Helldivers 2 announces 'biggest update yet' dropping in August

The hype for Sony's co-op third person shooter Helldivers 2 has subsided a little since its release back in February, but a newly announced update is hoping to draw players back in.

To clarify, Helldivers 2 is still wildly popular and regularly pulls in over 30,000 players every day on Steam alone. When compared to initial peak of almost half a million daily players on Steam, this decrease might look worse than it actually is.

Games rarely ever see player numbers increase past their initial month of release, and recent big hitters such as Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree are obviously going to lead to a temporary decrease. The overwhelming majority of AAA titles would be thrilled to still be pulling in 3,000 daily players, let alone 30,000 (shout out to the 130 or so people currently playing Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League)

Sony and developer Arrowhead Game Studios clearly want Helldivers 2 players to stick with the game long into the future though, especially if the newly announced "Escalation of Freedom" update is anything to go by.

The juiciest feature in the new update is the inclusion of a brand new, tenth difficulty setting: Super Helldive.

The press release described the Super Helldive difficulty as "our most challenging, most relentless dive difficulty level yet", which is great news for players like me who are still struggling with missions on Combat Rating level 7.

There's also several new enemies on both the Terminid and Automaton sides for players to maim, including the return of a boss from the first Helldivers game; the Impaler.

And yet, players are seemingly most excited about the changes to Helldivers 2's matchmaking system.

The update will feature changes to how Helldivers 2 will "mitigate the problem of grief kicking". They clarified that they've "implemented a system where if a player is kicked, they will spawn into a new session as the host with all of the team’s loot from their previous session."

Loyal Helldivers 2 fans will be thrilled to hear such a big update is already less than two weeks away, and hopefully those jumping back in will stick around as a result of the announced fixes to its matchmaking system.