into action to try and rebalance the game to keep things spicy. Unfortunately for the developers,...
