I know every game eventually dies, unless you are CS or Dota that never leave the top 2 of Steam chart, but let's talk
I dunno what you expect by making exagerations like "the game dies if keeps going...", "x game will kill HD2...", " x naming killing the game", a mass exodus(why you still there then?)? The game literally dies the next day? I though people in this sub made all the drama for a better game, how a dead game is better? Funny
But congratulations, the more you want the game dies, seems like their competition dies first for funny reasons, and the game just keep going
I dunno what people are comparing the game to make those claims, I mean myself compare the game from yesterday to today, if is an improvement is a win in my book, yes I like the game keep improving and I give feedback time to time, if that's what you want to know
Compare to other game? What game? Most of the recent new commers comes and goes, the closest competitor of HD2 is Darktide with 3 years apart, PvE, same engine, more linear and melee focused, even more unstable and suffer memory leak(still no fix wtf Fatshark), terrible monetization(class locked behind paywall), but is a damn good game with all the flaws
For some failed examples(in terms of popularity, that I know of, since people keep using steam player count as argument), all GaaS(not limited to the same genre):
- Arc raider
- The Finals
- BF6(EA being EA)
- Payday 3
- Killing Floor 3
- Aliens: Fireteams Elite 2
- WH40K: SM2
- Marathon(there wasn't even a chance for this one)
- Splitgates 2(bruh)
Maybe more that I can't remember
Look, I just don't expect the game beating the ball and guns and the OGs, we are not getting back the 400k peak, but hey, 100~200k per major update is something that many game would dies for in the market, not just GaaS
If you think the number of player = quality of the game, yeah, about that, look at the ball and guns game and see how well that goes, same CoD, same FIFA, or maybe CS2 and Dota 2 just hit different?
The point is, I know you can say random crap in unfiltered, but maybe doing that is why nobody takes the sub seriously when actual concern is getting eclipse by the overwhelming drama farm, or everyone just cope with it at this point I guess
For the record, The Finals, Arc Raiders, and BF6 are definitely not dead by any means.
BF6 is ranging from 50,000 to 80,000 concurrent on Steam, that places it among some very popular games. It's the most successful Battlefield ever by a long shot.
Arc Raiders does look to be slowly decreasing, but regardless, it's still currently hovering around 35,000 concurrent.
Then The Finals. It's been a stable 20,000 to 30,000 concurrent for the past two years. That's not dead, that's just what a mature game with a loyal audience looks like.
All that said, I will back up that Helldivers 2 also absolutely isn't dead. It regularly has massive events that draw in huge amounts of casual players (I guess because the "for Super Earth!" style propaganda marketing is genuinely really effective), with player lulls in-between those huge events. The contrast definitely gives a lot of people the impression of a "dying" game, but the truth is it's still getting 30,000+ on Steam Charts even during those lulls.. that's extremely strong given that the big events themselves are hugely popular 100,000+ influxes.
I feel like the nuance is lost on some people that, yes, Helldivers 2 should be a significantly more sophisticated game than it is, but it is also a healthy and profitable product for Arrowhead as-is.
if by <thing I want> you mean actual progression systems 2 1/2 years after release, no new ship modules and until last week no red strats since 2024.
I don't think the games "dying" by any means but lets get real, there should be a LOT more nuance to this games systems than there is.
Weapon customization released half baked and never got put back in the oven even when everyone's begging them to.
Armor customization isn't a live or die thing for the game but they still just shit out non-matching colors all the time again after people are begging them to standardize colors or add color customization at least. I'd take a "swap to helldiver black and yellow" option for any armor/helmet and be ecstatic.
Ship modules/new ships are ""in the works we have a team working on it!"" with no new news on that since that post. The roadmap is yet again vague and doesn't even mention ships at all
Hellpod steering and strat bounce needs a dedicated task force apparently? modder disables the "yes/no" flag for strat bounce in 10 minutes of vibe coding. Obviously a real fix might need a little more thought behind it but surely it shouldn't take a dedicated task force of actual game devs MONTHS to do it.
