Shams Jorjani, CEO of Helldivers 2 studio Arrowhead, says morale at the development team has dramatically improved since early September when the game's Into the Unjust update launched and seemingly brought along with it myriad bugs and performance issues.
The meaty Into the Unjust update added new desert-type hive world planets with giant Terminid structures and labyrinthian caves crawling with bugs, brand new mission types and tactical objectives, and new enemy types, including the notoriously resilient Hive Lord worm thing. Unfortunately, it also added plenty of bugs of the boring, inconvenient variety as well as significant technical issues messing with frame rates and stability.
However, updates having arrived since then seem to have done a pretty good job getting things back on track, and over on the official Helldivers Discord, Jorjani had good news to report on the overall vibe at Arrowhead some three months after the Into the Unjust update's launch.
Asked specifically about the studio's morale following the "negativity" in response to the update, Jorjani said simply: "It's much better now. Steam score is trending upwards, development is progressing and you folks seem to like the upcoming warbond."
At the time of writing, Helldivers 2's recent Steam reviews are back to 'Very Positive' after having recently dipped all the way down to 'Mixed'.
Meanwhile, the new Python Commandos Warbond, released on December 2 for 1000 Super Credits, has been generally very well-received, which most likely has been a significant contributor to the recently lifted spirits at Arrowhead. Frankly, going into the holidays, I love that for the studio. Everyone deserves a holiday break, and for Arrowhead, I imagine the ideal version of that is just a world where Reddit isn't constantly complaining about their game.
