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Helldivers 2 developers Arrowhead have opted to pull a recently deployed variant of the shooter’s Terminid bugs offline for five weeks, in order to fix issues with them. Yep, for now you can dive onto planets like Oshaune and explore some Into the Unjust update caves without having to worry about burrowing bugs jumping out to mercilessly kick your bottom.

Rupture Warriors have been the main source of Rupture Strain ire since their arrival at the start of this month, as their ability to pop out of the Earth and instantly murder unsuspecting troops has proven tough to counter. At first, those hosting sessions were most at risk of dying like this, but Arrowhead’s attempt to rectify the issue in Tuesday’s patch seemingly put everyone in each party in an equal amount of danger, though some players did dispute this was the case.

Fast forward to now, and the studio have decided the best option is to sub the Rupture Strain out for a little while, until they can return in a more palatable form. “Our patch yesterday combined with other issues regarding the balance of the Rupture Strain have made them function in a way we did not intend,” Arrowhead community manager Katherine ‘Baskinator’ Baskin announced on the game’s Discord server. “We’re going to take the Rupture Strain offline…No other units will be affected. The improved Rupture Strain will be back online in 5 weeks.”

So, there you go, as of 5PM BST on September 17th, the Rupture Strain’s been put back in its box, and will stay there for just over a month while the devs try to persuade those warriors to give folks with machine guns and bombs a fair chance.

A comment an Arrowhead QA lead going by Jojo made in the Discord a couple of days ago sheds a bit more light as to what’s happened since the patch arrived and the Rupture Warriors started mercilessly murdering everyone, rather than just session hosts. Apparently the host focusing quirk was down to a “networking issue” that Arrowhead opted to rectify.

“That is a lot more straightforward to fix then tweaking the attacks and was causing some networking issues,” the developer explained. “So it’s unfortunate that the fix means more people are getting hit by an arguably unfair attack, but it was a needed fix. We are looking into how the rupture enemies have landed but thats a broader issue.”

That look’s clearly convinced the studio that this pulling of the enemies offline is the best course of action, so here’s hoping that when they come back online, the issue of their overtuned attacks making them very unpopular to play against will have been taken care of for the long-term.

Bugged bugs aren’t the only problem Arrowhead have had to grapple with after deploying Into the Unjust, with the days following its arrival plagued by technical gremlins that, to be fair, the studio were quick to say they’d try to sort, even if they weren’t keen on doing a patch that only featured performance tweaks.

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A major Helldivers 2 update is here, but somebody invited the wrong kind of bugs to the party. The Into the Unjust update takes the fight to Terminid strongholds, plunging Super Earth’s finest into cave systems guarded by acid-spitting bug dragons.

That’s all well and good, but a new wave of bugs (the software kind) is threatening to ruin the good times. Folks are reporting huge, inexplicable framerate drops before and during missions, others are crashing all over the place, and those new cave expeditions have introduced some annoying quirks, like a tendency to respawn on top of the level, where the only option is to fall to your death.

Helldivers 2’s technical state is bad enough that Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani spent hours yesterday responding to complaints in the Helldivers Discord, taking responsibility for the instability and explaining how Helldivers 2 has built up “technical debt” over time.

“Performance is something we’ve talked about a TON today. It’s not good enough. A fix for some of the most immediate things is being prepped,” Jorjani responded to one fan.

“The technical debt is crippling,” he responded to another. “With the Xbox release behind us, we’ll be able to take a much better stab at it. Like a double stab. With a bigger knife.”

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(Image credit: Discord)(Image credit: Discord)(Image credit: Discord)

In games, tech debt is typically associated with technical problems increasing as a game grows more complex. That’s what Helldivers 2 is going through in a big way, according to Jorjani.

Compared to other games with regular update schedules, Helldivers 2 changes a lot: An average Apex Legends update may add a new character and map element, but Helldivers 2 receives new enemy types, weapons, maps, and missions every few months. It’s enough that a studio of any size would struggle to keep it squeaky clean, and Arrowhead isn’t particularly big.

That said, Arrowhead isn’t making excuses. In a handful of responses, Jorjani reinforced that he considers the current state of the game unacceptable:

“We’ve been lax in setting standards for what’s fine.”

“This is us trying to get our shit in order: make fun content and keep tech afloat. [We’re] not quite there.”

When asked if Helldivers 2 is due for an “Operation Health” update that focuses solely on performance over content, Jorjani said he’d like to avoid that if possible.

“The way we want to operate is that every update is also a health update. But we didn’t hit the mark with this one.”

“We’d prefer not to have to do a performance-only update, but if that’s something that is needed, we’ll do it. But no one update will tackle all tech debt.”

For what it’s worth, I ran a few missions last night with minimal issues (no crashes or major framerate drops), so it’s not exactly unplayable at the moment, but other bugs that predate yesterday’s update have been grinding our gears, like one that causes audio to get horribly staticky and loud until the mission’s over.

Fingers crossed that the planned hotfix will squash the most pressing problems. Jorjani didn’t give a timeframe for such an update, but given the speed of past hotfixes, I’d be surprised if it didn’t arrive by the end of the week.

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Helldivers 2 devs Arrowhead pull new Rupture Strain bugs offline for five weeks to fix their, er, bugs

As bugs and bad performance spoil an otherwise excellent Helldivers 2 update, Arrowhead CEO says its ‘technical debt is crippling’