Helldivers 2 queue times are driving players so out of their minds that they're now squatting servers
Helldivers 2 players are doing the most ridiculous things to stay logged into the game's servers, just so they don't hit a log-in screen.
Though its numbers may be nowhere near as large as something like Palworld, the popularity of Helldivers 2 somehow appears to be more tangible. The game continues to break its concurrent player record, with the most recent (on Steam) being 411,359 - reached just nine hours ago.
The game has long had server problems, which affected everything from delayed/failed mission rewards, matchmaking headaches, all the way to preventing players from being able to log in at all. It’s no surprise, then, that this continued rise in popularity has caused more troubles.
Many of the existing server capacity issues were compounded over the weekend, thanks to another jump in player numbers. This was the game’s roughest two-day period yet, and it lead developer Arrowhead to take the unusual step of capping the concurrent player count.
As it stands right now, thanks to recent patches, there’s effectively a log-in queue. This is meant to better communicate to players what’s actually happening, and it’s a big upgrade over the launch system, which offered no feedback.
As with any form of queue for a popular game, long log-in times are to be expected. Unfortunately - and quite bizarrely - this has lead some players to keep the game running, sometimes overnight, just to not lose their spot.
Over on the Helldivers subreddit, and the game’s Discord server, some people are bragging about leaving their game running for hours in order to avoid the log-in queue. On PlayStation 5, some have suggested putting the console in Rest Mode to prevent the game from shutting down entirely and logging them out of the servers.
This obviously meant that servers have been getting unnecessarily filled up with AFK players, which is actually a problem other popular online games have run into in the past. The solution? An AFK timer that kicks players out after a certain period of inactivity.
This is something the team at Arrowhead is looking into, as confirmed by game creative director and studio CEO, Johan Pilestedt, on Twitter. Pilestedt also shared that fixing server issues is not a matter of simply renting more server space.
“It's not a matter of money or buying more servers,” he said, responding to a fan on Twitter. “It's a matter of labour. We need to optimize the backend code. We are hitting some real limits.”
The good news is that some of the "24/7" work being done will result in a new update this week on PC and PS5. The patch will, unsurprisingly, work to address the core problems of matchmaking, server load, and log-in times. The studio’s production director warned, however, that “no single update will solve all the issues.” as it’s simply a problem that requires constant work.
If you’re among the thousands of players who just got into this excellent co-op shooter, don’t sleep on our informative Helldivers 2 tips. This is a game that doesn’t tell you a lot about its mechanics, and the link has plenty of wisdom for you.