Helldivers 2 really does appear to have won its playerbase’s enthusiasm back, recent snafus with the Democracy Space Station aside. Its recent reviews are now “Overwhelmingly Positive” on Steam, meaning that over 95% of recent reviewers have been left with a good impression while fighting for Super Earth.
Now, typically, I wouldn’t put too much weight on this sort of thing—but Helldivers 2 is a special case, given its players have used Steam reviews as a way to make their voices heard in the thousands. When Sony tried to muscle in a PSN registration post-launch, the outcry was massive. There’ve also been community controversies not so dramatically represented in Steam’s funny red bar graphs, primarily to do with balancing weapons. In other words, the Helldivers 2 community is uniquely loud—so I trust this is a genuine sign for the better.
In fact, taking a closer look at the numbers, the ratio really is staggering. As per SteamDB, the overall negative reviews have gone down by 2,225—meaning players have flipped their score or removed their reviews—while over 29,000 players have given the game a thumbs up. There’s been a spike starting November 27 that’s steadily climbed since, and I can’t, for the life of me, connect it to anything other than a general atmosphere of good will.
The only real thought I have is attributing this to the Steam Autumn Sale, which saw the game discounted by 20% on November 27—a deal that’s ending today. Helldivers 2 makes a good first impression for new players, and loses its lustre over time, as all live-service games do. That’s not a knock against it, really, it’s just a consequence of the genre. Flicking through recent reviews in the past week, I’m seeing a decent buffer of 20-80 hour reviews, which I’d consider somewhat new, but nowhere near a fleet 29,000 strong, and there are plenty of seasoned vets in there with a few hundred hours under their grenade belts, too.
As for why, well: Arrowhead finished its 60-day patch plan in October, and it does seem to have the game in good nick. Players are complaining less about weapon balance (they’re still complaining some of the time, it’s the internet) and while the Democracy Space Station’s implementation was a bit wonky, it is objectively engaging players more in the decision-making process of the Galactic War. Mind, sometimes they make dumb decisions, but that’s democracy, baby.
As for that “all reviews” number, it’s going to be a little harder for Arrowhead to pull that back, mostly due to raw maths. Steam’s review scores are based on a percentile, and the bugger with percentage numbers is, the more reviews you get, the more positive reviews you need to make a dent—a number that keeps going up even when you are getting those happy impressions.
At the moment, the game has 938,882 reviews, both positive and negative. 1% of that number is 9,388. But if you add that percent onto the total, 1% is suddenly 9,482. In other words: The amount of people you need to impress keeps going up, even if you’re doing well. No wonder Bethesda kept trawling through Steam reviews to try and flip them last year.