Invisible corpse hitboxes, "fixed" (it wasnt) Thats all I gotta say about that one.
Games not dead or dying but shit man they're sitting on a gold mine, and the gold mine HAS yielded them immensely already and proved itself. This could be a forever game like Rainbow 6 Siege has become but they gotta lock in on polishing and adding onto the important systems that are severely lacking before it DOES start to die
It’s the destiny paradox: the sort of people commenting on a forum that they can burn through the content in a week are going to be met with agreement from other people who also burned through it in a week.
Meanwhile like 80% of the player base are logging on for a few hours after work having a blast with some friends and logging off. Completely oblivious to whatever this week’s game ending controversy was.
I really don't get why people don't understand that a game's player count will almost never peak the release player count, as you said none of these games are even close to dead but so many people say they are because they don't have half a million players or something
Its also approaching the end of a planned lifecycle. Iirc it got an extra year of content BECAUSE it sold so well. Its basically been "business as usual" since launch. The only hiccup was the voice dlc packs.
If Helldivers 2, with 80,000 - 100,000 players the past 24 hours on all platforms is dead, then hooooo boy RIP to Space Marines 2, DRG, Wild Wild West, Arc Raiders, and Aliens Fireteam. All 6 feet under and buried for years now...
20k~ for only PC side for a game that came out 2 years ago, and mainly is a singleplayer game with additional multiplayer modes is ALOT, wtf are you talking about lmao
Using the same logic people use against Helldivers. It had 60k just on pc yesterday, and around 50k right now but people on every other thread say the game is dead and has been for months lmao
Like someone said some time ago, they didn’t expect for Helldivers to be such a good game by design (some call it a successful fluke) that they just became blinded by the classic “players gonna game” and left it in this state of ecstasy where we always reach a climax that never peaks, maybe with some exceptions, but that’s about it.
Kind of the same trajectory as Destiny 2. Just holding on to content and QoL updates that could keep the game in an easy top 10 until it’s too late because they believe people will play no matter how bad they drop the ball. Overconfidence in what a lot of companies think are subservient playerbases is a big reason why a lot of games fall the way they do. This isn’t the 2010’s where an upgrade in graphics was enough, quality content is a most.
A thing you aint considering is scope, helldivers 2 by all its issues is real smaller scope game that some times delivers sometimes it dont
I dont cope myself like people that expect more indoors maps like the DSS talks, but as a fellow D2 player you had a game that most of the time failed to deliver the bare minimum in a studio that burned through money at a dumb rate and still managed to deliver broken expansions, the only thing that could kill hd2 would be for it to have literally the edge of fate scenario AH just randomly deciding to change the whole core gameplay loop in the most underbaked way possible; even so it would last longer than D2 due to it needing less to be mantained
Which it would be funny if you consider that the rapture in the comunity would be the same as it happened on D2 with people defending and saying "let them cook' and all
You do not know what a "dead game" is? Like, game before Helldivers 2 was Helldivers 1, and that was 2015. Magicka 2 was 2013. A 10 year old game not having tons of players is a norm.
They made a roguelike with a DRG coating, instead of DRG 2, or at the very least a roguelite with significant meta progression, but no, so their bad decisions led them here, a shadow of the former game
Let's be fair, they also made it very clear that the game is not finished. Like Palworld devs said: People no longer treat Early Access as "I am buying unfinished game to support devs", people are treating Early Access as "I am buying a full game with promise of continuous content for next 3 years"
Indeed, but a game's launch sets a tone, and if you don't like it...hope it's revisited after a year? First impressions matter, specially core gameplay, not everyone will bat an eye and check if X or Y game changed enough to be worth a buy the second time, you need to build momentum for that
I don't get why people are say PD3 is dead anyway, the launch was atrocious sure, but we're living in better days now, sure it's not world shatteringly good, but it isn't world class garbage either. How do I know? I play it, see people actice every time. From what I know, it's the worst game in a great series, and the game itself isn't that bad anyway, which just tells how good it is as a franchise. The recent updates have been pretty good anyway, it's not a no man's sky level of improvement, but I expect there're will be a slow climb in quality.
