WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is refusing to pass the controller to America over to another player in the Democratic party following his disastrous 1V1 against Donald Trump during the first Presidential Debate on June 27th.
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has been sparring with reporters during daily press briefings, blaming the poor performance of factors out of the President’s control.
“Joe Biden has been playing this game longer than most of the people in this room have been alive. He knows more than anyone that sometimes you just have a bad match, but one bad match doesn’t equate to just handing the controller over to someone else,” Secretary Jean-Pierre said. “It wasn’t even his fault. This was not a skill issue, the reason he kept frequently stopping and stuttering was because of lag and it wasn’t from his end. The President was also playing on an unfamiliar stage, and against an opponent who does not fight fair. Our hope is the upcoming September debate will receive a balance patch that will play to our strengths.”
The Democrats find themselves caught between a desire to ensure victory against Donald Trump, and wishing to avoid drawing the ire of President Biden. The messaging behind closed doors clashing more and more with what members of the party are saying to the press.
“Joe Biden should do what he decides to do and when he decides to do it I will respect whatever he decides,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on CNN. “If that decision is to decide to make the determination to pass the controller to someone else or to shuffle across the finish I know he will decide which decision is the best one to make a determination about.”
President Biden himself has been openly defiant, white-knuckling the controller and insisting he’s the only one who can beat Donald Trump in November.
“C’mon, man!,” President Biden said during an interview with George Stephanopoulos. “I beat Donald Trump in 2024, and I’ll do it again in 2008, Jack! Everyone’s reaction speeds get slower as they age, but I can still outwit my opponent. Watch me!” When asked what would happen if all the things he had predicted would come to pass if Trump were re-elected and be given the controller to America, Biden said, “All that matters is that I try to do the absolute job to do the job best and what tries is what matters. A little bit of ice cream and all it is is gangbusters. I’ll be fine. And by the way, I’m not using a claw grip, my hands just look like that now.”
At press time, President Biden has locked himself in the Oval Office with the controller while angry Democrats demanding he hand it over patiently wait for him to do so.
Danny O’Dwyer is the founder of Noclip, makers of fine video game documentaries. Prior to Noclip Danny worked at GameSpot, and appeared as a frequent guest on GiantBomb.com videos and the Giant Bombcast. Danny spoke with Minus World about digging for treasure in the boxes upon boxes of archival footage that spans decades of game history, where he sees Noclip going in the future, what the film Banshees of Inisherin means to him as an Irishman, and more.
MW: What’s the game that you’ve enjoyed the most so far this year?
Danny O’Dwyer: This year it’s probably Balatro or Balatro, the pronunciation is not going to come across very well in this written article, so I’m not sure why I corrected myself there.
MW: I interviewed the dev, and according to them it’s pronounced Balatro.(/ˈbɑːlɑːtroʊ/ BAH-lah-troh)
O’Dwyer: I have also interviewed LocalThunk for our new podcast, Dear Dwyery, which is coming out very soon. It’s a new developer focused podcast from the people who brought you Noclip documentaries. Plug plug plug wink wink. yeah. And also what’s interesting about that guy is that he just goes by LocalThunk and doesn’t turn his webcam on, he is a private dude. His background in development is that he just used to make games for his mates, and then eventually made this thing because he liked Big Two and it blew up. It’s crazy though, when you meet these people who are able to not just code the game, but also do all the art and then figure out sound design, you know, in their spare time. So it’s probably that or Cyberpunk 2077. Which I’ve gone back to because we’re doing a series on Cyberpunk on Noclip. We’re filming it all in Poland and Boston, and we have filmed a bunch of interviews at GDC. I played that game a bunch when it first came out, and to play it post 2.0 and Phantom Liberty is kind of bittersweet because it’s absolutely brilliant. The quest structure in that game is like nothing else. I think if you play Cyberpunk and then go play a game like Red Dead Redemption, you realize how Rock Star’s games, even though they make the most amazing open world, when you go on a quest you’re on the quest and then you get off. It’s like getting on a train, you know? And then when the quest is over, you get off the train. Whereas in Cyberpunk the quests are just happening and you can get lost on another quest halfway through it, and then it picks up later. It’s really remarkable and completely makes sense why that game was so buggy. Because it just seems like a nightmare to make a game like that.
