Arrowhead has rolled out a big Helldivers 2 update (version 01.000.400), the patch notes for which reveal plenty of buffs for stratagems and weapons. Arrowhead recently said that Helldivers 2 updates will slow down going forward, making room for major patches and content additions.

Helldivers 2 update 01.000.400 patch notes (June 13, 2024)

Complete patch notes for today’s PS5 and PC update are as follows:

Balancing

A/MLS-4X Rocket Sentry

• Decreased spread
• Prioritize larger targets
• Increased target distance from 75 to 100m
• Decreased Rockets per salvo 2 to 1 (to get a better ammo economy)
• Increased explosion radius from 1m to 4m
• Decreased explosion armor penetration (Explosion can no longer damage heavy armored enemies. The projectile still has enough AP to damage heavily armored targets.)
• Increased projectile damage from 200 to 300

A/MG-43 Machine gun sentry

• Reduced cooldown from 180 sec to 120 sec.

A/MG-43 Machine gun Sentry, A/G-16 Gatling Sentry, A/MLS-4X Rocket Sentry, A/AC-8 Autocannon Sentry, A/M-12 Mortar Sentry, A/M-23 EMS Mortar Sentry:

• Increased durability* from 0% to 80%

E/MG-101 HMG Emplacement

• Increased rotation speed by 100%

MD-6 Anti-Personnel Minefield

• Increased explosion damage from 250 to 350

MD-I4 Incendiary Mines

• Increased explosion damage from 150 to 210

Orbital Gatling

• Increased fire rate by 25%
• Increased rounds per salvo from 30 to 60
• Increased armor penetration (Can damage heavy armored enemies)
• Decreased cooldown from 80 sec to 70 sec

Orbital Precision strike

• Decreased cooldown from 100 sec to 90 sec
• Decreased Spawn/Call-in time from 4 sec to 2 sec

Orbital Airburst Strike

• Decreased cooldown from 120 sec to 100 sec

Eagle 110MM Rocket Pods

While these changes may look like a straight up nerf, that is not the intention. Please see the blogpost for more information.

• Improved targeting
• Increased projectile armor penetration (now does 100% damage to heavily armored enemies instead of 50%)
• Decreased projectile damage 600 to 250 (to compensate for the improved targeting and the extra damage from the increased armor penetration.)
• Decreased explosion armor penetration (explosion can no longer damage heavily armored enemies)

Eagle Strafing Run

• Increased uses from 3 to 4
• Increased armor penetration, can now damage heavily armored enemies.

GL-21 Grenade Launcher

• Increased explosion damage by from 350 to 400

MG-206 Heavy Machine Gun

• Increased projectile damage from 100 to 150
• Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 23% to 33%
• Decreased fire rate from 450/750/900 to 450/600/750
• Decreased reload time from 7 to 5.5 sec
• Increased stagger strength

MG-43 Machine Gun

• Decreased reload time from 4 to 3.5 seconds
• Increased max amount of Magazines from 3 to 4

MG-43 Machine Gun, A/MG-43 Machine gun Sentry, A/G-16 Gatling Sentry and EXO-45 Patriot Exosuits Gatling

• Increased projectile damage from 80 to 90
• Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 7.5% to 25%

AR-23 Liberator, M-105 Stalwart and AX/AR-23 “Guard dog”

• Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 10% to 23%

AR-23C Liberator Concussive

• Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 23% to 35%

BR-14 Adjudicator

• Increased magazine capacity from 25 to 30
• Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 10% to 20%

AR-61 Tenderizer

• Increased projectile damage from 60 to 95
• Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 10% to 17%
• Decreased ammo capacity from 35 to 30
• Decreased number of magazines from 10 to 8
• Increased stagger strength

PLAS-101 Purifier

• Increased projectile armor penetration to be the same as the explosion
• Decreased explosion damage falloff

CB-9 Explosive Crossbow

• Increased explosion armor penetration to be the same as the projectile
• Increased demolition strength (Can destroy Bug holes and Bot Fabricator buildings)
• Added medium penetration tag

R-36 Eruptor

• Increased total damage from 420 to 570 damage per shot

R-63 Diligence

• Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 10% to 25%. *Some enemies have durable body parts that receive only a portion of base damage from projectiles

Other

• Updated Recoil stance modifiers: We made changes to the recoil stance modifiers to make them more consistent and also reward being prone more. Almost all of them will improve the recoil and only two have been made worse (and only by 10%).

