Arrowhead CEO humbly asks Helldivers 2 fans to "stop s****ing your pants" as servers wobble under the weight of 500,000 concurrent divers following Xbox recruits joining the fight and a new Halo ODST Warbond

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That's a lot of bugs squashed and oil spilled

Helldivers 2 x Halo ODST armor
(Image credit: Arrowhead Games)

Helldivers 2's Xbox launch has, unsurprisingly, led to a huge boost in player numbers. You may want to attribute this purely to the newbies, but the Steam numbers are shooting up, too, thanks to the new Halo 3: ODST-inspired Warbond.

The all-time peak for Helldivers 2 on Steam is 458,709 concurrent players, which occurred right at launch and caused the game servers to become incredibly unstable. Yesterday, the player count surged from around 50,000 to over 150,000 on PC, and console numbers boosted that number even further.

To little surprise, Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani writes on the game's Discord: "This is gonna be a bit awkward…. but can I ask you to stop shitting your pants somehow?" alongside a screenshot showing over half a million players were Helldiving at that moment. It's become a running gag for Jorjani to mention our pants turning brown – don't ask me why.

And I can see why. It contains the ODST's iconic silenced SMG, as well as a magnum and Halo 3's assault rifle and shotgun – all very cool for fans of the (now retro) FPS. You can see everything in the ODST Warbond, right here.

Issy van der Velde
Issy van der Velde
Contributor

I'm Issy, a freelancer who you'll now occasionally see over here covering news on GamesRadar. I've always had a passion for playing games, but I learned how to write about them while doing my Film and TV degrees at the University of Warwick and contributing to the student paper, The Boar. After university I worked at TheGamer before heading up the news section at Dot Esports. Now you'll find me freelancing for Rolling Stone, NME, Inverse, and many more places. I love all things horror, narrative-driven, and indie, and I mainly play on my PS5. I'm currently clearing my backlog and loving Dishonored 2.

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