Is Helldivers 2 down?

Are the Helldivers 2 servers down? Arrowhead Game Studios’ frantic third-person shooter launched today (February 8) on PC and PlayStation 5, and players have been reporting matchmaking issues and crashes. However, it now also seems that the Helldivers 2 servers are struggling, with players flagging outages. Here’s what we know. 

At around 3:40pm GMT (10:40am ET / 7:40am PT, which is 2:40am AEDT on February 9), the official Helldivers 2 Discord server was flooded with players reporting that the game’s servers had gone down. This was corroborated by TechRadar Gaming. However, within 10 minutes, and before the developers could even address the issue, things appeared to have returned to normal again.

Is Helldivers 2 down right now?

At the time of writing, the Helldivers 2 servers appear to be fully functioning again, but while the developers iron out other technical issues, there’s a chance that this could change. We’ll be sure to update this article with more information as it becomes available.

After the initial disruption and reports in the Discord, at just before 4pm GMT (11am ET / 8am PT, or 3am AEDT on February 9), an update from Arrowhead Game Studios’ CEO, Johan Pilestedt, was shared on the official Discord server. 

“Hey everyone, we did an optimization update to the backend that unfortunately gate rushed ourselves (can you say friendly fire?),” Pilestedt wrote. “In common English: ‘someone tripped on the network cable.’ Backend will be up and running soon. And service will continue. We are actively monitoring and resolving the situation. Head of backend says sorry.”

This isn’t the first time on launch day that Helldivers 2 players have faced technical issues, however. Earlier in the day, Pilestedt, shared a statement via the Discord server and apologized for the matchmaking issues that players have been experiencing. The CEO added that “I have not been as active as I would have liked” since “it’s been a bit of a crisis mode in the studio today.”

Pilestedt explained: “We are seeing the matchmaking issues as well as some of the unfortunate stuck och [sic] login screen / crashes. I just wanted to let you all know we’re working as hard as we can on resolving these, the volume of players exposed some shenanigans in the system that went past many, many, many hours or testing. 

“We have tried resolving it on the backend only but it seems like we will have to patch the game to resolve the issue. Sorry for this and thank you for your patience. For now, I recommend to team up with people from the community as joining friends [works] fine. I hope you are enjoying the experience once you get into the game.”

Furthermore, earlier in the day, Helldivers 2 game director Mikael Eriksson stated: “We are aware that there’s an issue that shows up when you hit Quickplay and the game attempts to matchmake. We are on it and attempting a fix as soon as we can.”

For more games like Helldivers 2, be sure to check out our lists of the best co-op games, as well as the best multiplayer PC games.