Gameplay

General

• Removed operation modifier AA-Defenses: Reducing the stratagem slots by 1
  • We want to look over the operation modifiers in the future. Right now there are too few of them which become repetitive and the ones we have do not create variety or promote different playstyles. For now, we removed this one because it only encourages the players to bring the best stratagems and does not promote variety.
• Disabled the Retrieve Essential Personnel defend event mission for the time being
  • This is to give the mission the proper attention and care that it deserves as it is now deemed not fun enough or performing as we want it to.
• Super Samples
  • Super samples now spawn on difficulty 6. The reason for this change is that we feel that their existence only on difficulty 7+ forced some players to play the game on a harder difficulty than they wanted to comfortably play on. We do however still want a gating of them but a less punishing one.
• The SEAF Artillery stratagem is no longer blocked by stratagem jammers or Ion Storms, and is available after the mission timer ends and the destroyer leaves close orbit.
• Enemies in melee range of the gates in the Evacuate High-Value Assets mission will now attack it more consistently.
• Added the ability to chat from in-game menus and mission loading screen.
• Updated some first person crosshairs to improve readability.

Social

• Invite-Only lobbies are now supported

Armors

• New armor passive Peak Physique (+50% melee damage, +30% weapon ergonomics)

Planet Hazards

• Spike Plant
  • The spike plant that appears on certain planets has been reworked.
  • No longer causes bleed or stamina drain if hit by the plant explosion or spikes.
  • Now “pops” three times sending spikes everywhere, dealing increased damage.
• Fire Tornados
  • Fire tornados have had their behavior changed, they should no longer feel like they actively respond to player movement, and should move more randomly.
  • While a fire tornado storm takes place, enemy vision is reduced. Player vision is unaffected.
  • Fire tornados being more random should result in more variance in situations players find themselves in. Tornados are significantly less likely to pile up and overlap on extraction points or objectives, and will generally be a bit easier to deal with.
• Tremors
  • Tremors have had their spawning tweaked to be slightly more random.
  • Tremors have had their epicenter size and effect range increased.
  • These changes should result in more situations where enemies away from the player get stunned, as well as reducing how consistently the player has a tremor occur next to them.
• Visibility
  • A lot of planets have had their fog amounts tweaked to be a bit less harsh and dense, to provide less fatigue from constantly fighting on planets with bad visibility. We still intend there to be foggy planets with worse visibility, but the balance was a bit off.
  • Desert planets such as Erata Prime, Chort Bay, Hellmire, and similar.
  • Highlands planets such as Varylia 5, Matar Bay, Oshaune, and similar.
  • Artificial light sources have had their intensity rebalanced and reduced across the board to fix situations of lights completely blinding the player.
• Unexploded Hellbomb
  • The unexploded malfunctioning hellbombs that can sometimes be found on planets will now explode immediately if hit with strong explosions or heavy weaponry. They will still have the same delay if hit by small arms fire or weaker attacks.
• Vegetation
  • Vegetation that’s large enough to slow the player now has an extra function. When inside the vegetation helldivers will be harder to detect, reducing their detection range by enemies. This effect stacks with other detection reducing effects such as nighttime, being crouched or prone, or things such as the scout armor passive.
• Ion Storms
  • Added additional VFX for Ion Storms.

Enemies

• Acid effect
  • The acid effect applied by hunters, bug mines, etc. now allows you to sprint while under the effect and slows you by 30% instead of 50%. Duration has been increased from 3 to 4 seconds. These changes are intended to make it less punishing for players to be slowed while fighting the Terminids, This allows us to use it in more places without making the experience very punishing, for example the Bile Spewers.
• Armored enemy balance
  • We have toned down the amount of heavily armored enemies like Bile Titans, Chargers on higher difficulties and instead spawn more hordes of smaller enemies, the difference should be quite noticeable and the amount should be at least 30% less than before during bug breaches. We have also toned down slightly how many Hulks that spawn for the Automatons. Our intent is to ease up on the demand of anti-tank weapons and by having more of the other enemies give a better incentive for the group to bring stratagems and weapons that take care of hordes.
• Patrols
  • Patrol spawning is now back to how it worked before patch 01.000.300 with some slight tweaks so that the levels are less empty if you are far away from important locations with enemy presence.
• Stunning
  • Medium and large sized enemies now don’t get stunned as easily. This will not affect the stratagems that stun, and will mostly just affect how easily the Pummeler can stun larger enemies.

