In late April, the creators of Helldivers 2 released the "Vehicles of Oppression: 6.2.2" update for the co-op shooter. Soon after, players began to flood the game on Steam with negative reviews.
The chart shows a surge of negativity, with an average ratio of positive to negative reviews of 1 to 5. Dissatisfied community members are urging developers to fix Helldivers 2 and adjust the balance.
The update is also being discussed in the game's Discord* channel. During the discussion, one player stated that developers should listen more often to their audience. Arrowhead Game Studios boss Shams Jorjani reacted to this.
The head explained that releasing updates "is not an exact science" and it's not always possible to predict the community's reaction to patches:
Sometimes we hit the mark with updates, sometimes we don't. It's not an exact science. There have been cases where we did a lot of testing (internal and external) and got normal feedback — and in the end, the update was received much better than we expected. And the community itself also changes: one thing is liked after 10 hours of play, another after 100, a third after 1000.
Shams Jorjani also noted that when the game was released on Xbox, many new players arrived, and the overall "taste" of the community shifted. Due to the constant change in "taste," supporting the game as a service becomes "damn difficult."
- *(violates the requirements of Russian legislation)