Helldivers 2‘s recent Steam reviews have fallen to a “mixed” rating amid ongoing performance issues that Arrowhead CEO Shams Joranji has now acknowledged. Despite cultivating a wide and active fanbase since its February 2024 release, the multiplayer shooter has run into some difficulty lately. The team behind Helldivers 2 has assured players that it’s working on optimizations, but that hasn’t been enough to stop widespread negative feedback.
While the game’s PC performance may be causing a stir right now, the title is still going strong on some platforms. In late August, Helldivers 2 sold nearly a million copies on Xbox in just one week of the Sony-published game coming to competitors’ consoles. That was enough to solidify it as the top paid game on Xbox, but despite that success, Helldivers 2 is still grappling with some significant challenges elsewhere.
Recent Helldivers 2 Steam Reviews Are Mixed Amid Performance Issues
Just 69% of Helldivers 2′s Steam reviews in the past 30 days are positive, and Joranji has addressed the criticism on Discord, saying Arrowhead is “well aware” that the game’s stability and performance “isn’t where it should be.” He explained that the team is working hard to right those wrongs, but did not offer a timeline on when fans can expect fixes. Earlier in September, Helldivers 2 received two updates in the same week as devs worked to polish the game, but many negative reviews have still come out since then, so the issues are not over yet.
While the shooter’s overall reviews remain “mostly positive” and lifetime English language reviews are even “very positive,” things have shifted over the past month. Several users have expressed frustration with Helldivers 2‘s PC file size, lack of performance benefits for SSDs, freezing, lag, and other issues. Some have claimed that Arrowhead has spent too much time on the game’s Xbox version and story updates and not enough effort on optimizations and bug fixes. Developers have said that such improvements are a priority, but for now, it seems like the performance problems are persistent.
This is not the first time the game has faced a wave of negative feedback. In August 2024, Helldivers 2 was review-bombed over server issues and complaints about some weapons getting nerfed and a lack of enemy variety. Before then, the title also withstood review-bombing over matchmaking errors and PlayStation Network requirements. Helldivers 2 has a history of overcoming waves of backlash, so there may be some amount of hope to take in that, but the future remains uncertain. Patches and optimizations may come, but things are not where fans would like them to be for now.