Helldivers 2 studio mulling “slightly lower” update frequency after hectic first few months

Even without the whole PSN debacle, Helldivers 2 has had hectic few months, with developer Arrowhead pumping out wild, game-changing updates at a furious pace. But it looks like the studio is finally ready to ease off a bit, and has said it feels a “slightly lower [update] cadence… will benefit both us, you, and the game.”

Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt first hinted at some adjustments to the studio’s current development strategy at the start of May, when he said he would be talking to the team about in-game balancing, agreeing that changes had perhaps “gone too far” in recent months. And another strategy shift has now been confirmed by Helldivers 2 community manager Twinbeard on Discord (thanks PC Gamer) when discussing an ETA on the game’s next update.

“We want to take some more time for this one and potentially between future patches,” Twinbeard explained, “since we feel cadence has probably been a bit too high to be able to maintain the quality standard we want and you deserve.”

“Patching a lot can easily disrupt work flow and takes more resources than you might think,” he added. “It needs planning, implementing, monitoring, possible tweaking in hotfixes etc. For this one we prefer to stretch it out a little, hopefully with a good result.”

As to how this slower schedule might look compared to the studio’s previous release strategy, Twinbeard says that’s still undecided. “I’d say it’s something we have to try out and get a feel for,” he told fans. “[Right now] we feel a slightly lower cadence overall will benefit both us, you, and the game.”

There’s obviously risk to messing with a winning formula so soon after launch – particularly one that’s helped propel Helldivers 2 into becoming PlayStation’s fastest-selling game ever, to the tune of 12m copies on PS5 and PC – but it’s unlikely fans will begrudge the team their hard-earned rest too much after such a chaotic and largely successful first few months.