Over 3,000 Helldivers 2 players have left negative reviews on the game’s Steam page, bringing down its Positive rating and calling out Arrowhead over the “scripted” ‘Illuminate invasion’ event.
The Illuminate invasion of Super Earth has been met with players worldwide banding together to take down their Squid-like enemies. Since the May 20 update went live, over 163,000 have logged in to stop the invaders from claiming their home planet.
One of the biggest stories to come from the event is the heroic defense of Equality-on-Sea, the in-game of Shanghai. Their effort captured the community’s hearts, with players from York (New York) even abandoning their city to help out their Chinese allies. But many players now feel this defense has been in vain.
Helldivers 2 fans furious following “scripted” EoS cap
As the last remaining city, besides Prosperity City (Super Earth capital), many players had hoped that space Shanghai would be liberated from the Illuminate. In fact, Chinese players’ defense of EoS has led to the city receiving a whopping 99.99% defense rating, while Super Earth’s capital only struggles with 56.90%.
The Chinese community is not willing to give the space squids any ground. One squad famously went viral for showing community how to take down the colossal Leviathan ships, much to the delight of Western players.
Comical memes capturing the camaraderie between Chinese and US players have also been shared across social media, but despite their combined efforts to protect Shanghai, the city’s defense rating has remained capped at 99.99%, with many players now accusing the devs of rigging the event.
This has led to players review bombing, with 3,456 Negative reviews being posted in only a few days. Many comments left on the Stam page poke fun at the defense rating, with the line: “Progress to positive review is stuck on 99.97833%.”
“I witnessed Arrowhead MURDER a 99.9783% miracle,” wrote one player. “For 120hrs global players pushed [for] liberation…, Then devs deployed ghost nerfs at midnight: shadow-debuffing stats, manipulating server data, and finally executing their scripted ‘player-driven story’ farce…To CN/US helldivers, we died at 99.9783% with democracy in our hearts.”
Whether Arrowhead will lift the cap on EoS remains to be seen, but for now, a large portion of the community is unhappy with the event.