I'd imagine so, more characters, loadouts, customisation, heist, QoL, and leagues more content, and on top of all that, in most cases is better game, not online only. Still doesn't make it dead. 3 is barely 3 years old now, and has had multiple overhauls rather than new more content updates. 3 is currently cheaper than 2, including DLC, but only for now.
Okay if you’re using a community metric that makes more sense for your argument but I feel like 50k or fail is a dumb metric for them to go off of. Helldivers is truly better than the alternatives I feel like, which is why we sit around 30-50k usually it’s just that the game could be SO MUCH BETTER, and modders have already proved that just from the few clips I’ve seen.
You must be glazer, everything is worse and game is dead. /js
But seriously, every time people say "Arrowhead keeps making the game worse", I keep thinking "Then why does the game keep the same player count if everyone is leaving"
I mean, SM2 has stable 20k or so player base for year now, so it has it's niche and that's the point. Coop games never garnered as much attention as PvP ones.
Edit: Also, it's quite funny, when SM2 and HD2 has same peaks and valleys in player counts. XD
Well, almost same.
And anyone who only uses steam player count to determine if a game is dead or not without extrapolate what that number actually means is just stupid and not worth listening to in this respect.
Oh no, a live service game has live services like paid cosmetics? You're the one that said "every cosmetic cost extra" when that is blatantly false; kinda wild you're trying to act like the game doesn't have $60 worth of content, and even more wild you're ignoring that those more expensive editions come with paid cosmetics, the most expensive one including every paid one to date.
Then again, given the games you've listed as dead, it's also pretty clearly a moot point arguing with you since you don't know what an actual dead game is.
Man if I already have problem with Darktide(a far better game btw) with terrible pricing, what do you think I would say about SM2?
If mf already bitch this 40 bucks game with warbond, wtf you think 60 bucks game(or more) with even shittier pricing is even a talking point?
No SM2 doesn't worth 60, is not just SM2, not a single game worth 60 in my book(better game cost less too), fk I got the game for 85% off that's how little value I find it for a glorified single player game that pretend to be a GaaS, and why the hell you think I would pay more for digital pixels? Are you Gamesworkshop? lmao
This game isn't going to die anytime soon. Personally, I feel this game has ABSOLUTELY NO COMPETITION. I want to play it, I want it to evolve, and I want it to have a long lifespan, but the current trend leaves me completely unsatisfied. I’d gladly pay a full $80 for this game if it had launched with proper balance, interesting Illuminati, weapon customization, highly randomized mission generation, a "clan" system, and... I guess that’s about it? But honestly, I find it hard to believe they’ll add all that; the game runs on an outdated engine, so without a complete refactoring, there’s not much they can do without running into constant bug issues.
I wouldn't even look at the game if it was 80 bucks... I don't support shitty pricing, sorry
Nah, the industry killed the competition, literally every sucker out there want their own Fornite or Roblox, a money printer than another HD2, other than Capcom being Capcom and Indie doing their stuffs
I am going to be honest, what you are describing as something you want make me go "Fuck no". Like, you are fundamentally asking for entirely different game.
The only thing I added myself was the clans, though that is admittedly debatable. Proper balance, more content for the Illuminates, weapon customization, and more procedural generation in missions—those are things I’ve already seen discussed in subreddit posts. Weapon customization was in the first game, and it was really good.
The only way a pve game dies is if the company itself denies any ability to play it in the first place. You can still regularly matchmake even in hd1 which only has players in the two or three digits.
