Shams Jorjani Responds as Helldivers 2 Falls to Mostly Negative

Helldivers 2 has dropped to Mostly Negative on Steam as players pile up complaints about recent patches, balance changes and new Warbonds. The slide comes after a late-April surge of more than 14,700 negative reviews and a May 6 hotfix push during the Machinery of Oppression theme.

One reviewer wrote, "I absolutely love this game," before adding, "But I'm just so tired with Arrowhead with their infinite warbonds and zero balancing if is something not in the warbond just to make it more appealing for people to buy." That kind of split verdict is now showing up in the game's recent rating, not just in isolated comments.

Machinery of Oppression and three Warbonds

The current Machinery of Oppression theme centers on Super Earth taking on the mechanized forces of Cyberstan, and three Warbonds have arrived since it started: Siege Breakers, Entrenched Division and Exo Experts. Exo Experts brought special exosuits that needed buffs after release, which fed the criticism that the studio kept adding paid content while basic systems stayed in rough shape.

Steam reviewers have been even more direct about the tradeoff. One called Arrowhead "Heavily focused more on warbonds and pay to play updates, while ignoring core aspects of the game's basic functionality," while another wrote, "This is a paid game yet they lock most progression behind lackluster expansion packs that you need many hours of grinding to unlock."

SteamDB and the April spike

SteamDB data showed Helldivers 2 hit a spike of over 14,700 negative reviews at the end of April, after the Exosuit rebalance and the 6.2.2 patch. That surge is the clearest sign that the backlash is not just about one update, but about the accumulation of balance changes and rollout choices players think keep repeating the same pattern.

One reviewer said, "Most disappointing is that most of all development over these years is only these expansion packs." Another was sharper: "Keep making the game unbearable with your buffs to the enemies. Meanwhile we get a $10 warbond that gives us a peashooter that does nothing to any of the enemies past level six," a complaint that ties the review collapse to both gameplay tuning and monetization.

Jorjani's promised fixes

Shams Jorjani, the creative lead, has promised improvements after a Reddit ask me anything session filled with painful feedback. Arrowhead has not addressed the recent Steam review drop, but the timing leaves little room for another content-first response if the studio wants the rating to stabilize.

For players, the practical read is simple: the backlash is now large enough to move the public score, and the complaints are specific enough that future patches will be judged on whether they improve core play instead of adding another Warbond. Until the next fix lands, Helldivers 2 is being measured less by its theme than by whether it can stop burning goodwill on Steam.