crippling

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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Shams Jorjani, boss of Helldivers 2 developers Arrowhead, has taken to Discord to address the rise in reports of performance issues following the arrival of the shooter’s Into the Unjust update. In addition to admitting that the new addition has missed the mark from a stability pespective, the exec added that the game’s Xbox release now being in the rear view mirror should free up more resources to tackle performance problems.

Since the Terminid spelunking expedition-themed update arrived yesterday, players have cited an uptick in crashes that Arrowhead are already looking into, with the installation size the game’s ballooned to on PC and your usual sorts of pesky bugs also being sources of ire, at least among vocal online Helldivers.

In light of that, Arrowhead CEO Jorjani made one of his fairly regular trips to Helldivers 2’s Discord server last night, to address some of the concerns folks there were raising. “Performance is something we’ve talked about a TON today. It’s not good enough,” he admitted fairly early on. “A fix for some of the most immediate things is being prepped.”

“Nobody is saying ‘this is fine’ at Arrowhead or PlayStation,” he added an a separate post. “We are talking about what to do differently – cus we really want to release content AND keep performance in line. With [the] Xbox release behind us more resources will be available.” Jorjani made the last point a number of times, when discussing fixes for performance issues that’ve drawn ire from players on and off for a while, but have come to a head with this update.

The update isn’t the root cause of the issues. Instead, the CEO links them to a build-up of engine-related limitations he calls “technical debt”. “The technical debt is crippling,” he wrote in another of these many posts. “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.”

Jorjani reckons a single massive performance-focused update – something he said Arrowhead would “prefer not to have to do”, but will if it’s “needed” – wouldn’t be enough to tackle all of this tech debt. He also suggested that pulling all the game’s developers off of creating new additions, like warbonds, and putting them onto fixes isn’t the simple solution it might seem, writing: “if we could put every single soul on just performance/stability and significantly improve those we would – but not everyone can make an impact on performance and the issues that need to be fixed are complex and take time to work at.”

I didn’t run into any major issues while dipping my toe into the update last night, but here’s hoping Arrowhead can offer some performance relief soon. For now, their CEO doesn’t reckon this uptick in player dissatisfaction has put the shooter back in as dire straits as it found itself following the Escalation of Freedom update last year. The studio ended up unveiling a 60-day plan of tweaks, in an effort to turn around player sentiment back then.

While acknowledging there are “definitely some similarities” between the two situations, Jorjani argued that this time it at least isn’t a double whammy of player frustrations about how the game plays mechanic-wise and how it runs. “Since then, I think it’s safe to say we’ve fixed one thing and kept wobbling on the other,” he wrote. “I hope we proved back then that we won’t give up till we get it right.”

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

Arrowhead will target Helldivers 2’s “crippling” tech issues now Xbox release is sorted, but would rather not do a “performance-only update”