Helldivers 2’s community is at risk of fracturing over a plan to forgo current objectives in favour of potentially disastrous meme-fueled assault

Remember Malevelon Creek? Well, if you weren’t there, man, it’s a planet that Helldivers 2 players tragically lost following some fighting so intense it spawned a litany of memes. Now, inspired by those gags, some folks are trying to incite another mass assault of it, but their serious peers reckon doing so could end up negatively impacting the current war effort.

Yup, the community’s at odds over a potentially disastrous return to the world that some folks just can’t stop thinking about - mainly because they can’t stop making Vietnam war-based jokes. If nothing else, it’s a pretty interesting case of meme evolution, with the Malevelon Creek gags that helped bring players together now fuelling a bit of rift between a few of the hardcore roleplayers and the wider group of pragmatists.

Over on the Helldivers 2 subreddit, a number of posts have been popping up over the past few days calling on folks to head back to Malevelon Creek for a big assault designed to take the planet into Space Earth hands once and for all. They’re mostly from folks who’re at least trying to commit to the bit roleplaying-wise and generally cite the typical kind of ‘avenge our fallen comrades’ language you might have seen in a lot of Malevelon-based memes.

The date they look to be aiming to get folks to return to the planet on, at least in the majority of cases, is March 16. The posts don't offer a specific or clear-cut reason behind this particular date having been chosen. It could concievably just be because those involved think staging the get together on a Saturday will allow the maximum amount of people posssioble to take part, since lots of folks work during the week.

That said, a quick Google reveals March 16 to be the date of 1968’s My Lai Massacre, an assault during the Vietnam War that saw US troops commit war crimes against Vietnamese civilians. To be clear, none of the posts mention that massacre directly, so there's a good chance this is just a coincidence. Though, it seems worth noting, given that a lot of the memes about Malevelon Creek play off of Vietnam war-related stereotypes and language, since the community's nickname for the planet, due to its environment and enemies, is Robot Vietnam. You can see why the optics of this could be seen to be bad taste, right?

Regardless of the intent, the plan hasn’t gone down well with a lot of the folks who’re busy trying to achieve the game’s current objectives. The planet that the majority of these players are urging their meme-obsessed peers to focus on instead is Draupnir, which - according to Helldivers.io, sits at a stalemate and a liberation percentage of 11.20 as of writing.

That’s with something like 30,000 players being listed as deployed on its surface, so it’s fair to say there's a big battle raging there right now. Though, there’s far from a consensus as to whether this is actually the best approach to the community’s current predicament. Some have even begun dissecting how the game’s supply lines for different planets work, just in case that offers any clues as to where best to direct the community’s attention.

We'll have to see what the majority end up doing, but as one player in the thread above argues, convincing people to help grind out wins on less glamourous or well-known planets looks like it'll be a theme going forwards, with them explaining: "The problem is that you have to explain every time why it's important, but the Creek, everyone already knows why it's important to them."

Make sure to check out our story on the game's latest patch, which dropped earlier today and delivers some highly-requested changes to heavy enemies.