Update | Helldivers 2 stops working on older systems following recent optimizations, players outraged

Several minor clarifications made in response to e-mails from two volunteer moderators of the official Helldivers Discord server.

Helldivers 2 has been one of the more successful launches of last year, garnering massive attention and mostly positive Steam user reviews. Since launch, players on both old and new PCs have been able to enjoy the game at varied levels of visual fidelity, but now (late March, 2025), surprisingly, players on older systems have been locked out and are unable to play the game that they paid real money for, the reason being lack of support for AVX2 instructions in older CPUs. 

As reported by Eurogamer, the Helldivers Discord server has been seeing an influx of user complaints stating that they are unable to play the game even though they meet the minimum spec requirements. Some players who were able to enjoy the game ever since it launched shared their installation of the game won’t start, or that it just crashes. This seems to be due to an AVX2 or Advanced Vector Extensions 2 issue and the lack of support for it in older CPUs.

AVX2 support was seemingly included in the original system requirements but this was not properly enforced, according to The Verge. This allowed players on CPUs older than 2013 to run the game. But now, after recent optimizations, it seems to have become a hard minimum requirement, and players using CPUs that don’t support AVX2 are unable to play the game without having to upgrade or get an entirely new system.

A player shared on the Discord server, “I’ve never had any issues before this update, and I’ll stand by saying that it’s really defeating to play a game for 600+ hours, be in love with it, and then be hard-locked out while meeting/ somewhat above minimum specs.” The discussion of the AVX2 issue seems to have heated up, and a volunteer troubleshooter shared their frustration due to players’ behaviour around this issue, “I don't like to have to tell people their 13 year old processor is out of date.” They went on to say, “I get you're venting, but as I keep saying- it is up to you as the consumer to confirm your system meets spec before purchase, and you should never be surprised if your out of spec machine can't run the game.”

Fortunately, the issue has been acknowledged and community manager Baskinator shared that the team is currently working on a fix for the AVX2 issue and thanked players for their patience. Some of the suggested troubleshooting tips in the meantime include rolling back AMD/Nvidia GPU drivers and disabling mods, among other options.