Against all odds, Helldivers 2 community notches a historic win in grueling Major Order many thought impossible – defending 10 planets amid communication breakdowns

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They actually did it

Helldivers 2
(Image credit: Arrowhead Game Studios)

Democracy is especially sweet today, folks. After days of doubt and despair, not to mention coordination and technical issues, the Helldivers 2 community has cleared a Major Order challenging them to defend 10 different planets within a tight timeframe. 

Just yesterday, players began to wonder if the objective, which many considered impossible just days into the Major Order with only a small handful of planets checked off, might be possible after all. After a slow start, Helldivers worked their way up to eight defended planets with a full day left on the order. 

"They said this MO was designed to show us that we can't always win," wrote one player on April 24. "I say we all dive Varylia and show them we can." 

Calls to arms like this cut to the heart of this recent Major Order and what made it so daunting. A major obstacle was getting the massive, largely siloed player base to agree on which planets to target. This resulted in a war on many, many fronts, with several planetary forces spread too thin to make meaningful headway. Even if they were winning the fight, with the Major Order time limit ticking down, they often weren't winning fast enough. 

On top of that, as the devs confirmed in an April 21 Discord post, a technical issue meant that "unfortunately, we will be unable to provide updates to liberation percentage and ongoing galactic war progress for the foreseeable future." Forces were already in disarray, and now they were literally making stabs in the dark. Fortunately, per a follow-up Discord announcement, the problem was fixed as of April 22. 

At the same time, developer Arrowhead was also reacting behind the scenes. The player above is likely referring to recent comments from the devs, with community manager Spitz notably saying: "Frankly, you can't continue to blame the developers when the community came up with a plan, asked me if it'd work, I got direct confirmation from the GM that it would work, told you all that it'd work and encouraged you to do it, the GM tweaked the decay rate to make it even easier, and there still wasn't enough of a player effort to make it happen. Short of handing you the win, there isn't a lot more we can do."

This feels like a big moment for the game. I won't lie, this was looking like a loss. The fact that the Helldivers 2 community was able to rally at the eleventh hour and eek out a dark horse win like this really sells the inherent drama and intrigue of the game's dynamic Galactic War. At the time of writing, we're still awaiting a new Major Order. I like to imagine high command is also too busy celebrating to issue a fresh mission. 

MAJOR ORDER COMPLETE from r/Helldivers

Helldivers 2 dev asks players to stop deliberately shooting at soldiers with that sweet blue pre-order bonus armor that's apparently a yogurt salesman uniform.

Austin Wood
Austin Wood
Senior writer

Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize his position is a cover for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.