Helldivers 2 Player Count Spike

Those who preached that live-service gaming was a dead affair must find another game to scapegoat their theories onto because Helldivers 2 has shown that it is alive and well.

According to the player charts in SteamDB, the game posted a peak of 150,169 today. This is the first time since May when the bug and robot exterminator game has crossed the 100,000 players mark.

The spike in player count since Friday came after the franchise made a bombastic display at The Game Awards, introducing the Illuminate as a third hostile faction.

Helldivers 2: Who Are The Illuminate?

The Illuminate faction is rumored to be returning in Helldivers 2. But just who are they, and why do they hate Democracy so much?

The Illuminate Cult is a group of humanoid squid-like chaps who are technologically advanced, intelligent and have a knack for enslaving Super Earth citizens.

These evil enemies of democracy debuted in the first Helldivers game in 2015, when the title was a tough top-down shooter with a relatively small but loyal player base.

When Gamers Get Too Good

Most players who have sunk a couple of months into Helldivers 2 have gotten extremely comfortable fighting Terminids and Automatons.

Helldivers are so competent at this that it has spurred Arrowhead into action to try and rebalance the game to keep things spicy. Unfortunately for the developers, things got spicy on Earth instead.

The balance patches after release tanked the player population, sending Helldivers 2 from the top of the Steam charts to a respectable mid-table position.

Arrowhead eventually patched most of the complaints, but while this resulted in brief spikes, the player count never came close to the first three months.

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Helldivers 2 and the Horrors of War

Fire. Blood. Lead. Napalm. War is beautiful. But only when it’s used to remind us how horrible it truly is.

The addition of the Illuminate proved the perfect opportunity for Arrowhead to shake things up without messing with the fragile balance in the war against Terminids and Automatons.

What makes the Illuminate so challenging but also so damn fun to fight is that they combine high-tech ranged attacks with hordes of zombified humans.

Sitting out in the open gets you obliterated from far out, but ducking behind cover mindlessly ends up in a bloody last stand that you will definitely not win.

In a few months, there might be an article on this site about how Helldivers 2 players are bringing out the pitchforks and torches again because they figured out how to beat the Illuminate meta.

Until then, take a deep breath, load your weapon, and deliver sweet liberty to those dastardly squid people.