The Escalation of Freedom was the biggest update for Helldivers 2 so far, but it caused plenty of backlash from the community—and the developer has revealed how the team is approaching the feedback
On Aug. 11, Arrowhead Game Studios CEO Shams Jorjani wrote in a Discord message that many developers in the studio are “disappointed on a few levels” about how much negative feedback there was for the Escalation of Freedom update for Helldivers 2.
While the player feedback regarding the balancing changes overshadowed the update’s new content, Jorjani believes it’s deserved. “I think more broadly it also has us discussing the path ahead and what we can do to avoid this situation again. ie internal learnings, more changes in process etc.”
Jorjani explained the developer has “long lead times on development,” and most team members are still on vacation since the June balancing patch. “We still need to improve a lot in understanding what players want and marry that to the development process. We want every release to be a step in the right direction. Constant improvement. I don’t think we feel this was that. so we need to do better.”
In the following Discord messages, Jorjani added that the developer is working on improving communication about the game. “Our official communication about the game should be via blogs, streams and vlogs – not me posting here.”
The Escalation of Freedom update added a new difficulty, enemies, missions, and a few controversial nerfs to Helldivers 2, including a change to the SG-225IE Breaker Incendiary shotgun. Players agreed nerfing the weapon just because of its popularity is a terrible approach, resulting in the game getting review-bombed on Steam.