Terminids

• Bile Spewers & Nursing Spewers
  • Spewers will now get slowed if they lose their legs.
  • Spewer puke now applies the acid effect.
  • Spewer puke now can only damage helldivers up to 4 times per second and the helldiver cannot take damage multiple times from the same projectile. This should reduce instances where you are instantly killed by it.
• Bile Titan
  • The Bile Titan’s head is slightly less durable against weaker anti-tank weapons. It’s not a large change, and will mostly matter for weapons like the railgun.

The Bile Titan’s puke can now only damage the helldiver 4 times per second and the helldiver cannot take damage multiple times from the same projectile. The damage is still very deadly so running through their puke is not recommended. Their puke now also has a bigger spread.

• Charger Behemoth

The Charger Behemoth is now joining the battle on higher difficulties, it can now also take more damage than before. This enables us to spawn fewer chargers but still retain the difficulty.

• Chargers
  • Will now only show bleedout effects from the body if the bleedout state has started. It can still show bleedout effects from the mouth without having started the bleedout state.

Automatons

• Hulk Scorcher
  • The Hulk’s flamethrower now does less damage and cannot damage helldivers more than 4 times per second. In addition, the helldiver cannot be damaged multiple times by the same flame projectile. This should reduce instances where you are instantly killed by it.
• Automaton Tanks
  • The Tank armor value on the front has been lowered to be the same as the non-vent sections on the rear of the tank. The intent was initially that it was supposed to be more armored in the front, but the visual language did not show that.
  • The vents on the back of the Tanks turret still has the same armor value as before, but will check for explosion directions correctly now.
• The damage of exploding automaton jump packs has been decreased by 50%, it will still set you on fire though.

Galactic War

Introducing Supply Lines & Origin of Attacks:

Supply lines were previously not shown on the Galactic War map to reduce clutter and improve readability. However based on the feedback from our community we have made an implementation showing them on the map. This solution tries to maintain the general readability while still exposing the system to players in game.

You will now also be able to see which planet an attack is originating from, potentially allowing for the community to stop the attack at its source.

We have also updated visuals in the sector and planet info pop-ups.

Fixes

• The FAF-14 Spear targeting has been reworked and should now function much better. However it has lost the ability to target Automaton spawners, this is not intended and will be fixed in the future.
• Intense Heat and Extreme Cold environmental modifiers will now affect the Quasar Cannon’s reload speed and will show correctly in the HUD.
  • Reload speed on Cold planets -2.5 sec
  • Reload speed on Hot planets +2.5 sec
• The radar pulse that detects enemies on the mini-map is now visible.
• Most of Automatons weapons have now gotten tighter limits to how much the projectile they shoot can deviate from its weapons muzzle angle. What this means is that situations where devastators shoot sideways and similar should be fixed.
• The weapons of the Exosuits are now allowed small adjustments in the angle they fire their projectiles versus their muzzle angle. This should make their weapons more accurate.
• Ballistic shield now collides with grenades.
• The unblock button should no longer disappear from the social menu.
• Blocked players can no longer join the blockers lobby through recent players.
• Fixed a bug where enemies killed, missions played, and missions completed stats would not be properly displayed in armory.
• Fixed issue where the player can throw an unlimited amount of grenades by pressing the “Quick grenade” button right after closing the Stratagem menu.
  • Helldiver now also switches to the last active weapon when out of grenades, fixing the issue where they would be holding a stratagem ball without the stratagem menu being open.
• Fixed some text overlap in various locations.
• The burning effect applied to the player when a combat walker dies is now a normal burn. The intent is that you should be able to escape it alive. But you will be on fire so hit the ground!
• The extraction shuttle can no longer take damage preventing extraction. New high grade materials directly from Super Earth R&D have been utilized.
• On PC you can now navigate the super credits menu with “WASD” keys
• Fixed an issue where sample count in missions were incorrectly displayed
• Levels no longer generate with blocked areas preventing player progression.
• Your Ships bridge is no longer cast in perpetual shadow.
• Reduced situations where blue stratagems would bounce when placed next to the detector tower.
• The warbond menu now displays correct emote & victory poses in the thumbnail.
• War Medals cap is now displayed in the UI.
• Fixed a bug where the Helldivers armor could appear invisible for other players.
• Refined player reporting UI.
• Fixed issue where Helldivers could be launched into the air if close to a Bile Titan or Factory Strider corpse.
• Fix for Factory Strider sometimes spawned an extra model after being destroyed.
• Reduced situations where helldivers could spontaneously die while walking into seemingly walkable valleys on some planets.
• Fixed rare issue on arctic planets where players could spontaneously die close to large bodies of water.
• Fixed Pelican-1 sometimes leaving immediately after any player gets onboard.
• Fixed bug where helldiver could get stuck in grenade idle state after throwing grenades
• Fixed Superior Packing Methodology not working for other peers.
• Recent Players list will now include hot-joining players.
• Relaxed disconnection policy for PC users.
• Fixed an issue where previous sessions’ player names might not be saved correctly when restarting.
• Defend event attack origin now visualized when hovering the planet with the defend event or the attack origin planet.
• Implemented outlines for previously poorly readable texts.

