Helldivers 2 hotfix on the way to address crashes, matchmaking errors and "mixed" Steam reviews

Helldivers 2 launched earlier today and has been sat at the top of the Steam sales charts, with a healthy 60,000+ currently in-game. Alas, the co-op shooter also has a "Mixed" user review rating on the platform, thanks in part to optimisation and matchmaking issues.

Developers Arrowhead say they're working on a hotfix to address the issues as fast as possible.

"I want to give you an update on the issues we've experienced today. I'm happy to say that we've now improved matchmaking and the most frequent patches," game director Mikael Eriksson shared on Twitter.

"Let me explain where we are: We've made a patch, and are about to start playing alongisde you to check it works as intended. If it's a success, we'll trigger a hotfix and get it out to the Steam community first, then roll it out to PS5 players as quickly as we can."

Many of the negative reviews on Steam place the blame at the foot of Helldivers 2's "kernel level anti-cheat", nProtect GameGuard. Whatever the cause, players are reporting crashes-to-desktop when trying to play missions, an inability to play past the tutorial, and matchmaking that fails and leaves players to experience the alien bug hunt - predominantly intended to played in co-op - by their lonesome.

It's a shame. I was initially disappointed that Helldivers had abandoned its eagle-eye view of the battlefield in favour of a third-persona camera, but my interest has grown as Arrowhead have detailed their macro-scale Galactic War and most recently their human game masters which tweak the battle in real-time. Hopefully Arrowhead can fix the issues before the audience is scared away for good.