Helldivers 2 review bombed after Easy Anti-Cheat breaks mods

Negative Steam reviews have hit Helldivers 2 hard. Players are angry about the switch to Easy Anti-Cheat in update 7.2.0, "Devoid of Liberty," which broke a number of popular PC mods. As relayed via Steam, recent reviews sit at Mostly Negative, with 38 percent of the 9,619 reviews posted over the last 30 days being positive.

Easy Anti-Cheat replaces GameGuard

Arrowhead Game Studios released update 7.2.0 on October 20. The patch removed nProtect GameGuard from the PC version and replaced it with Epic's Easy Anti-Cheat, along with additional security tools. Arrowhead describes Easy Anti-Cheat as an industry standard used in more than 200 games and says GameGuard was not as effective as it could have been and that it wanted to crack down on cheat mods that have been circulating recently. The studio said some of these mods affect other players' games and can even interfere with the shared Galactic War. Steam Deck and Linux compatibility, along with hardware requirements, remain unchanged.

Mods caught in the crossfire

Helldivers 2 has no official modding support, but PC players have long relied on community mods. Arrowhead warned that some cosmetic mods could stop working and said non-malicious cosmetic mods may need updates from their creators to function again. Because mod use is at the player's own discretion, Arrowhead offered no list of what will or will not work. It invited players who believe Easy Anti-Cheat is blocking a harmless mod to contact its support team. Some players also object to the deeper system access the software requires.

One of the most notable casualties is Custom Galactic War, a fan project that added multi-faction battles and custom maps. Many of the negative reviews also come from players who used mods to work around bugs they say Arrowhead has not fixed, such as stratagems bouncing off course. Modders have reportedly found a workaround to bring some mods back within days, though Arrowhead has not confirmed it.

Review scores keep shifting

Steam's recent review rating has moved since the update. It was reported as mixed, with 57 percent positive on October 21, before falling to mostly negative. The game's overall rating remains positive, with roughly 80 percent of all reviews favorable. For now, getting mods working again depends largely on individual mod authors updating their work.

While Helldivers 2 is weathering the storm of another review bombing, Mimic has finally reached early access.