It wasn’t until I actually sat down to play Helldivers 2 that I realized how seriously live service changed my enjoyment of the game. I was shocked when I noticed that neither the basic assault rifle nor the SMG had an attached progress bar. How could I show my dedication to my favorite gun without it? Wait, when did I become so dependent on shining lights and ticking boxes?
On paper, Helldivers 2 is everything I’ve come to expect from a multiplayer shooter over the years! It cuts out all the unnecessary crap you see in live service games now. There was no progress tracker required, no lengthy grind to unlock all the weapons and gear I wanted. No handcrafting required – thank god. There are battle passes, but they don’t expire. Helldivers 2 has no artificial FOMO, which is ironic because literally thousands of people are suffering from old-school organic FOMO due to server saturation.
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Sure, you can log in every day and complete daily missions, but all you get is a chunk of XP and some currency you can earn through regular gameplay. It’s like someone dug Hellraiser 2 out of a 2010s time capsule, but without the drab brown and gray color scheme it required. Compare that to another game I play every day: Honkai Star Rail. Now look, I’m as big a fan of anime slots as the next person, and Star Trail is one of the best. But with the current story content completed, I’ll be logging into Star Track to complete daily missions, use up my resources, and fill out the battle pass. On the other hand, I sit in the queue for Helldiver 2 every time because Super Earth requires me to fight robots, you know?
Of course, I want to max out the battle pass, who doesn’t? But I can do it on my own schedule and with little sense of urgency. I have a job now and I can’t slog away on defense duty all day, even if the people of Super Earth need me to. It’s nice to know that Helldiver 2 is waiting for me after hours without the progress loss and inefficiency of Black Jack hitting me hard. It’s like Tekken 8 in that it makes me want to play because it doesn’t punish me for not playing. Our relationship is non-toxic, just like a real relationship, which is great news.
Surrounded by other games with more malicious (but completely normalized) retention practices, Helldivers 2 can only be described as being like a cold Asahi game on a warm day. The approach to monetization that Arrowhead takes sets the game up as a test of sorts. It’s already attracted players, but will it retain them like other games with dedicated retention features? It has a fair way to make money, but can its quality and admirable spirit bring in big bucks?
I think I can safely say we all hope they do. It could be good for the industry as a whole if one of the biggest games of the year can achieve so much without engaging in some of the more horrific practices we’ve all become accustomed to. It opens up so many possibilities if the right lessons are learned from it. Sony is one of them, and it’s probably very proud of its foray into publishing games for live streaming services, as it can now count Hellraiser 2 as a great success story.
I hope it and the wider industry can move away from this and sometimes you don’t need to wave around shiny lights, explosive upgrade animations and FOMO to get people invested in a game. So if you find yourself stuck in the typical live service approach, give Helldivers 2 a try.
Oh, who am I kidding? You probably already are.