Crash Fixes

• General crash fixes.
• Fix for a crash that could occur when applying wounds to multiple enemies.
• PlayStation Only: Fixed an issue that would sometimes cause a crash when switching between Quality and Performance mode.
• Fix for a crash when a player leaves after all their railguns have exploded.
• Fix for crash that could occur when rejoining a previous session
• Fix for crash that occurred when trying to throw a snowball in ADS mode
• Fix for potential crash when loadout is aborted during hotjoin.
• Fix for rare crash linked to leaving a session while aiming a weapon.

The post Big Helldivers 2 Update 01.000.400 Buffs Stratagems and Weapons appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Sony is very pleased with Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 sales. In its latest investor presentation, the company called it a “great success” and one of PlayStation’s biggest first-party tentpoles.

Sony satisfied with Spider-Man 2 and Helldivers 2 sales

Sony spotlighted the sales of Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man 2 during the presentation. The company noted that it sold over 11 million units as of April 20, 2024. It was also pleased with the game’s critical reception, noting its 90% rating on Metacritic.

Of course, Spider-Man 2 hasn’t been Sony’s only game with impressive sales. The company divides its portfolio into tentpole games from established Studios and IPs, “transformational” live-service games with ongoing content, and more experimental games. The presentation didn’t focus as much on the third category. However, it highlighted Arrowhead Game Studios’ Helldivers 2 as a successful transformational title. Launched on PC and PS5, Sony revealed that it sold over 12 million units as of May 5, 2024.

The presentation also noted that PlayStation 5 is Sony’s highest-earning console generation, generating over $106 billion from fiscal years 2020 to 2023. Sales have climbed steadily since 2020, and the new console now has as many monthly active users as PS4. Players also spend a combined 2.4 billion hours gaming on PS5, compared to 1.4 billion on PS4.

The PS5 owes its success to various factors, though there’s no denying the impact of its strong first-party lineup. It’s hard to say how big a role Spider-Man 2 and Helldivers 2 specifically played in attracting users. However, with a combined 23+ million in sales, it’s easy to see why Sony is happy with their performance.

The post Spider-Man 2 PS5 Sales Are a ‘Great Success,’ Sony Reveals appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Stellar Blade has unquestionably been a success for developer Shift Up and publisher Sony. According to market analysts, the action-adventure game is now one of the year’s best-selling games.

Stellar Blade was April’s best-selling game

“Stellar Blade debuted as the best-selling premium game of April and the #16 best-selling game of 2024 year-to-date,” said Mat Piscatella from data analytics company Circana. “Stellar Blade was the only new release in April to rank among the month’s top 20 best-selling premium video games.” Shift Up released the action-adventure game as a PlayStation 5 exclusive on April 26.

Helldivers 2, another Sony-published title, retained its position as the month’s second-best-selling game. Meanwhile, Call of Duty Modern Warfare III rose from 4th to 3rd, with Sea of Thieves and Fallout 4 jumping from #55 and #87 to #4 and #5. Sea of Thieves PS5 port launched on April 30, explaining its sudden jump in popularity. Meanwhile, Fallout 4’s revival can be attributed to the success of the recent Amazon Prime show.

