Helldivers 2's themes are bleeding into its community management, and creating a new standard in live storytelling

Helldivers 2 is setting a new standard for live storytelling, and not a little of that is how the game's fiction has bled-over into the online interactions between Arrowhead Game Studios and the playerbase. This found spectacular expression last week after the game's first real misstep, a Sony-mandated account linking requirement, saw Helldivers collectively organise and (what else) review bomb their own beloved game on Steam in an effort to get the situation reversed.

There is something apposite in the Helldivers themselves, albeit metaphorically, hitting upon an explosive solution: even more fitting is that it actually worked. Helldivers 2 has been a huge success for Sony as a simultaneous PC release, already its seventh highest-grossing game ever in the US, and this concerted pushback clearly caught the publisher off-guard. After a brief doubling down on the requirement, Sony abandoned it: for now, at least.

The Helldivers surveyed the wreckage, and it was good. Operation Clean Up began, a community led initiative to get the game's Steam rating back to where it should be (it's now at "Mostly Positive" overall, though recent review remains «mixed»), while players generally heaped praise on Arrowhead (not so much Sony) for being big enough to reverse course. There were casualties—one community manager was unfortunately too vociferous in their support of the players' tactics, and subsequently lost their job—but disaster was averted.

I find this stuff almost as fascinating as the ongoing Galactic War itself. Arrowhead has succeeded in engaging a playerbase at huge scale, and making them feel like they have a degree of control in how this game is unfolding. Helldivers 2 players are seriously invested in this universe already and, when they're not playing the game itself, are using a myriad of out-of-game tools to track it, offer feedback, and collectively organise themselves. The fact this maps so well onto Helldivers 2's satirical themes of managed democracy and