Helldivers 2 Director admits they focused "too much on making new content" and not enough on fixing issues

Helldivers 2 players have been dealing with several issues since the game launched. From random crashes and stuttering to several bugs affecting gameplay, problems have continued to appear with almost every major update. Things got even worse after the latest Into the Unjust update, and now Game Director Mikael Eriksson has admitted that the team may have made a mistake by focusing too much on creating new content instead of fixing the existing issues first.

In a recent Q&A session, Eriksson said that the team is passionate about keeping Helldivers 2 alive by releasing new updates and events. He explained that the developers love seeing players engage with fresh content and enjoy the new additions they bring to the game. However, he also admitted that this approach has caused problems. “While that’s super cool,” he said, “it takes away focus from fixing the issues we already have.” According to him, the team has spent more time making new content and not enough time improving the core experience for players.

“I think we have, and this is in large part on me, focused too much on making new things and just not enough on fixing the issues that we have.”

Eriksson went on to say that the developers got used to working in a certain way and often got away with things they really shouldn’t have. Because of that, they developed a habit of pushing forward without fully addressing existing problems.

“You get used to working in a specific way, like we keep getting away with things that we really shouldn’t be getting away with. Since we do keep getting away with it, we sort of just get used to it, and we just keep developing the game like we normally do.”

He further added that now they realize there are issues in many parts of the game at once, and they are paying the price for it.

Looking back, Eriksson said that there were signs all along, like warnings from both the community and their own team, but those signs were overlooked while they focused on moving forward.

To fix this, Arrowhead is now changing how they approach development. Eriksson said they are tightening their processes and are going to develop the game in a “more responsible way” to make sure similar mistakes don’t happen again. The focus is shifting toward improving performance, fixing long-standing bugs, and stabilizing the overall experience before introducing more new content.

While players should expect to see new updates in the coming weeks and months, Arrowhead's CEO recently claimed that the game's performance will take "many more months" of work to see meaningful improvement.