Helldivers 2 had a disastrous weekend, but it didn't stop hordes of players from diving in, with countless more stuck in queues

I was planning an indulgent weekend shackled to my PC eradicating alien bugs and robots in Helldivers 2. Instead I was forced to do boring things like going outside and spending time with my annoying dog. A travesty.

Helldivers 2 continues to suffer for its success, which wasn't entirely unexpected. Ever since its launch, developer Arrowhead has struggled to keep the game running smoothly in the face of its huge popularity, and a new server cap doesn't seem to have noticeably alleviated the issues, instead just causing another one. 

As the concurrent player count kept rising, Arrowhead attempted to create a buffer against this horde of Helldivers by capping the servers at 450,000 players, but this did nothing to solve the most significant problem. 

For the entire weekend, matchmaking was completely broken. Despite the multitude of people playing, the in-game tracker was registering zero players, the maps showed no missions-in-progress (unless someone in your friends list was playing), and selecting quick play did absolutely nothing. 

The only way to get into some multiplayer action was through your friends list, leading to players sharing friend codes on Steam and Discord. I managed to get through a bunch of missions with Phil, Sean and Harvey with no issues, but for a game like this matchmaking really is essential, so it's not a great state of affairs, and it's yet to be resolved. 

With the servers being battered, more problems were making it a less than ideal time to be a Helldiver. During UK hours, I had no trouble getting in-game, but the moment the Americans woke up that changed. I wasn't surprised to see server queues, but Helldivers 2 provides frustratingly little feedback for queue dwellers. After failing to get in, you get a message about the servers being at capacity, and then you just need to keep waiting. There's no estimated waiting time, no information about your position on the queue—you just have to hope for the best. 

During these busy hours, the