Helldivers 2 Just Jumped 48 Places on Steam. Warhammer 40K Helped Bring the War Back

Helldivers 2 is more than two years old, but somebody forgot to tell Steam. Arrowhead's co-op shooter just climbed 48 places to become the #4 highest-grossing game on Steam for the week, while its new Devoid of Liberty update pushed the PC player count back above 146,000. The Warhammer 40,000 crossover certainly helped, but after looking through the new missions, weapons and player reactions, I think the comeback is bigger than one expensive Warbond. Helldivers 2 finally feels unpredictable again.

There are plenty of new games fighting for attention in August. Phantom Blade Zero is taking preorders, Big Walk is one of the year's surprise co-op hits, and Hell Let Loose: Vietnam just launched. Somehow, a February 2024 shooter has forced itself back into the middle of that conversation.

SteamDB's official weekly revenue data for August 11 to August 18 places Helldivers 2 at #4 worldwide, up 48 positions from the previous week. Only Counter-Strike 2, Apex Legends and Phantom Blade Zero ranked above it. The chart is measured by revenue rather than copies sold, so paid games compete directly with free-to-play titles earning money through in-game purchases. That makes a jump from roughly #52 to #4 particularly hard to ignore.

The players came back with the money. Helldivers 2 reached 146,751 concurrent Steam players on August 12, the day the Devoid of Liberty update arrived. That is more than three times July's monthly peak of roughly 43,000. A week later the game is still pulling serious numbers, with SteamDB recording a 100,931-player 24-hour peak at the time I checked.

This is not quite the insanity of launch, when Steam concurrency reached 458,709, but I do not think that is the useful comparison anymore. Most live-service games would love to be discussing six-figure concurrent player counts two and a half years after release.

The obvious explanation is Warhammer 40,000. I think that explains only part of it.

Arrowhead gave people several reasons to come back at exactly the same time

The Devoid of Liberty update launched on August 12 and sends players toward the expanding Illuminate Void, introducing corrupted worlds, new mission structures, additional objectives and two particularly unpleasant new enemy types. The level cap has also been raised to 300, SEAF soldiers can join operations as friendly support, and some missions now allow squads to unlock secondary extraction zones instead of relying on one escape point.

Devoid of Liberty pushes Helldivers into worlds being altered by the Illuminate Void. Image: Arrowhead / PlayStation

More importantly, the new Void operations are less predictable. Arrowhead says operations can contain several randomized primary objectives, which changes the rhythm from some of the game's more familiar mission structures. You may find yourself documenting corruption with a tactical camera, destroying Illuminate structures, gathering reconnaissance and then trying to reach an alternative extraction zone before the mission collapses around you.

That sounds like a small design change until you remember what eventually happens to almost every co-op game. Players learn it.

They learn where enemies spawn. They learn which objectives take the longest. They learn exactly which Stratagem deletes which problem. Eventually, the unpredictable war becomes a routine performed by four heavily armed employees.

Helldivers 2 is at its funniest when that routine breaks.

A teammate panics and calls an airstrike too close. Somebody drops the objective down a cliff. A supposedly easy enemy suddenly tears through the squad. You arrive at extraction with no ammunition, one reinforcement and a friend screaming because they are being chased by something nobody noticed.

The Void update understands that the best Helldivers content is often created when Arrowhead gives players a plan and then finds a new way to ruin it.

Watch: Devoid of Liberty, Uncover the Truth

The new enemies are horrible, which is exactly what Helldivers needed

The two big additions are the Wretch and Crusher, and neither exists to politely stand in front of your rifle.

The Wretch is fast, aggressive and capable of dodging attacks while closing distance. The Crusher goes in the opposite direction. It is large, brutally durable and can regenerate, meaning squads have to commit enough damage to finish it rather than shooting it twice and running away. Arrowhead describes the Void creatures as organisms twisted by whatever the Illuminate are doing inside the anomaly.

The Crusher is considerably less friendly than the average Super Earth recruitment officer. Image: Arrowhead / PlayStation

The visual inspiration is not exactly subtle. PC Gamer compared the Wretch to Dead Space's Necromorphs and the Crusher to Silent Hill's Pyramid Head, which feels accurate after seeing them in action. The Wretch creates panic through speed while the Crusher creates panic because it refuses to die as quickly as you would like.

I like them because Helldivers 2 does not really need another ordinary enemy with a different gun. It needs things that force a squad to change behaviour.

The Crusher does that immediately. If everyone assumes somebody else will deal with it, congratulations, you now have a regenerating monster walking through your team.

