Helldivers 2 has caused a lot of, well, hell due to its sudden massive popularity. Plenty of good games have server issues at launch due to what we call the “hug of death,” and Arrowhead’s latest game is only the latest. But with a new cap increase, they’re slowly working on fixing that issue.
Late last night, CEO Johan Pilestedt shared that the developers had, in fact, raised the cap for concurrent players to 700,000, hopefully alleviating some of the queue times.
Friends of @helldivers2,I have one final update for tonight. We have updated the max CCU cap to 700,000. Unfortunately, we expect the CCU to reach that level. We believe that the wait times will be much more bearable.Tomorrow we are doing some final improvements for the…
— Pilestedt (@Pilestedt) February 23, 2024
However, given the popularity of the game—it peaked at 457,000 players at one point on Steam alone—there’s absolutely no way that this new limit isn’t hit pretty damned quickly, especially with a new weekend upon us. The swift effort is likely appreciated by players, though, given developers can’t just flip a switch and add more room, unless they have very specific cloud gaming setups.
A recent patch aimed to help move the queue along, too, with a new 15-minute AFK timer implemented. In short, if you idle for 15 minutes in your ship, you’ll be thrown back into the lobby so other players in the queue can have their turn. (A citizen always logs off to give others a chance to fight for democracy, anyway.)
The popularity seems well-earned, as it’s a $40 game with players and critics alike singing its praises. Its release and popularity apparently also re-launched “Starship Troopers Is A Parody” discourse online, but that’s a different issue…
