You're waking up to bad Galactic War news in Helldivers 2 because the bugs and bots don't sleep, says developer Arrowhead's CEO: 'It's a push and pull'

The galactic war in Helldivers 2 proceeds apace, and it sure is fun to watch, from memes about the creek to Veld-induced panic, there's a whole lot happening day by day. The current major order to keep Heeth and Angel's Venture safe is going well, but players are starting to notice something strange. They plug in the hours to defend Super Earth, but when they wake up the next morning, all that progress has gone down the drain. What gives?

Turns out, bugs and bots don't sleep, that's what gives—as noted by Arrowhead Games' CEO Johan Pilestedt on Twitter over the weekend. «I've seen many posts about a planet's liberation amount—at peak [Concurrent Users (CCU)] the community is able to liberate high amounts, but as soon as peak passes, the enemies manage to take the planet back.»

He then goes on to explain that «each planet is sized constantly (think HP regen), this means that at low CCU planets lose liberation %. It's a push and pull!» I figure Pilestedt meant 'seized' here, because otherwise the sentence doesn't make sense. If 'sized' means proportionate scaling to the amount of Helldivers glassing a planet, these campaigns wouldn't suffer from a low CCU like he mentions.

So there you have it: There's not some sneaky DM knocking off hard-earned percentage numbers while you sleep. Rather, the perception of Joel-based meddling is more mirage than reality. That's not to say things have never been shuffled around, as in a separate tweet Pilestedt did confirm that they can send reinforcements to planets. 

However, his response to a player on that thread seems insistent that numbers-tweaking is less to do with a capricious game master—rather, the game's unexpected player count has caused some early adjustments to the formula. In response to the idea of an «illusion of choice», he writes: «It's not true. It was just in the first segment we had to get the balance right for several times more players. Now the choices you make are the ones that will happen.»

If I have my