Like every PvE game which does not have hundreds of people working to churn out content, its playerbase will dwindle until only those who do not get bored by its gameplay stick around. Whether it's Left 4 Dead, Payday, Deep Rock Galactic or Vermintide, those types of games follow this pattern...

And I for one, see no fucking issue with that. It's a great game, people play it until they have had their fill and then move on. Helldivers 2 is only an outlier because of how hard it hit at launch. It absolutely does not have the content pipeline to keep a large playerbase engaged, so yeah it will not keep printing a lot of money, just a little bit every now and then.

Now excuse me as I go and spread some managed democracy.

The player base was always going to decline significantly.

It doesn't have the same kind of slow grind and wide open maps with tonnes of things to interact with that kept up the populations of a game like WoW or Overwatch, so it was going to naturally decline anyway as most people got their fill of the game play and move on to the next game. Anything that is comparable either had a ton of content that was drip fed or has random loot boxes to keep people playing. This game lets you earn enough to play even the highest levels of play fairly quickly, with getting everything taking a bit longer.

The remaining population is actually pretty high for this kind of game, and it is far from dying. I play randoms when friends aren't on even though I have unlocked all the upgrades to earn myself medals, but also to help out the other players because the game does promote team play even with all the accidental team kills. I never have to wait when there are more than 1,000 players on a planet, and the there are often several planets with several thousand even when people aren't grouped up for major orders.

The community is engaged and while there will certainly be more of a decline as time passes, I wouldn't be surprised if the game gets a significant bump in player activity (old players coming back) when they introduce the next faction. Probably not double whatever population is there when it hits, but maybe 50% increase as people come to check out the new content. I think the rapid release was their original plan to keep the player base going and I'm happy they slowed down to address bugs and do quality of life improvements for a bit.

This game also has the most friendly, or at least least antagonistic, player base I have ever experienced in an online game. Although most random games don't have anyone speak up unless I do first, people help each other out, attempt to get everyone out, and there is often hugs on the ship after extraction. I have only had one player grief in dozens of random games and one match had someone who was rude. Far, far fewer negative experiences than any other game I've played.

It may get down to 3% of the highest number of players and will still be alive and kicking for those that do enjoy the game play.

I really enjoy the game, but now me and my friends are maxed out. Max samples, max medals, max upgrades. With nothing to progress to there is far less incentive to play.

The way my friend group works, and I imagine many others work, when I see one of my friends online playing a game, I join their game. And hell divers was great for that, they made joining games effortless. So it was very social.

But without any of my friends actually progressing towards something in the game, it's far rarer for us to just join on each other cuz we're not playing it alone. So now Helldivers is a an option, when we're already together online, trying to figure out something to do, we will hell dive and have fun no problem. But it's far less likely now

If they want to maintain a larger user base, they need to have something for people to constantly progress towards. It could just be donating samples to a new research project, that could be infinite grind

When the initial player base numbers are fucking unsustainable, this is a necessary and expected correction.

Panicked headline aside, there are still tens of thousands of players online at any given time and the game is doing extremely well at for not having had a proper expansion or new faction, and just the steady drip feed of new gear and equipment.

So?

I hate how every game want to compete for current playtime.

I got way more than money's worth out of this game, but I haven't played in over a month. I hope that when I go back to it, there's still a playerbase.

But like, the developers planned for at best to get 10% of what they did....

If they dropped that extra 90%, I don't see why that should spell the end of the game. It's the playerbase the game was designed for.

There's just this weird "first or worst" mentality with a lot of studios. I hope this game is just given the room to stretch it legs over a decade or so. Something people might not always keep installed on their console, but still download once or twice a year to get some games in.

Games like that can be a success. Just because a lot of people burnt out doesn't mean they'll never play again.

It's just games like that don't maximize investor returns. They want to churn out hits that people play exclusively for 3 months then drop, only to buy the new one next year.

Why would it sustain those numbers? It's fine to play a cool game, be satisfied with it, and then move on.

Naturally there is always going to be a certain amount of player decline over time, but I have to wonder how much of this could have been saved had Sony not created a PR nightmare for the game with the required PSN account linking.

That said, I'm sure there's going to be a sharp spike in players very soon, as Arrowhead should be releasing a new enemy faction into the game very shortly, which is going to bring a lot of players back again for a while. Hopefully they'll find a way to keep those players interested again.

And the Sony account requirement will be reimplemented in 3... 2... 1...

More accurate to say that the initial success surge has calmed down to their core audience.

That 10% or fewer depending on if it's still shrinking will be the rock and stoners that keep this game running well into the future.

You'll probably see a similar spike then fall off then consolidation when The Forever Winter releases. That core community revenue is probably going to be what FunDog is planning on using for future projects and to cover the maintenance costs of TFW. I mean either that or they'll power the servers by kidnapping the playerbase and harvesting their organs and bioelectricity but it was really their own fault for not being able to get out of sight before nightfall.

I'll put my two cents in. I never bought the game because of the invasive anti cheat. I was still tempted until they required PlayStation account linking.

I didn't get it initially because it looked very repetitive and cheesy (in a bad way). Some of my friends played it which made me look into it and by the time I may have gave in and tried it they introduced account linking and I full noped out of it.

Never touched it again after the psn fiasco. I am not deluded enough to think the devs were on the players side. If you saw there early messages about it and still think they are with you, you are completely lost.

That's like saying breaking bad has lost 99% of its viewers with no sign of recovery. L take

And other major expansions for elden ring and FFXIV released recently. There's potential overlap in the player base. 90% is a big dip though.

How to be successful long term:

1. Make a good game

2. Don't ship your game with a rootkit

3. Don't ban entire regions from your game

That is just the natural lifecycle of every multiplayer game

As someone who loves Helldivers 2 but has not played in about a month and a half, it's summer Forbes. People are also playing less games than normal.

Oh no, anyway.

It has gotten more fun grinding at extreme for samples, and helping out lower level players, since the buffing patch. The endgame is just kind of flat.

(edit): The article doesn’t go into how and why there was a decline, how Sony and Arrowhead kinda shot themselves in the foot with account linking. I think this would still be a fast moving train had they not tried to do that, and had the man power to focus on bugs, balance and battles at the same time.

Without any real sense of progression, I just couldn't find a reason to play unless I had a friend who was already online and playing. Unlocking new weapons and whatnot is fun until its not, and when I don't have the minutia that comes with an MMO or the randomness that comes with a rogue-like, I don't have anything to look forward to from the next run. There was no surprise to the game, and the initial luster faded pretty quickly when I realised what the treadmill was going to be. If there had been a more single player focused bit to it, I may have lasted longer, but being so heavily reliant on a party meant it was a group of friends, or some randos that are going to waste my time.

To be honest, the nerfs killed it and the buffs didn't go to the things we enjoyed playing with like the quasar. It went to a lot of other things, but we came back and it still felt awful

I've been waiting for a sale to buy it... hopefully there are still players but if not shrug

Wait, was this heralded as some live service forever game?

There Will be a bump when the release the new faction and the mystery 4th faction. But as someone with everything maxed out I just drop in twice or thrice a week now. Just nothing to aim for. Some kind of prestige system could be good.