The Helldivers 2 update Into the Unjust dropped September 2 with new Hive Worlds, cave systems, enemies, and missions.
But instead of celebrating, much of the community is frustrated, calling it one of the roughest updates since launch.
Performance Meltdown
Across Reddit and X, players are venting about technical problems that make the game hard to play:
- Frequent crashes, sometimes every other mission.
- Severe frame rate drops, especially in caves.
- Poor optimization on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
- Audio glitches and bugs like stratagems misfiring or dropping in the wrong place.
One post on Reddit – with the “Ok so this update is bad bad” thread having over 6700 up-votes – put it bluntly:
Constant loading screen crashes, 20fps in the hive caves and audio bugs so loud and frequent I have to play the game on mute just to hear myself think. Not to mention the update itself added enemies that are annoying to fight and glitchy as hell, not fun and interesting to combat, like the bugs already in the game.
Ohh and if you like light armor pen weapons, just throw them in the trash. Not a single bug you find in the gloom will take damage without med pen or above.
The update also ballooned the PC install size to over 140 GB, drawing comparisons to Call of Duty’s notorious bloat.
Unbalanced and Unfun
Even when the game runs, players say the design feels punishing rather than challenging. Complaints include:
- Burrowing enemies that erupt beneath squads, leaving little room to react.
- Spawn rates that flood players with bile-spewing and armored bugs.
- Poor visibility in caves, leading to cheap deaths from hidden hazards.
On Reddit, one frustrated player wrote: “My only gripe is that the burrowing enemies are more annoying than they are a challenge. I wish there was a way to hit them while they’re underground.”
Some call the patch “cheeks” or “a mess,” with veterans stepping away until fixes arrive.
Arrowhead Responds
Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani admitted the problems are serious on Discord, telling players: “100% get it. Performance is something we’ve talked about a TON today. It’s not good enough. A fix for some of the most immediate things is being prepped.”
He also pointed to “technical debt” from the Xbox port as a major factor, and said fixes are being prepared, though the studio prefers bundling them with content instead of releasing standalone performance patches.
However, players aren’t convinced. Many argue balance issues and performance bugs should have been addressed before dropping such a large update.
The Mood of the Community
While a portion of the fanbase still enjoys the tougher fights and new enemies, the dominant tone across forums is anger and disappointment.
Players expected the chaos of Helldivers 2 to be fun; instead, they’re battling crashes, lag, and overwhelming bugs in the worst sense.
@Pilestedt hey so…Helldivers 2 isn’t a game I expect to have S tier optimization….but my guy Idk what’s going on now but I can’t even get my hellpod to touch the ground on ps5 without the game completely crashing. Last night I was good, has there been a bad update since then?
— Avenged Sevenfold-1Yayyy✭-(THE Youngboy stan) (@_1Yayyy) September 3, 2025
Wow @ArrowheadGS or @NixxesSoftware or somebody needs to address Helldivers 2 on Xbox. I’m sure it’s on all platforms but it’s bad for me right now. Before this last update and content it ran so good, now not good at all. At least half of not more of the games have been bugged
— 🎮cdavide333🍊 (@cdavide333) September 3, 2025
Brother I’ve never seen a game destroy itself with one update quite like the newest Helldivers 2 update. In 1 night I went from having rarely crashed ever to crashing every other mission. And that’s ignoring the fact the new content isn’t that great and very unfun.
— Bingus (@anon_johnx) September 3, 2025
This new Helldivers 2 update kinda sucks balls, gotta be honest
— John Peanut (@Soy_Uyi) September 3, 2025
New Helldivers 2 update is extremely bad.
— Drone_EL145 🔞 (@Sol_Vasum) September 2, 2025
Enemy attacks dont hit you, but then they still kill you.
Call in a hellbomb backpack very well clear of the caves? No, drop the pack on top of the caves.
Good level design? No, poor visibility and deep water that you couldnt see.
https://t.co/rPFdgtVU2D honest to god this new helldivers 2 update is cheeks. love the environment and the atmosphere like usual but this one has a number of issues that go beyond the most glaring performance mishaps
— ᅟᅟ * ⋮ 𝐃𝐀𝐈͟𝐃͟𝐀͟𝐋͟𝐎𝐒 🔞 (@_bloodnchrome) September 3, 2025
This update for helldivers rn is so fucking ass dude lmao
— Snoozie (@SuzySnoozie) September 3, 2025
Every like 5 seconds there’s 30 fucking spewers spewing and shooting explosives and they all have armor. and then you have a dragon flying over head
It’s just straight up not fun
