Helldivers 2 players accept the win and the free cape after Arrowhead miraculously finds millions of extra Liberty Day kills under a rug: "We can only track" melee or bullets and "we went with bullet kills"

Helldivers 2 screenshot of two soldiers cheering in the desert
(Image credit: Arrowhead Game Studios / PlayStation)

Rejoice, for Liberty Day 2025 in Helldivers 2 was a resounding success for all. To mark the occasion, all players will receive a commemorative cape, to signify their participation in another glorious day for democracy. What were the exact margins, you may be asking? Don't worry about such frivolous concerns, there were enough dead bodies, I assure you.

Or, Arrowhead Game Studios assures everyone. The overall objective and whether or not it was accomplished are slightly spurious. The mission was to get 40 million combined kills across the whole community using the R-2124 Constitution.

HELLDIVERS 2 – Into the Unjust | Launch Trailer - YouTube HELLDIVERS 2 – Into the Unjust | Launch Trailer - YouTube
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For the 'official' readout, according to a dev on the official Discord, the team went with bullets; gunfire, as that was likely to be the majority of what people used. But that excludes a significant amount of bugs, androids, and other slain adversaries because of the bayonet - perhaps even leaving the global community at a deficit.

The remedy is simple: act like everyone got over the finish line as intended and give out the award to all. As a Reddit commenter points out, it's a classic faux pas often solved in table-top games with the GM rolling some hidden dice and just having over the win because they've realized there’s a quirk in the mission they hadn't thought about.

These things happen, and at a time when Arrowhead could do with some goodwill, this is definitely a good move. For liberty, in our shiny new capes!

Helldivers 2 performance is still many months away from "more meaningful improvement," admits Arrowhead CEO, but there are "more patches coming."

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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