Unreleased Helldivers 2 vehicles are leaking all over the place, but I'm not ruling out that Game Master Joel has something to do with it

The Super Earth mothership is springing leaks. Developer Arrowhead Game Studios has talked openly about how unprepared it was for Helldivers 2's massive popularity at launch, so it's fair to assume it also didn't anticipate how motivated fans would be to find out what's coming next. 

In the past week, videos of players accessing unreleased vehicles have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on TikTok and YouTube. Far and wide, players are joining quickplay lobbies and discovering teammates piloting walking mechs equipped with machine guns and missile launchers. Officially, mechs are set to roll out «soon.» More surprising has been the discovery of unannounced four-seated transport vehicles. A few videos of a «Rover» buggy with a back-mounted turret (like a Halo warthog) have appeared, as well as evidence of a larger APC van with multiple mounted guns. Over the weekend, players also gained access to mysterious new weapons, including the «Commando» rocket launcher and a «Quasar» laser cannon.

The main way that players are accessing unreleased content seems to be through cheat software. Elsewhere, Helldivers 2 dataminers have allegedly uncovered references to over a dozen weapons and stratagems not currently in the game.

But because this is Helldivers 2 we're talking about, a game with a dedicated dungeon master steering its galactic war in big and small ways, I don't think cheats tell the whole story. Are these all just garden variety leaks, or is this another narrative Arrowhead is manipulating?

There's good reason to believe that some of these leaks aren't leaks at all, but intentional sneak peeks supplied by Arrowhead itself. As explained prior to Helldivers 2's release, Arrowhead's Game Master tools include the ability to intervene in player's live sessions by spawning in enemies or granting special stratagem access.

That could explain an uptick in mech drops. If Arrowhead were slowly doling out mechs to random sessions, it'd accomplish two things: gathering