Helldivers 2's recent Steam reviews slide down to mixed amid nerf backlash, and Arrowhead's "having a lot of internal discussions about the best course of action"

Following the weapon balancing changes that arrived alongside Helldivers 2’s Escalation of Freedom earlier this week, a pretty big backlash from players to some fire damage nerfs has ensued, and, well, it’s now led the game’s recent Steam reviews to dip from “mostly positive” to “mixed”.

Arrowhead, to be fair, definitely hasn’t responded to the criticism from folks who think the tweaks to fire-based weaponry has made the game less fun in a fashion they’ve previously indicated they’re not fans of by burying its head in the sand.

First, if you take a look at the game’s Steam page, while its overall reviews are still mostly positive, the recent ones are now mixed, thanks to over 2,000 fresh negative ones having rolled in since August 6.

As I said, Arrowhead certainly isn’t hiding from that and the complaints it’s been getting via Reddit, Discord, and in these reviews.

“We have heard your feedback about our change to fire and how it has affected flamethrowers, and we appreciate our community's continued honesty about how they feel about Helldivers 2,” community manager Baskinator wrote in today’s announcement of the Freedom’s Flame warbond going live, “We're now having a lot of internal discussions about the best course of action.”

“In the meantime,” they added, “we don't want to go back on our promise of a new warbond. So here it is, flames and all…”

Outside of this, Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani has continued to address the controversy via Twitter. “I've gotten like over 200 tweets today with suggestions, opinions and thoughts on what people think,” he wrote in one thread, “We have a lot of discussions going on internally at the studio as well as we evaluate this update and plan ahead.

“How we do it is that we look at different things and tweak on different time spans. There's a hotfix/small patch coming at some point and that will focus on bugs and might include some balance changes. Other things need time to cook a bit more.”

He also added in response to one player raising the idea of a test server which would allow groups of players to test out change or new additions prior them going live that such a feature is “on the wishlist”.

Are you planning to hop into Helldivers today to check out the the Freedom’s Flame warbond despite the ongoing nerf controversy? Let us know below!