Helldivers 2 raises its server capacity to gear up for another crazy weekend, but will it be enough?

Arrowhead braces Helldivers 2 for the masses ahead of what’s sure to be a very busy weekend.

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What you need to know

Following its launch on February 8, Arrowhead Game Studios new third-person PvE co-op shooterHelldivers 2rapidly became a colossal hit, and one of 2024’s biggest and most popular games. It soared up to 150,000 concurrent players on Steam alone  during its launch weekend, and in the weeks that followed, it’s rocketed to an average of 400,000-450,000 players during peak hours — and that’s not even taking its console player base into account.

The success has been incredible to see, though this past week, it’s led to somesignificant problems with Helldivers 2’s server capacitythat’ve often left many players waiting for hours in a queue. Arrowhead has been working 24/7 to expand the game’s network for several days now, and ahead of the upcoming weekend, it’s deployed an update that raises the server cap to 700,000.

The patch notes exclaim quite joyously that “we have raised the server cap!” (a glitch causing players to get stuck in cutscenes was fixed too), though Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt added some further context in aposton X (Twitter): “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.”

The question on the mind of every Helldiver eager to fight for Super Earth this weekend is “will this be enough?”, but ultimately, there’s no way to know until we see how things go later this evening during primetime. Pilestedt expects for there to still be a queue — you canuse this trick to skip the queue, by the way — but hopefully, the larger concurrent user cap will help to ensure that wait times are short.

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It’s also possible that this extra supply of server space will fail to meet demand, though. Helldivers 2 has been at the apex ofSteam’s Top Sellers chartever since it became available to buy, and its player base has continued to grow quickly with each passing day. Surprisingly, it even broke a few of its concurrent player records in the middle ofworkdaysthis week as a result, so it wouldn’t surprise me if we saw 500,000-600,000 fans trying to hot drop into the Galactic War this weekend.

The good news is thatHelldivers 2 AFK queue dodgers are no longer a problem, which should help alleviate server strain compared to how things were last weekend. Players would previously sit idle on their ship to keep themselves logged in and hog space that could be used by active fans trying to actually play the game, but this is no longer possible thanks to the introduction of an AFK kick that gives idle players the boot after 15 minutes of inactivity.

Aside from beefing up the game’s server capacity and resolving the aforementioned issue with freezing during cinematics, Helldivers 2’s new patch doesn’t include any other fixes or improvements. However, the patch notes do have a “Known Issues” section where various bugs the developers are working to take care of are being tracked. Make sure you check the section below for an overview of those.

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If you’re new to Helldivers 2 and jumping in this weekend, don’t missthese 7 tips and tricks I wish I knew before I got sent to the galactic front lines, as they’ll help you get started on the right foot. Not sure which gear you should take into the fray? I’ve also put together a guide to thebest Helldivers 2 weaponsyou should consider using in your loadouts.

Helldivers 2 Update 1.000.12: Patch notes

Here are the patch notes for Helldivers 2’s new 1.000.12 update, taken directly from Arrowhead’sofficial news poston Steam.

Fixes

Known Issues

These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.

Helldivers 2 is available now for $39.99 on both PS5 and PC, and so far, it’s one of thebest PC gamesof the year. Notably, the game also supports cross-platform play between PS5 and PC.

Helldivers 2 —$39.99 at GMG (Steam)Battle aliens, robots, and other beasts in humanity’s quest to spread democracy through an unforgiving galaxy. It’s 4-player co-op at its absolute best, and its most refined.

Also at:Amazon (PS5, Physical)|Walmart (PS5, Physical)

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Brendan Lowry is a Windows Central writer and Oakland University graduate with a burning passion for video games, of which he’s been an avid fan since childhood. He’s been writing for Team WC since the summer of 2017, and you’ll find him doing news, editorials, reviews, and general coverage on everything gaming, Xbox, and Windows PC. His favorite game of all time is probably NieR: Automata, though Elden Ring, Fallout: New Vegas, and Team Fortress 2 are in the running, too. When he’s not writing or gaming, there’s a good chance he’s either watching an interesting new movie or TV show or actually going outside for once.Follow him on X(Twitter).