MLB The Show 24 dropped from 3rd to 6th, with Dragon’s Dogma 2 dropping from #1 to #7. It’s followed by Fallout 76, which also rode the Amazon bump all the way from #159 up to #8. Finally, Hogwarts Legacy rose slightly from #10 to #9, with EA Sports FC 24 rising from #12 to #10. Other notable changes include Rise of the Ronin falling from #5 to #11 and Princess Peach Showtime dropping from #6 to #15.

The post Stellar Blade Tops US Sales Chart, Already One of 2024’s Best-Sellers appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Arrowhead Game Studios has said that it’ll space out Helldivers 2 updates a little bit more going forward, following a hectic few months since launch in February 2024. The company had previously indicated that it needs to strike a balance between adding new content and fixing the game to “stay relevant” in the live service space.

Helldivers 2 updates will be spaced out to ensure quality and consistency

Addressing fans on Discord who expected Helldivers 2 to receive another patch, Arrowhead said that it wants to take its time to maintain “the quality standard we want and you deserve.” The dev added that pushing out patches and fixes too quickly can “easily disrupt work flow” and consume resources.

“It needs planning, implementing, monitoring, possibly tweaking in hotfixes,” Arrowhead wrote. “For this one we prefer to stretch it out a little, hopefully with a good result.” The studio added that a “lower cadence overall” will benefit both Helldivers 2 and its community.

Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt previously said that there’s a lot of pressure to continue fixing live service games, but if developers don’t pause to add new content along the way, they risk shedding players. “We want to deliver the best in the industry and we are calibrating our efforts of fixing vs. new stuff,” Pilestedt said at the time.

The post Helldivers 2 Updates to Slow Down Going Forward appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Helldivers 2’s Steam reviews are turning around after Sony backtracked on requiring a PlayStation Network account. However, it may be some time before the damage is fully reversed.

Helldivers 2 back up to ‘Mostly Positive’ on Steam

Helldivers 2’s Steam page was swamped with negative reviews after Sony announced the PSN requirement last week. Sony reversed course on Monday, and the game’s Steam reviews have slowly climbed. After dropping to “Mixed” over the weekend, its overall review score is back up to “Mostly Positive.” Almost 62,000 players left a positive review on Monday, with nearly 30,000 additional players doing so over the next few days.

“This game is so good that we even had a campaign mission in real life,” one player joked in their positive review of Helldivers 2. “MAJOR ORDER COMPLETE,” another reads in all caps. However, not everyone thinks dropping the controversial PSN requirement is enough to win back their approval. Steam user Foxtrot39, while acknowledging this is a start, wrote that they won’t change their review until Sony relists the game in countries where it was removed.

Fortunately, Foxtrot39 isn’t the only one who wants to see Helldivers 2 back up everywhere. Sony removed it from 177 countries where PSN isn’t available. However, now that the PSN requirement is gone, Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt seeks to get the game relisted.

The new outpouring of support doesn’t quite balance out the pushback, with over 200,000 users leaving negative reviews between May 3 and May 6. The review bombing started last Friday and peaked over the weekend, with over 94,000 negative reviews on Sunday alone. Still, it shows that many Helldivers 2 fans are willing to forgive publishers that listen to their customers.

The post Helldivers 2 Steam Reviews Climbing Again After Sony Backtrack appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Arrowhead Games Studio CEO Johan Pilestedt has revealed the studio is working to reverse the Helldivers 2 delists that occurred on Steam following the reintroduction of the need for a PSN account to play the game. The game was removed from sale in 177 countries where PSN isn’t available and is yet to return.

Arrowhead is working with PlayStation and Valve to reverse the decision

Helldivers Alerts spotted that Pilestedt told the game’s concerned players on Discord that he is working with PlayStation and Valve to undo Helldivers 2’s delisting on Steam in 177 countries. The developer “won’t rest in my desire to have it available everywhere.”

At the end of last week, Sony tried to reinstate the requirement that current PC players would need a PSN account to play the game after June 4. As PSN isn’t available in a large number of countries in which the game had already been sold, it was removed from the Steam marketplace in those locations.