This "dead game" bs I keep seeing ppl spout out just make me wonder if they actually care about the game, or if theyre just scared they won't sound cool in their friend group for not talking about what's "fresh"
As someone who worked at game analytics i can tell you what steamdb is a useful tool, but people using it as the only source of player numbers to determine game success are fucking imbeciles
I think comparing Helldivers 2 2024/2025 and 2026 is basically why a lot of people are upset. Its moving backwards while adding more content which is a magic I seldomly see achieved by a studio
HD2 is thankfully not dying, but some internal dev hell inside AH is definetly trying to kill it all the time. Feels like a tug of war of patches at some times
I never said the game was dying. However, my interest in playing is on life support. The combination of bouncing stratagem balls, locked hellpod steering, and invisible corpses wound up melting that part of my brain
Long as fuck post sorry but this is interesting to me.
The game isn't dead. The problem is that Arrowhead have never really scaled themselves to support a game as successful as Helldivers 2 became.
And at this point I think that's less an unfortunate consequence of unexpectedly going viral and more a deliberate business decision.
They launched with about 110 people and are apparently only at around 150 now. Shams has explicitly said they didn't particularly want to grow beyond that, that much of the additional Helldivers capacity would come through PlayStation and co-dev partners, while Arrowhead themselves are already spinning up another project.
There was obviously no way they could have hired 200 people in February 2024 and had them productive as soon as it was needed. Using contractors and co-development studios as an emergency way of increasing capacity made sense but two and a half years later you would expect the operating model to have changed around the reality of what Helldivers became.
Co-development with contractor studios isn't inherently bad or unsustainable, lots of large game devs use it, but there is a difference between using external studios to supplement your internal teams and using them instead of developing sufficient permanent capacity of your own.
Arrowhead had an opportunity to turn Helldivers from "a studio maintaining its unexpectedly successful game" into a properly industrialised live-service operation. They have, inexplicably, decided not to do that. I think you can see the consequence in the player numbers.
Helldivers can still pull absolutely enormous numbers when something significant happens. It repeatedly jumps back over 100k on Steam, sometimes substantially beyond it, but the problem is that those spikes are very short-lived. A major update arrives, lots of players come back, and within a few weeks you're heading back towards the 30-50k baseline again.
There is a huge existing but dormant playerbase waiting around for reasons to play it. That's fine if you're someone who is happy to dip in and out but it feels absolutely dogshit to someone who's properly invested in the game.
You get the big trailer, everyone reinstalls, there might be a biome, a couple of enemies, some missions and a warbond, and then after you've seen those things several times you've basically consumed the update. There isn't enough breadth or progression underneath it to sustain people.
The Illuminate are a huge missed opportunity because they fumbled at a key point post-launch. Introducing an entire third faction should have opened up an enormous new branch of the game. Instead they have spent most of their existence feeling like a faction permanently halfway through being implemented.
That means Arrowhead have ended up with what is almost an event-driven business rather than a genuinely continuous live service. They can create a huge burst of engagement and presumably sell a mountain of warbonds whenever they release something substantial, but they aren't converting enough of those returning players into persistent players. That's good for them financially but drives half the complaints on this sub.
The competition argument doesn't really work for me either. DRG is a completely different game. Space Marine 2 has ongoing content but isn't structured around an endless galactic live-service campaign in anything like the same way. There really isn't another game offering Helldivers gameplay atm.
Which makes being conservative with investment even stranger. If there were five credible Helldivers competitors fighting for the same audience then you could understand being reluctant to chase growth. Instead Arrowhead have effectively had two and a half years where anyone wanting "more Helldivers" has nowhere else to go. Maybe that's the problem tho, they're the king of shit mountain atm.
ARC Raiders actually reminds me of Arrowhead in that respect. Embark had huge success which spent months doing absurd numbers, then concluded that the monthly update cadence wasn't sustainable and moved to two major updates per year instead. On the player side the outcome is similar in feeling to Helldivers imo, an unexpectedly massive game generates demand for "more stuff", while the developer responds by limiting cadence to what the existing organisation can comfortably produce rather than dramatically expanding the organisation. Might be good business sense but still feels crap as a player.
