After months of anticipation, Helldivers 2 fan film gets suddenly removed from YouTube, but it wasn't Sony even though an official movie is in the works: "I am chatting with YouTube right now"

Helldivers 2
(Image credit: Sony)

While we wait for Hollywood's Helldivers 2 movie to be made, a fan film called For Liberty! is here to fill the gap. Or it would be, if not for a YouTube takedown that unceremoniously removed the video from the platform without notice.

After almost a year of anticipation, For Liberty! arrived recently to helped deliver democracy across the known universe. Sadly, the powers that be had other things in mind, with the short production getting taken off YouTube soon after becoming publicly available.

For Liberty! | Official Trailer (2025 Helldivers Movie) - YouTube For Liberty! | Official Trailer (2025 Helldivers Movie) - YouTube
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"We have no confirmation that Sony was involved in the removal," the team comments on Reddit. "This appears to be an automatic system with YouTube itself that flagged that the film was made available to download for free." Another comment clears the devs of responsibility.

"I am in contact with Arrowhead and I can assure you that they had nothing to do with the takedown," Plot Coalition says, mentioning in another comment: "I am chatting with YouTube right now."

YouTube disallows download links to be placed anywhere in uploads, and the belief as of now is that For Liberty! being freely downloadable from the video description caused an automatic removal. While the producers are trying to sort this out, I wouldn't hold my breath for a resolution too soon. YouTube is famously hard to deal with on these issues, but hopefully the film is freely available again in the near future.

An animated tribute to Helldivers 2, For Liberty! follows several recruits as they take on legions of bugs and other threats. It's a fun, bombastic celebration of the series and its community, and at the very least, this has all helped give the movie more attention.

Helldivers 2 ramps up the authoritarian satire as High Command takes action against civilians who make too much eye contact, and fans think a new rebel faction is on the way.

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Anthony McGlynn
Contributing Writer

Anthony is an Irish entertainment and games journalist, now based in Glasgow. He previously served as Senior Anime Writer at Dexerto and News Editor at The Digital Fix, on top of providing work for Variety, IGN, Den of Geek, PC Gamer, and many more. Besides Studio Ghibli, horror movies, and The Muppets, he enjoys action-RPGs, heavy metal, and pro-wrestling. He interviewed Animal once, not that he won’t stop going on about it or anything.

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