The enemies of Super Earth have yee’d their last haw in Helldivers 2 as the co-op multiplayer shooter has plum gotten itself a rootin’ tootin’ new warbond that features plenty of Wild West style with new armors, weapons, and emotes. But unfortunately no actual cowboy hats because that apparently breaks design ethos. It’s fine, game studios can be wrong about things now and again.
Speaking of design ethos (and in more gameplay-related news), last week brought on another sweeping balance patch for the game, with several adjustments that touch a variety of guns and stratagems; we spy buffs for the Eruptor, Slugger, and Pummeler, an increase in the number of uses for exosuits, and better armor penetration for the MG-206 Heavy Machine Gun. The patch also made automatons more aware of their surroundings, refitted the armor values for the barrager tank enemy, and made a variety of fixes.
Taking a quick peek at the multiplayer shooter’s Steam health, we find that things are still strong, albeit understandably less of a major blowout in terms of concurrency on the platform, while user reviews are still sitting in the blue.
Naturally the success of the game would leave creative director Johan Pilestedt to have opinions on the game industry and its continued shedding of workers, and those can best be summarized by a call to stop chasing trends so damn much.
“We will always go through the cycles of death and rebirth, but now that cycle is unnecessarily brutal because we don’t diversify enough. We need to make more types of games because people are playing more than ever and still we are unable to stay in business. It’s ridiculous,” he said at this year’s GDC. “A lot of publishers […] try to play it safe by taking safe bets. But one thing that I can guarantee is that those safe bets are a death sentence for the studios that try to make it.”