MW: I went back to it after Phantom Liberty came out after playing 20-30 hours of the base game at launch, and after Phantom Liberty it was the game I had wanted it to be when it first came out.
O’Dwyer: Yeah. It’s a shame that it took them that long, but there’s no easy answers to why that’s the case. So that’s why we’re interviewing, like, 30 people for this thing.
MW: Has working directly with devs made you a more lenient reviewer than when you were working at GameSpot now that you know how the sausage is made?
O’Dwyer: I haven’t officially reviewed a game since I left Gamespot. I’ve done some stuff on my YouTube channel, but that’s basically why I left to do Noclip. I lived with the revolutionaries and now I was becoming a revolutionary, you know what I mean? I had seen too much of the other side of the fence, and I was just sort of struck by how, at least back then, I think it has changed, but back then, a lot of games press people were speaking about design with such unearned authority, in a way that like when you know nothing about something, you think you know loads, you know what I mean? Like if you know a little bit about something, at least you realize how little you know. And I had a background in software development like web software stuff, and I had done some C-sharp and made ActionScript games. I had a tiny amount of ideas of how this stuff was put together, but it was when I started talking to developers and asking them questions that were a bit more technical without having the technical verbiage myself. I was slowly getting into the deeper layers of what goes into things. At a certain point I just couldn’t. The biggest problem was I had an opinion show where I was talking about game design at a certain point I was like, I have to shut the fuck up. I can’t sit here and say, “This is the way games should be made,” because this is a huge pyramid of knowledge that I have to fucking spend some years climbing up if I’m going to start doing that again. That’s why when I started Noclip, I’ll be on camera for the purpose of hosting this thing, but we are going to talk to the experts about this shit. That was weirdly, I won’t say radical, but it was outside the box thinking. People talked to game developers when they were about to release a game because they wanted them to hype it up to sell us, but they weren’t asking about the craft. The only other place you’d see is like GDC talks. But this is before Game Maker’s Toolkit. This is before Tim Cain had his own 100,000 subscriber YouTube channel where he just talks about design. This was only seven and a half years ago. So yeah, that’s why I stopped. And it’s why to this day when I talk about games, I couch it. And this is in a very subjective way. I talk about like, this is what I think. Or if I criticize a game for a certain thing that I think maybe design wise isn’t good. I usually couch it in like, oh, but perhaps because of this, or perhaps they didn’t have enough money or thought about this thing or that thing. So I’ve totally, unfortunately, come out the other side just with, you know, much, much more qualifiers.
MW: Your teeth have been filed down as a critic?
O’Dwyer: I think I’ve always been largely an empathetic person, and I always hated the whole angry gamer thing, whether or not it was a journalist doing it or a YouTuber or whatever. I think it’s so easy to just appeal to people’s base reactions to things. There’s really good money in it. You can build an audience really well, find a game that people don’t like. There was a couple of years there, or if you just spent a lot of time complaining about Bethesda, you’d get a lot of YouTube subscribers. I mean, people have built careers on that stuff, and it just seemed so, I don’t know, boring or something Black Mirror-ish about the whole thing. I wasn’t interested in building the audience. I was interested in learning. And don’t think I have the patience and dedication to make games myself. So this is the really sort of backdoor way of learning about how games are made without actually having to do a lot of work.
MW: Yeah, you figured it out.
O’Dwyer: We’re all still figuring it out. That’s the whole point, right? The road is the point. Destination is never the point of it.
MW: Why is it important to preserve the type of material that you are uploading to the Noclip game history archive?
O’Dwyer: I think it’s because I saw how quickly that stuff can disappear. I was at Gamespot when they made the big swap from their old content management system and video robot to a much more versatile, modern one. But in so doing, they basically deleted a decade or more of video stuff, though I think it’d all been converted to swift files or something. And having grown up a Gamespot fan, that’s why I ended up working there. There’s a reason why the giant bomb Reddit community has backed everything up on archive.org because like a lot of them were there during the Gamespot days, and a lot of that stuff you can’t really get anymore. So when we got this cache of stuff, some of it is going to exist on the internet somewhere. I have a mini DV camcorder over there and in the evening, we’ll just grab 20 tapes and just put them in and play them on the camcorder. Like footage of Black And White 2, but it’s post-release Black And White 2. We don’t need to back this up. It looks like shit, it’s 480p or less. So there’s stuff like that that doesn’t warrant it. And then we run into a 1080p version of the Sony PlayStation 3 conference and you’re like, “Jesus. Oh my God. There’s like 5 or 6 different moments in this which are part of gamer history, and the only versions we have online now are screen grabs of copies of IGN streams that have been copied from Vimeo to YouTube to Dailymotion and then here’s 1080p. It never even hit the internet that good.” You know what I mean? It was never that good.