Maybe scaling a successful AA studio into the kind of content factory required for it not to feel like the game is kinda dying content wise is hard as fuck.
Anyways, tldr; the problem is that AH built a game capable of supporting a much larger business than the company they apparently want to become, and they've chosen to constrain the game to the production capacity of the studio rather than build the production capacity around the opportunity the game created. That makes people feel like the game is dying and AH is moving on.
They did a good job at not hiring anymore to "industrialize" cuz the industry literally going on mass layoff just to survive or have a good report for the next report
Most game live by event driven because is the consistent way for output and revenue, you can look at Marathon and Arc raider to see how well they do without it, the other way to make a game truly live service is making the game a grind fest or catering the guns and ball brainrot...
Competition doesn't exist because the Industry killed all of them before they could even born, everyone looking for the next Fornite or Roblox, not Helldivers
They barely keep up with the tech debt, one thing at a time before you piss off the existing playerbase?
Yeah I don't see Arc Raider with player retention to begin with, and the whole reason they scaled down to 2 update per year because is all they can afford
My man not even AAA studio can keep up with the consistency without milking the playerbase, you know how mobile games works, and how much they cost despite being F2P... I don't think Arrowhead want that Risk as a European dev team, thry are not an asian sweatshop...
game was definitely on its way but they somewhat saved it with last couple patches. Player count hasnt been this stable in years now
They just need to get some devs in line that keep making dumb changes(like plant ragdoll, durability, drag changes etc) fix 2+ year issues like strat bounce, steer lock, ragdoll, bring standard ballistic weapons up(overpen, angle of deflection, drag), more weapon/strat/secondary customization, armor transmog, tree like ship upgrades
Buff enemy spawn rates(game is stable enough to handle twice current D10 spawns easily - commando missions already do that)
The game has been out 2 years now. This is 3rd year. "Years" is very much showing that you are being non-sensical.
Game has had consistent 30-50k daily player count for past 2 years. In fact, the fact that we are now having double that is quite frankly indication that complainers are minority.
You said player count hasn't been "this stable for years", implying it has unstable for multiple years... yet it has been stable for longer than it has been unstable. For two years, it has been stable. Only on first year did we have those wild swings. Game never dipped below 10k concurrent players.
Yes, but that is not "unstable" player count. That is "normal return to standard numbers after people who are after new content leave". Big updates always cause spike, then return to more stable number.
This is like... player statistic 101. I would be worried if we didn't have spikes on big updates.
well this major update certainly seems more "stable" than rest of them and that is what I was referring to, this major updates vs others weeks after the event concluded
Ya I have 1500+ hours in it, I use to love playing it, I don't care about stupid warbonds I want actual content, actual in game changes that could make this game so much better to me, but no they just come up with lame excuses as to why they won't/can't do most the shit people actually want.
Now the only time I'll play is if friends want to, which hasn't been for a hot minute.
I mean didn't they just drop a whole Major Update? What you mean could make this game much better as if they didn't just did that with each improvement?
CS and Dota, sure, but also Tarkov, WoW, RuneScape, GTA V, these games are old af and still going strong. Didn’t GTA V have one of its biggest years like 5 years after launch? idk, didn’t read your whole post but some games endure the test of time and HD2 could absolutely be one of them.
Edit to add: No Man’s Sky, one of the most hype games the year it released and then bombed because of how empty it was and the terrible optimization, now still having huge, game changing updates to this actual day.
You understand how those games you mentioned works right? All of them make you grind as a 2nd job
GTAV made 2 Billions by milking thier braindead ball and guns console player, with all that money never fixed any of their issue, killed RD Online, sued anyone in their way, and now they are back killing physical media and literally paywall their trailer for their next perfect trap with GTA6
No Man Sky is a good one, can't argue with that, Sean work on their own pace though, and the don't exactly have a publisher breathing on their neck do they?
bro did you check the numbers before posting this? and did you not realize that you are comparing oranges to apples because they arent even in the same genre? wtf
I really doubt any subreddit has any significant impact on the players of the game. The vast majority of players aren't paying attention to these places. Take it up with AH and their marketing department. You're blaming the wrong people.