Since then, Sony has reversed course, and the update that would have added the PSN requirement “will not be moving forward.” At the time, Pilestedt thanked PlayStation for “quickly and effectively making the decision” but admitted it had been “a herculean effort.”

Neither Sony nor Valve have commented on the game’s delisting and Pilestedt has hinted the decision may not be down to him. He previously told players “I don’t have the final say” when it came to reversing the PSN requirement, and it’s fair to assume the same can be said for reversing the delistings.

Despite the controversy, today’s update has added the new premium Polar Patriots Warbond featuring new armors, capes, primary weapons, secondary weapons/utilities, capes, banners, and victory poses. The update went ahead with blessing of the Helldivers 2 community following a poll to determine whether it was “tone deaf to release a new (paid) Warbond this soon.”

The post Arrowhead Wants to Reverse Helldivers 2 Delists appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Arrowhead Game Studios has fired Helldivers 2 community manager following the controversy surrounding mandatory PSN linking on PC. The backlash led to Sony pulling the plug on PSN account integration on PC, but the community manager — only known as “Spitz” on Discord — played a rather strange role in the fiasco.

Helldivers 2 CM encouraged review bombing and refunds amidst PSN outrage

Spitz, who frequently bumped heads with the Helldivers 2 community, switched sides during the backlash and encouraged players to leave negative reviews for Helldivers 2 as well as request refunds from Steam. Spitz claimed that doing so would help Arrowhead as it battled Sony over the PSN decision, and thought Sony wouldn’t read their Discord messages. Well, turns out, they were wrong.

Screenshots of Spitz encouraging refunds and review bombings made rounds everywhere, and once the dust settled, they were let go. In screenshots captured by Wccftech, Spitz admitted that it isn’t a “good idea” to do what they did, but also showed no remorse. They said that they enjoyed working with Arrowhead and would have loved to continue, but they certainly don’t have that choice now.

Some players are now rallying behind Spitz and attempting to have their firing overturned, but others have said that they aren’t sad to see them go considering their history with players.

The post Helldivers 2 Community Manager Fired After PSN Controversy appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Arrowhead has released Helldivers 2 update 01.000.302 on the PS5 and PC — the game’s first patch since the PSN integration showdown with PC players. The patch notes reveal damage-over-time (DoT) and scope fixes, among other adjustments.

Helldivers 2 update 01.000.302 patch notes (May 7, 2024)

Complete patch notes are as follows:

Overview

• Some weapon and enemy balancing
• Crash fixes
• Social Menu issues
• DoT damage fix
• Misaligned scopes fix
• General fixes and improvements

Balancing

Primary, Secondary, & Support Weapons

• R-9 Eruptor
  • Increased explosion damage by 40 and removed shrapnel from the explosion
  • This is to avoid cases in which players would randomly one-shot themselves or their teammates in a huge radius around the explosion

Enemies

• Increased Shrieker sight and hearing range slightly.
• Increased Gunship hearing range slightly.

Fixes

Gameplay

• We have fixed issues with the way Damage-over-time effects were being applied. This should fix issues where only the network session owner could apply them, and other cases where they would be applied inconsistently.
• Firing the Punisher Plasma while wearing a shield backpack no longer damages the Helldiver
• Fixed issues with some weapon scopes not being aligned in First-Person-View.
• The sound when stimming no longer plays while being interrupted
• Major orders with the “Kill task” now track score correctly. Previously it counted the entire squad’s kills once for each player, meaning it would multiply the score by the number of people on the mission; this is now amended.
• Helldivers can no longer land on tall rocks in the “Horde Defend Missions”
• Helldivers can no longer land on top of bug pillars in Deactivate Terminid Control System missions
• Fix for the reinforce stratagem not being present if a Helldiver leaves the session before readying up and then hot joining the active session

Crashes

• Fixed a crash that could occur when all players were dead on the “Deactivate Terminid Control System” mission
• Fixed a crash that could occur on game shutdown
• Fixed a crash that could occur when leaving the mission and rejoining
• Fixed a crash that could occur at the end of cutscenes
• Fixed a crash that could occur when diving into missions
• Fixed a tutorial crash that could occur on PC when ALT+Tabbing
• Fixed a rare crash that could occur when using beam weapons
• Fixed a rare crash that could occur for players on startup when using VPN
• Fixed a soft lock that could occur if the player would open the text chat while having the stratagem menu open
• Other general crash fixes

