In an official chat with fans, Arrowhead's director of product, Alex Bolle, explained that the previous update release schedule for Helldivers 2 involved adding major features to the build at the "very last stage," which led to unforeseen errors.
For a long time, our features were considered ready and implemented into the release build at the very last moment. We are working with teams to stop this practice.
According to the director, the studio uses the term "functional" as the minimum standard for implementing features into the game. As an example, he cited Hive Lords — an element that made it into the release in a "functional" but "very raw" form, as noted by players.