MW: All we had was the potato quality version.
O’Dwyer: Exactly. So when you say, “How important is it?”, some of it’s really important. Some of it’s not important at all. The difficult part is looking at this mountain of boxes and figuring out where you put your energy.
MW: Do you have a Noclip intern pilfering through and separating the wheat from the chaff?
O’Dwyer: I wish, no, we’re a small operation. There’s only really two of us who are full time and two part time and, and no it’s just me, man. It’s just me right now. It’s my garage. I converted my garage into a studio. And we have a separate lock up that’s temperature controlled that has the bulk of the stuff as well. So I go there and grab whatever. It just takes time. And that’s why we slowed down a bit over the holidays. Because we moved offices and then we slowed down again recently because I had to have surgery and take a couple of weeks off. So we’ll get to it. But in my head, this is going to be a ten year project. So like if we’re slow for a couple of months, sure. It’s been a while, we can wait a bit longer. It’s fine.
MW: What’s the most interesting thing that you’ve found so far?
O’Dwyer: The conferences are great. I think the my favorite things I found were the ones that I’ve had to kind of edit. A lot of the stuff is just raw tapes of things. There was one that was just like a raw tape of Infinity Ward, with Vince Zampella, and Jason West during the development of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, doing a tour of Infinity Ward. But it was just the raw tape. There’s a world in which you upload the raw tape, but there’s 30% or 20% of this of the people just getting the shot right or moving a light or something. So what I did was actually take some time to edit it together, which was crazy because that was basically me just pretending I was a GameSpot employee back in 2007, which was my dream. I had a lot of fun doing that, the ones I’ve had to do a bit of editing on or, for instance, there’s a trailer for Eight Days. The canceled game that had this really bombastic CG shootout trailer, and some of these had the audio from the auditorium playing maybe and maybe not the actual connected audio. Some of the tapes had five or six different channels of audio so you can isolate stuff. Or there were some cases where we grabbed the audio from worse quality versions that exist online, and took that and put that audio underneath the really good video, just to make sure that we had the best version, even though that wasn’t the version on the tape. The version on the tape had people going “woo” in the background or whatever. Then what we often did was we had the “woo” version in the big version, so we’re retaining everything. But to me it’s the ones like that. It’s the ones that I got to have a bit of fun doing a little bit of editing on them. There was a Kentia Hall whole tour from E3 2006 that Tor Thorson, may he rest in peace, he died a few years ago. Great dude. He was a host and a journalist at Gamespot for years. But that was a raw tape that they had presumably edited into a feature at some stage, but that feature is gone. So I just edited my own version of the feature using the way they would have done it. I think that stuff that’s more interesting to put together.
MW: Right on. What’s the most horrifying thing that you found?
O’Dwyer: Oh man. There was one DVD that just had “Halo 2 Demo” written on it, and I was like, “Oh, that that could be anything”. And when I put it in it was literally the file that presumably Bungie just gave to Gamespot. That was the original, real time demo for Halo 2. That’s another infamous demo. I think people have found a pretty good quality version of that over the years. It was just the fact that it was stuffed in like a box, because they’re CDs, right? So the CDs are just loose. You’ll just be in a box somewhere and you’ll fucking pick up a couple of tapes, and there’s suddenly a CD there. And that was one of them. So it’s the fact that you don’t know what’s on these things and when you find one that’s really good. There’s a Miyamoto interview we have. I don’t think we’ve put it up yet, but there’s a Miyamoto interview we have that’s like five minutes after the Wii is announced, this interview happens, and it’s the first interview with Miyamoto about the Wii. And some stuff we’re cutting out, like if there’s a journalist asking questions or stuff like that, if there’s somebody who didn’t ask to be on the international stage 20 years later, there’s some stuff where we’re editing it out if we need to, just to retain people’s privacy. The people who are being interviewed, they’ve given up their privacy, they’re being interviewed, they know there’s a camera pointed at them. But any of the stuff around the fringes, like producers or marketing people, we’re trying to cut that stuff out. But the questions that journalists were asking were such weird questions because they didn’t know what the Wii was yet. We just found out about it.