Social Menu fixes

• PC players adding friends through friend codes can no longer show up as “Unknown”
• Fixed overlapping footers inside menus
• Steam friends should now be visible in Social Menu, even though Friends List is not set to Public in Steam Privacy Settings
• Recent Players list will now include hot-joining players
• Players are now able to unblock players that were not in their friends list beforehand
• Fixed issue with empty friend-names in Social Menu
• Lobby privacy mode text updates immediately when changed
• Player names longer than 26 characters should now update properly in the Social Menu
• Fixed issue where non-host players could kick others indiscriminately including the host

Other

• Total purchased counter on the right side of the Robotics Workshop section no longer displays 7 / 8 despite all stratagems being purchased
• Resolved some edge cases related to Steam AppId related errors on login

You can check out an updated list of Helldivers 2’s known issues on Reddit.

The post Helldivers 2’s First Update After PSN Showdown Fixes Damage and Scopes appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Sony has reversed its decision to mandate PSN account logins for Helldivers 2 PC players. After a weekend of intense backlash and review bombing campaigns that extended to other Sony and Arrowhead games, the publisher said that “it’s still learning what’s best for PC players.”

Helldivers 2 PSN account requirement backlash explained

It’s not unheard of for games to require linking external publisher accounts for their games on Steam. However, Helldivers 2 is an interesting case because the game was sold in a large number of countries where PSN isn’t available.

While it’s a common practice among console players to create PSN accounts in multiple regions, a large number of Steam players in non-PSN countries found their accounts blocked when they attempted to link them to Steam — likely due to the discrepancy in regions. Players also found it unsettling that creating PSN accounts with false information to circumvent the regional restrictions is actually against Sony’s terms of service, leaving them at the company’s mercy when it comes to dropping the banhammer.

Helldivers 2 subreddit was full of complaints from players in non-PSN regions who invested hundreds of hours into Helldivers 2, only to end up getting banned for having the wrong GPS coordinates. Valve ended up pulling the game in 177 countries and issuing a large number of refunds before Sony caved.

Sony’s own goal here is astonishing considering that PC accounts for a majority of Helldivers 2’s sales.

The post Helldivers 2 PSN Requirement on PC Pulled After Intense Backlash appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Sony recently announced that Helldivers 2 players on Steam will soon need to link to a PlayStation Network. While this was the case at launch, the publisher made it optional due to technical problems. However, many PC players are unhappy with the decision to bring it back, flooding the game’s Steam page with negative reviews.

Helldivers 2 gets over 17,500 negative reviews in one day

Sony announced Helldivers 2’s PlayStation Network requirement in a Steam Post at 8:33 PM Eastern/5:33 PM Pacific on Thursday, May 2. This triggered a massive spike in negative reviews on Friday. As of this writing, over 17,500 Steam users have posted a negative review in a single day. While the game’s overall Rating is still “Mostly Positive,” its recent reviews have already Dropped to “Mixed.”

 “The Automatons have taken over Sony headquarters,” reads the headline of one Steam review critical of the change. Over 11,700 users rated it helpful, and quite a few others made similar jokes.

Another reads, “I bought this game on Steam with the intention of playing it on Steam. I do not now, nor will I ever have a PlayStation account. Forcing players to link or be banned from the game months after launch is unacceptable.”

There are also Helldivers who won’t be able to jump in at all after the new rule goes into effect. “As someone who lives in Estonia,” writes one Reddit user, “I cannot even make a PSN account. So [the] game technically is blocked for me.”

Sony claims that requiring a PlayStation Network for Helldivers 2 makes it easier to police abusive players. “This is our main way to protect players from griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of players that engage in that type of behaviour,” writes Sony. “It also allows those players that have been banned the right to appeal.” However, many players believe the rule is motivated by financial gain rather than security.

The requirement goes into effect on May 6, though current Helldivers 2 players won’t see a mandatory login until May 30. They then have until June 4 to link their Steam and PlayStation Network accounts.

The post Helldivers 2 Hit By Wave of Negative Steam Reviews After PSN Announcement appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.