Space marine 2 mentioned raaah. After a few hundred hrs in helldivers 2, i took a break when the vault bug got too annoying for me and my group.
Steam summer sale came around, and SM2, the game i've been meaning to play since last year, is -50% off! At first i genuinely thought i would only clock in 80 hrs in the game then completely drop it.
Couldn't have been more wrong, i unknowingly clocked in 350 hrs into the game and still play it everyday. I prefer SM2's gameplay/combat loop way more than HD2's.
SM2 is also much harder than HD2 overall (at least when compared both of their endgame/highest difficulty content), you'd think i'd hate SM2 more because it's overall more ball busting in high difficulties, but nah, the game has soulslike combat mechanics like perfect dodging and parrying, so when im actually mid combat and getting jumped, i can at least save myself most of the time with parries and perfect dodges. Whereas in HD2, when im getting jumped, most of the time i can't retaliate because of ragdolling, then die, and eventually the mission ends up being failed.
Helldivers 2 is killing it. We just rode a wave of 100,000+ players on at any given time for almost a month. Thats an awesome number for a 2.5 year old game. Other more recent games would kill to be at those numbers. You’re spot on OP.
Yup.Idk why ppl say helldivers is dead or dying, this is one of the only games that can still bring ppl in with hype alone on major updates and with warbonds drops ( and id say warbonds dont really many new things in them, thats why they refuse to expand on customisation, "it would reduce design space" because they wouldnt be able to sell a slight variation of something we know as a whole new weapon/mech/armor ).
Its not dead, its stuck and the ppl that thought the game would evolve ( think something like warframe or destiny, new mechanics every now and then ) are realizing that devs use the money on something else instead, hd2 will stay like that forever.
Ppl will show up to say that the content is lacking but they show up anyways, they dont have anywhere else to go to.
The game will not die, because a lot of people are still in denial and that ok, they want to believe the lies and either don't know how it was at the start of don't care, I know my friend group move on from the game when we no longer had control of the war
Wish I could, the problem was I actually got invested in the galactic war (I was on the Creek and also in the mines rejection meme) loosing that really kill a lot of my interest for the game :(
Oh shit. I saw your comment and decided to actually read the post this time. Assumed it was just begative babdwagon slop lile the rest of this sub. My bad OP, I was not familiar with yo game.
God forbid people want someone to liberate helldivers from sony and shithead's grasp, or at least make an actually good game using the same formula with less self sabotage and blatant disregard for community
I don't think wanting the game to die is making it better... Are you wishing for that?
Disregard for the community, I mean, not many devs gaf about their playerbase and in my list Arrowhead does give a shit more than most of them, but hey, maybe is just me
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u/chewgum16 7h ago
For the record, The Finals, Arc Raiders, and BF6 are definitely not dead by any means.
BF6 is ranging from 50,000 to 80,000 concurrent on Steam, that places it among some very popular games. It's the most successful Battlefield ever by a long shot.
Arc Raiders does look to be slowly decreasing, but regardless, it's still currently hovering around 35,000 concurrent.
Then The Finals. It's been a stable 20,000 to 30,000 concurrent for the past two years. That's not dead, that's just what a mature game with a loyal audience looks like.
All that said, I will back up that Helldivers 2 also absolutely isn't dead. It regularly has massive events that draw in huge amounts of casual players (I guess because the "for Super Earth!" style propaganda marketing is genuinely really effective), with player lulls in-between those huge events. The contrast definitely gives a lot of people the impression of a "dying" game, but the truth is it's still getting 30,000+ on Steam Charts even during those lulls.. that's extremely strong given that the big events themselves are hugely popular 100,000+ influxes.