Helldivers 2 continues to struggle with log-in, matchmaking and reward-claiming issues as it soars past 360,00 concurrent players

The last few days have been pretty wild for Helldivers 2. The sequel took off immediately, quickly becoming Sony’s biggest launch on PC, surpassing God of War. Server issues couldn’t prevent the positive word of mouth from spreading, and the co-op shooter continued to grow in popularity.

But that has sadly exacerbated all of the connectivity, and server-related problems that those who jumped in early are very familiar with. The good news is that things have only gotten better.

Over the weekend, Helldivers 2 broke its Steam concurrent player record, almost doubling its sub-80,000 launch figure with nearly 145,000 players logged in simultaneously on Sunday. Developer Arrowhead, keenly aware of all the existing issues, was forced to deal with an increase in player activity as it continued working on dealing with all the launch pains.

The developer dropped a small patch that fixed several matchmaking problems, though it added that there’s still a lot more to be done. Later, the game’s creative director and studio CEO, Johan Pilestedt, offered a bit more detail on how the last few days transpired.

As Pilestedt explained, the game’s servers simply weren’t ready for the influx of players. Initially, servers had a rate limit of 10,000 per minute, and a concurrent player limit of 250,000. What this means is that only 10,000 could attempt to log in each minute, and servers could only support a total of 250,000 concurrent players.

Those limits were increased to 20,000 per minute, and 360,000 concurrent respectively. It wasn’t enough, however, because according to the creative director, it took Helldivers 2 five-and-a-half minutes to break 360,000 concurrent (presumably across PS5 and PC).

If you jumped in over the weekend, you’ll no doubt be very familiar with the ‘Failed to connect to server’ issue, which prevents you from even getting past the log-in screen. Pilestedt said that running into this either means too many players are attempting to connect at the same time, or that servers are at capacity. In other words, you should keep trying until you get in. Three “rapid fixes” were deployed following server maintenance over the weekend, intended to address log-in issues, fix rewards not being handed out properly, and increase server capacity.

However, the missing rewards problem remains the most stubborn. Though things improved, it won’t be entirely fixed without server maintenance. The high number of players means servers have been struggling to track rewards, too.

“I know the progression issue is frustrating, especially for newer divers that want to unlock sweet gear,” wrote Pilestedt. “For now, please once again accept our sincere apologies for the issues you’re facing and rest assured, we’re doing our utmost to make it right.”

Adding, “In order to do so, right now it is crucial that our team gets some sleep and we will be back at this again in a few hours.”

So there you have it. If you can’t immediately log in, keep trying. If you’re unable to claim your rewards, you could wait or relaunch the game.