Helldivers 2 was launched on PC and PlayStation 5 on February 8 and already boasts nearly a million copies sold. A popular craze that is clogging up game servers: players are struggling to connect.
The Swedish studio Arrowhead Game has already met with some success among players with Gauntlet or the first Helldivers, but clearly did not quite expect the enthusiasm generated by Helldiverse 2. The sci-fi co-op shooter launched this February 8 on both Steam and PlayStation 5and clearly, the game meets its audience.
According to Johan Pilestedt, the boss of Arrowhead, Helldivers 2 has already sold nearly a million copies over the weekend (the figure obviously includes PC and PlayStation sales). And based on SteamDB estimates, Helldivers 2 would have recorded a peak of more than 155,000 players connected simultaneouslymaking the best launch of a “PlayStation” game on Steam (Helldivers 2 is published by Sony Interactive Entertainment). For comparison, the record recorded by the PC version of the reboot of God of War caps at 73,529 concurrent players.
Servers stormed and connection difficulties
Each medal, however, has its downside: Arrowhead Game's infrastructures struggle to keep up with the load and players encounter difficulties sometimes in connecting, sometimes in staying connected. The studio publishes a note on social media, explaining the phenomenon: servers have a ceiling beyond which player connections are rejected to avoid a collapse of technical infrastructures. The limit was set at 10,000 connections per minute, it was increased to 20,000 connections per minute and the total capacity of the studio's infrastructures increased from 250,000 players connected simultaneously to 360,000. However, this limit of 360,000 players connected simultaneously was reached in five minutes. When a connection is rejected, it means that more than 20,000 players have tried to connect in the last 60 seconds and/or the servers are full. And obviously, the two conditions are therefore met quickly.
The developer claims to do its best to offer a gaming experience that is as fluid as possible, but we know that launch periods are often (always?) a bit chaotic. We can bet that they will gradually normalize, at the same time as player activity.
For the record, Helldivers 2 is a cooperative shooter playable in the third person, solo or with others. Players are taken into a science fiction world (reminiscent of Starship Troopers) in which they will have to stun cohorts of extraterrestrial creatures in different environments “in the name of freedom”.