'Hang in there': A fix for all those Helldivers 2 freeze-ups should ideally land 'well before the Warbond', says community manager
Democracy freezes for no one.
If you've been playing Helldivers 2, chances are you've probably been booted to your desktop after extracting—I sure have. Typically, this bug causes a premature return to civilian life at the end of a mission, which is extra frustrating since they tend to take over half an hour to complete. At least, if you're as much of a sample-hungry completionist as I am.
Fortunately, a fix is on the way, as confirmed by community manager Twinbeard on the Helldivers 2 Discord: "I just briefly want to say that we're aware of the crashes primarily surrounding extraction/end of mission that currently a lot of you are facing. There's a hotfix arriving very soon."
As for a timeframe, Twinbeard noted that they were "pretty sure" it'll arrive before the new Warbond, which is scheduled to deploy April 11. Granted, that's a solid 'maybe' passed on by a community manager—and considering the unruly nature of game development, there are no guarantees in bug-fix land.
In the meantime, Twinbeard gently recommends that players either "hang in there or perhaps let the game rest for a while"—"perhaps" being the operative word here, as they later clarified: "I haven't told anyone to take a break. I merely suggested it as an alternative if you suffer a lot of crashes, until the hotfix is launched." Which is fair enough. There's only so much a community manager (heck, even a dev) can do in the face of a gnarly glitch.
Regardless, I'll personally be glad to see the back of this bug, since it does jam an unfortunate interruption into an otherwise silky-smooth gameplay loop of shooting bots (well, bugs, since there aren't bots anymore) grabbing samples, extracting, rinsing, repeating, and saluting the Super Earth flag.
I've had a couple of play sessions where a crash has made me think 'right, I better take a break'. Which… might be for the best, honestly. I'm starting to hear binary in my dreams.
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Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.