Helldivers 2 breaches 200,000 concurrent players on Steam

Helldivers 2 continues to impress as its now managed an incredible peak player count of over 200,000 on Steam.

That information comes from SteamDB which lists the game as managing to hit a concurrent player count of 203,644 players, achieved on February 14 at approximately 02:50 UTC. It is, by far, the single biggest Sony Studios launch on PC. It also means it’s the second biggest launch on Steam of the year so far. The anomaly that is Palworld still holds first-place.

The immense sense has caught Sony and Arrowhead off-guard, which has led to a few issues with the servers buckling under the strain. According to Arrowhead, their servers were rated to handle 250,000 concurrent players and 20,000 login attempts per minute. The launch was especially rough, but since then there have been rough patches, including progress not being tracked, but Arrowhead have been putting out patches at a rapid pace and have upped the server capacity.

Arrowhead Game Studios CEO and creative director Johan Pilestedt also shared on X that they were at “around a million sales” after just a week.

Pilestedt also addressed the idea of having to earn the right to monetize games. “You have to earn the right to monetize” – I truly believe that.” he wrote on X. “If people want to support this title they have an option, but we are never forcing anyone to do so.”

I’d have to agree. While I’d prefer no extra monetization, Helldivers 2’s feel fair and aren’t pushy. Considering there’s a host of free content coming down the right, I’m okay with the microtransactions and Warbonds, both of which I’ve detailed here. With that said, I’m also okay with the idea of a multiplayer game coming out and having a finite lifespan of a few months rather than needing to be constantly supported and updated.

All of the developer’s hard work is paying off, too. Not only do the concurrent player counts keep rising, they’ve also managed to shift the Steam reviews from ‘mixed’ to ‘mostly positive’ after the rocky launch period.

Personally, I’ve been playing Helldivers 2 with friends every night and having a freaking blast with it. It’s a no-nonsense co-op shooter with satisfying guns, massive explosions, death-defying last stands and plenty of hilarious friendly-fire. Full review coming soon.