It's not just Helldivers 2 players that're disappointed with how the Escalation of Freedom update's played out, Arrowhead's CEO says many devs are too

Helldivers 2 studio Arrowhead’s CEO has revealed that it basically seems like close to no one - players or developers - involved with the game has been left happy following the deployment of the Escalation of Freedom update and the backlash that’s followed.

If you’re out of the loop, the inclusion of some nerfs to fire damage in the update’s changes well and truly reignited the discourse as to whether Arrowhead’s going in the right direction when it comes to its tweaks. Amid all the debate about limiting meta weapons vs just letting people have fun with them, the game’s recent Steam reviews dropped to “mixed” last week, and currently still sit at that mark.

As part of bunch of responses to players on the game’s Discord server over the weekend, seemingly as part of his ongoing efforts to gather plenty of player feedback from numerous places, Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani replied to one player asking how the team working on the game has felt about the response it’s gotten following the update.

“I haven't spoken to everyone of course - but many of us are disappointed on a few levels,” Jorjani revealed, “On the one hand the update had a bunch of nice stuff that aren't getting talked about. Maybe deservedly so - as many aren't happy with the latest balance round. I think more broadly it also has us discussing the path ahead and what we can do to avoid this situation again.”

The CEO went on to acknowledge that a lot of players have been “fairly” pointing out that this isn’t the first time the studio’s ended up in this position when it’s come to balance patches. “I hate sounding like a broken record” he continued, before providing a couple of explanations as to why things haven’t changed in terms of how such things are delivered as players might have hoped.

“We have long lead times on development, ie what you see is the result of weeks and months of development work, some changes take time before they show,” Jorjani said, “Not a whole lot of time has passed between now and the June balance round and most people are still on vacation.”

That said, the CEO still emphasised that the studio isn’t looking to make excuses. “We want every release to be a step in the right direction. Constant improvement. I don't think we feel this was that. so we need to do better. It's also clear that me [that] just talking about it isn't enough. Actions matter.”

In a separate response, Jorjani also confirmed that the studio will “keep tweaking” the new difficulty 10 helldives based on player feedback, with these having faced criticism in terms of enemies and rewards.

What changes, if any, would you like Arrowhead to make to Helldivers 2 in order to get the majority of the community back on side? Let us know below!