"I'll own this screwup": Helldivers 2 studio CEO apologizes for balance comments, admits fire weapon nerfs are "disappointing after we had a similar misstep earlier"

Arrowhead's CEO has said he'll "own this screwup" after comments made surrounding Helldivers 2's weapon nerfs and balance changes earlier this week.

Arrowhead announced the Helldivers 2 Freedom's Flame Warbond, which launched yesterday, August 8. As you can probably guess from the headline, it offers plenty of fire-based weapons like new flamethrowers, but just days prior, Arrowhead took significant steps to nerf fire weapons like the Incendiary Breaker in the huge Helldivers 2 Escalation of Freedom update.

At the time, Arrowhead came under scrutiny for seemingly nerfing something that people were having a lot of fun with, which is exactly what Helldivers 2's game director apologized for earlier this year. Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani then weighed in on the matter, revealing that the Incendiary Breaker nerf came about because roughly 30% of all Terminid-based missions saw the shotgun being used.

In a new message in the Helldivers 2 Discord channel, Jorjani has apologized for his messaging earlier this week. "I'll own this screwup. I should have provided more context behind that stat - instead of just dropping it on you. I hope for us to cover the topic more during an upcoming stream where discuss balance philosophy," Jorjani's length message began. 

"Some brief thoughts here - even though I'm not the ultimate authority on this topic. I want Johan [Pilestedt, Arrowhead COO] and Micke (our game director) to talk more about this. Is it a problem if 30% are all running the same weapon? In some ways and not in other ways. If we make something super fun and people love it it's of course a good thing. But we also want to all the stuff in the game be viable - depending on the situation (difficulty, missions, circumstances)," the Arrowhead studio CEO continued. 

Jorjani also said that if one weapon is an "omnitool" - in other words excellent in all scenarios - then Arrowhead "probably has some work to do." The studio CEO also knows that Helldivers 2 players would rather the