I hope you don't have a truck full of 15 friends waiting expectantly to play Helldivers 2 with you, because that would be really inconvenient. Developer Arrowhead's CEO Shams Jorjani suggests the third-person shooter isn't getting expanded lobbies any time soon.
Jorjani doesn't try to spare anyone's feelings while responding recently to a Helldivers 2 player on Discord asking, "how impossible from scale 1 to 10 would you say more people in a lobby is." He delivers the bitter truth: "my man, we're trying to fix performance. not kill it." Some players are already unhappy with Helldivers 2's performance as it is, reporting that it regularly drops to at least 40fps.
"I can give you 16 player lobbies tomorrow. and 16 fps. want it?" Jorjani continues.
"this was a joke," he adds, just in case, "plz don't quote me." (Sorry.)
Helldivers 2 can currently accommodate four players in a lobby, though Arrowhead seems well aware that grunts want more. But Helldivers 2 creative director Johan Pilestedt already said on Twitter in 2024 that, "The engine, network architecture, UI, performance, and difficulty can't cope" with something like eight players to a lobby. "We need to do significant investment for 8p coop to work."
"As a catch all reply: Its not impossible, and its something we talk about often at the studio," he added. "Future will tell what happens."
But I wouldn't get my hopes up. Jorjani also pokes fun at the idea that increasing a Helldivers 2 lobby's player cap would be simple, writing sarcastically on Discord that, "there's a file called config.ini in there, there's a line that says "players = 4," change it to "player = 16" and it you can bring more friends."
Helldivers 2 boss says "realism is not the goal" and "player fantasy matters more," but Arrowhead is still careful to remember that "it needs to be Helldivers."
