Helldivers 2 Updates May Start Releasing Further Apart to Maintain Quality

Helldivers 2 might slow down the cadence of new updates to maintain quality.

Since launching earlier this year, Helldivers 2 has built up a massive playerbase. There was a period where the game struggled after Sony tried to impose a PSN requirement on everyone, but that's been cleaned up, and now the developers at Arrowhead Games can focus on what comes next. During its relatively short lifespan, Helldivers 2 has brought new updates out pretty quickly, but the team might be changing its tactics going forward. Essentially, the team doesn't want to sacrifice quality for speed and might be slowing down the cadence of updates to hit its internal goals.

Helldivers 2 Updated Plans for New Patches

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The news comes from the official Helldivers 2 Discord server (first spotted by PCGamesN). There, community manager Thomas "Twinbeard" Petersson was asked about when the next update was coming. He responded with "'When it's done.' We want to take some more time for this one and potentially between future patches 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 takes a lot of risks, can easily disrupt workflow, and takes more resources than you might think; 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."

That all makes a ton of sense. The Helldivers 2 team has been pumping out new content and updates at an incredible rate thus far, which likely stretched the team a little thin. By giving the team some extra time with updates, they should be able to provide better patches that need fewer hotfixes to iron out issues. That's a net positive for the community. It gives them time to soak in current content, while not needing to worry about the next update breaking things as often. 

However, it's important to note that Arrowhead might not make this change across the board. Currently, this new approach is only for the current update but could be implemented for every update. When asked if Arrowhead was changing to bi-weekly or monthly updates, Petersson said, "Nothing that detailed is decided. I'd say it's something we have to try out and get a feel for. At the moment, we feel a slightly lower cadence overall will benefit both us, you, and the game."

Fortunately, Helldivers 2 players still have plenty to do while they wait for the next update. The game received a new patch last week and a Warbond a few days before that. Helldivers 2 is available on PlayStation 5 and PC.