Repeating it "a bajillion times," Helldivers 2 studio CEO insists Gameguard anticheat isn't behind the game's performance issues: "We see no evidence of it"

If you've been continuing the spread of liberty in Helldivers 2, you've no doubt encountered some of the latent stability problems that have been creeping in. Bugs and other problems are spawning as if there's a Terminid nest within the code itself, and the devs are getting tired of explaining what isn’t the problem.

The 20 months since Helldivers 2 launched have been turbulent for Arrowhead Game Studios. Exceeding expectations by a wide margin means regular updates and maintenance to make sure everyone can get into the game and have a good time exploding insect and cyborg scum.

So many patches and hotfixes stacked on top of each other over time has led to technical debt, wherein gameplay suffers long-term due to more short-term decision-making. It's a challenging side effect to avoid, as support is provided on a case-by-case basis, depending on the needs of the community and the game itself.

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The current condition of Helldivers 2 is less than amazing, to the point Arrowhead's internal roadmap has been altered to get things back to where the team would like them to be. On the official Discord server and other social channels, players have been making suggestions, including that the anti-cheat software Gameguard is responsible.

Shams Jorjani, CEO of Arrowhead, is growing weary of that line of thinking. "I've answered this a bajillion times. We see no evidence of [Gameguard] having performance impact. Will investigate more," he says, responding to another user on Discord.

The tool has "negligible impact," he adds, calling it a "boogeyman," while conceding it's worth one more, definitive, deeper look before crossing off entirely. Whatever changes manifest, don't bet on Gameguard going anywhere for the time being.

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