Community reaction to the new Void faction is much less unanimous than the Steam chart might suggest, though. Some players enjoy figuring out how to fight the Crusher and Wretch, while others are disappointed that the update did not introduce the much-discussed Illuminate Cultists and feel the current Void enemy roster is too limited. In one large Reddit discussion, players argued over the absence of several existing Illuminate units, with one person jokingly calling the update "Devoid of Content."

I understand that criticism. Calling something a major title update naturally creates expectations, and two new enemy types will feel thin to players who were expecting a dramatic expansion of the Illuminate army.

Still, the enemies that did arrive are good additions. I would rather have two enemies that genuinely change a fight than six colour-swapped targets whose only innovation is having 15 percent more health.

Then Warhammer 40K walked through the door

This is the part that probably made people who had ignored Helldivers 2 for months finally look again.

Castellan's Creed brings the Astra Militarum into Super Earth's version of galactic democracy.

The Helldivers 2 x Warhammer 40,000: Castellan's Creed Legendary Warbond launched alongside Devoid of Liberty. Instead of dressing everyone like Space Marines, Arrowhead chose the Astra Militarum, specifically gear inspired by Cadia's Kasrkin troops. That is a much better fit. Helldivers are not genetically engineered demigods. They are extremely replaceable soldiers being launched into impossible battles by governments that assure them everything is going perfectly.

Warhammer fans should feel right at home.

The Warbond costs 1,500 Super Credits, compared with the 1,000 Super Credits usually charged for a standard Premium Warbond. It contains the P/40-K Bolt Pistol, R/40-K Hot-Shot Marksman Rifle, Warhammer-inspired armour, capes and vehicle cosmetics, alongside other 40K equipment including the Meltagun and Meltamine.

Watch: Helldivers 2 x Warhammer 40,000

The Bolt Pistol is exactly the kind of crossover weapon that could have been terrible if Arrowhead had been too afraid to make licensed equipment powerful. Instead, players seem to love it. In one current r/Helldivers discussion, players repeatedly described the pistol as a strong secondary with good damage and stagger potential. The Meltagun has attracted even more enthusiasm because its terrible range is compensated by the ability to erase heavily armoured enemies once you get close enough.

One player put it simply:

"Everything in the warbond is very viable. Loving it so far."

Another called it the best Legendary Warbond yet, particularly against Automatons and Terminids. Not every weapon is getting the same love. The Hot-Shot rifle has a more mixed response, and players have complained that the Meltagun's actual damage range appears shorter than the visual effect suggests.

That is exactly how a crossover should work, in my opinion. I do not want a Warhammer gun that spends the next six months sitting in my inventory because the developers were terrified of making branded equipment useful. If you are going to hand me something called a Meltagun, I would like it to melt things.

PS Plus made the timing even smarter

The same day the update and Warhammer content arrived, Helldivers 2 joined the PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium Game Catalog. Existing subscribers on PS5 can now jump in without buying the base game separately.

Sony added Helldivers 2 to PlayStation Plus at almost the perfect moment. Image: PlayStation

That does not directly explain Helldivers 2 climbing Steam's revenue chart because PlayStation Plus subscriptions obviously are not Steam sales. What it does explain is why the game suddenly feels culturally louder again. New PlayStation players arrive, returning PC players see everyone talking about the update, Warhammer fans check out the crossover, and the community becomes active enough that clips and discussions begin circulating again.

Sony says Helldivers 2 has already been played by more than 22.9 million people across PlayStation, Xbox and PC. Putting it into a subscription catalog at the same moment as a major content push gives that enormous pool of former and potential players a reason to look at the game again.

The Steam version is also discounted by 25 percent at the time of writing, adding another reason for new PC players to jump in.

Individually, none of these things would guarantee a comeback. Put them in the same week and the Steam chart begins to make a lot more sense.

The numbers are strong, but the community is still Helldivers' biggest problem

This would be a much easier article to write if everybody had returned, played Devoid of Liberty and decided Arrowhead had fixed everything.

They have not.

Steam's recent review score is 80 percent positive across more than 4,500 reviews from the last 30 days, which is solid, but Helldivers 2 has accumulated years of arguments over balance changes, bugs, monetization, performance and what Arrowhead should or should not be doing with the game.

The new update brought some of those debates straight back. Players unhappy about the missing Cultists think the Void launched without enough enemy variety. Others think expectations were distorted by datamining and unreleased content that Arrowhead never officially promised. Some simply want the studio to fix long-standing technical problems before adding more equipment.

There are also genuine launch issues. Arrowhead released patch 7.0.1 on August 17 with fixes for crashes, ultrawide display problems and Stratagem UI errors, while several known issues remain under investigation.

I do not think any of that should be hidden behind the #4 Steam ranking. Helldivers 2 has always been a slightly messy game, and sometimes that mess is funny because your friend accidentally drops an orbital bombardment on your head. It is much less funny when the mess happens before the mission loads.

The community is messy too. Read enough Helldivers Reddit and you can watch two people play exactly the same update and come away convinced Arrowhead either saved the game or personally ruined their weekend.

Yet that weirdly suits Helldivers.

This game has never had a calm relationship with its audience.

The most important number might not be #4

The weekly revenue ranking makes the headline, but I think 146,751 tells the more important story.

Those are people.

People who decided to reinstall the game, update it and actually spend their evening dropping into another planet. Some undoubtedly arrived for Warhammer. Some came back because the Void looked interesting. Some had probably not played in months and simply wanted to see what changed.

That is what a live-service comeback has to do.

Selling cosmetics to the dedicated players who never left is easy. Convincing the people who already decided they were finished to reinstall is much harder.

Helldivers 2's August Steam peak is dramatically higher than June's 44,971 and July's 43,373. The player curve did not just move slightly. It changed shape.

Even several days after the update, SteamDB recorded a 24-hour peak above 100,000, suggesting this was not simply everyone logging in for thirty minutes on patch day and immediately uninstalling again.

That is why I think the current comeback is real, even if nobody should assume it will last forever.

Helldivers 2 remembered what made people love it

SEAF troops can now arrive to support Helldivers during Void operations. Image: Arrowhead / PlayStation

The strangest addition in Devoid of Liberty might also be my favourite. SEAF soldiers can now arrive in squads to help players, administer stims and fight alongside them. You can also salute them, shake their hands or hug them.

Yes, Arrowhead spent development time making it possible to hug an NPC soldier in the middle of an alien apocalypse.

Good.

PC Gamer's writer tried doing exactly that while a Crusher was nearby and discovered the obvious problem with showing affection during active combat.

That tiny interaction gets closer to why Helldivers 2 works than another page of weapon statistics ever could. The game takes its world seriously enough for the battle to feel dramatic, then lets four idiots completely destroy that seriousness within seconds.

A heroic extraction becomes a disaster because somebody throws the wrong Stratagem.

A squad survives against impossible odds and then one player accidentally kills everyone with a poorly parked vehicle.

A soldier fighting a cosmic horror stops to hug an NPC.

That is Helldivers.

Warhammer 40K gives players cool equipment. The Void gives them new monsters. The sale lowers the barrier on PC. PlayStation Plus opens the doors to a fresh group of PS5 players.

But none of those things matter if the game stops producing stories people want to tell their friends afterward.

Right now, it is doing that again.

So is Helldivers 2 actually back?

Steam says Helldivers 2 jumped 48 positions to #4 in weekly global revenue. The update pushed concurrent PC players to 146,751. Recent Steam reviews remain Very Positive, and the Warhammer Warbond is getting some of the most enthusiastic weapon reactions I have seen around the game in a while.

That is enough for me to call this a comeback.

It is not enough for me to say Arrowhead has solved Helldivers 2.

The Illuminate roster still needs more variety. The community has legitimate complaints about missing content and technical problems. The new player spike will eventually settle, as every update spike does. Arrowhead now has to give those returning players a reason to still be there next month.

But the strategy behind this week was excellent. Instead of releasing one Warbond and hoping nostalgia did the work, Arrowhead created a pile-up of reasons to return: a new campaign direction, strange enemies, redesigned missions, progression to level 300, friendly soldiers, a Warhammer crossover, a PC discount and PlayStation Plus access.

Then it let the chaos do the marketing.

The result is a two-year-old game sitting above most of Steam's new releases in weekly revenue.

For a live-service shooter that has already been declared dead, revived, ruined and saved more times than I can count, that feels appropriate.

Helldivers 2 did not quietly return to Steam's top sellers. It dropped directly onto the chart and started shooting.

What players are saying

"Everything in the warbond is very viable. Loving it so far."

"Bolt Pistol is a spectacular secondary."

Other players are much less impressed with the size of Devoid of Liberty, particularly the current Illuminate roster and absence of expected enemies. That split is worth keeping in mind. The money and player counts show renewed interest, but Arrowhead still has work to do if it wants this surge to become another long run.

Did Warhammer 40K or Devoid of Liberty convince you to return to Helldivers 2, or are you waiting for a bigger update?