MW: It has a remote?!
O’Dwyer: Yeah. Without the context of this is literally the first time anyone’s talked to Miyamoto about this new Mario game and the Wii you’d think this person didn’t know what they were doing? So there’s some stuff like that where you’re like, “We gotta fix this one up a bit.”
MW: I’ve seen you post screenshots from The Banshees of Inisherin a few times. I adore that movie, and I was curious, as an Irish person, what does that film mean to you?
O’Dwyer: I really like that movie because to me, it was a very clear parable for the Civil War that happened right after the 1916 Rising. Which is sort of a dark time for Irish and Irish history. There are a lot of bummer years, but that one in particular where the house is divided basically. There were a lot of Heaney poems, and poems about brothers fighting brothers and stuff like that. There’s an old Irish story, I think it’s called The Sniper, which is about a sniper taking shots of people outside the GPO wherever it was in Dublin. And then, you know, spoilers: One of the people who he kills, ends up being related to him. So for me, when I was watching it, it felt very close to that. And during the movie there is fighting on the mainland, you can hear them referencing it. So I think I read it like that because any part of Irish history that gets spread out a little bit, even if it’s kind of that way where it’s kind of hidden in a different story, I really like that. It’s always cool to see Irish actors telling stories in the country. Colin Farrell has been in a lot of Irish movies. Cillian Murphy in The Wind That Shakes the Barley. And it’s fun because we’re a small country. It’s 5 million people or whatever. We have an Oscar winner now with Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer. It’s like punching above our weight a little bit. It’s pretty cool, especially when it’s a movie set in Ireland. You know? Just proud of it, you know? It’s a great movie too. It’s very funny.
MW: How did Noclip get involved with Stunt Derby?
O’Dwyer: Alex is someone I’ve respected for years. I’ve been a big fan of his games before I was even in America. I remember watching him and those guys win the Shamus McNally Award at the IGF for Blast Miner, and it’s my favorite ever win at that award show, because one of the guys on the dev team literally walks up and reads three sentences from Dianetics and then walks off the stage, and he’s not a Scientologist. It was a joke. I thought that was hilarious. So I’ve respected Alex for years. We did a small documentary about Gish with him and Edmund McMillen a few years back. To me, he’s always been one of these guys who ‘s an absolute genius programmer, but he’s kind of like a Simon who never has Garfunkel. He’s absolutely brilliant at what he does. And Gish is a good example of he pairs up with somebody who’s got a really strong art style and they make something super, super memorable. Right? Alex also made like the original Bridge Builder back in the day, which is iconic. And he did that all on his own. And he just makes these amazing names that you can’t believe one person worked on them. He’d been working on Sub Rosa for years, and it had sort of plateaued in sales, and he’d worked on it for an extra year and a half, probably to his detriment, trying to keep that hardcore community happy. And they were pissed off because there weren’t enough updates coming to the game. And he’s on his own, earning no money from it. So he’s at a stage in his career, where maybe “I’ll just go and get that really high paying job as a software engineer somewhere,” and I was like, “Do you want to try one more? I’ve got, you know, some money, put aside, maybe I could hire you for a month or two and we could work on something, and we’ll use it as an excuse to learn more about how games are made and marketed.” And obviously now it’s been almost two years. It’s not like Alex is on our payroll. He’s doing a lot of that sort of stuff on the side and for free. He’s doing other projects too. But, that’s how it started at least, me trying to learn more about it and also trying to see if maybe with Noclip’s audience, we could get Alex a bit more of an audience that he deserves as well. It’s been a crazy journey, the whole thing. I don’t know how people make games. It’s incredibly time consuming and stressful. I absolutely adore Stunt Derby. It will come out. During this year we’ll have some sort of release, but we’re still trying to figure out the last push, and how to finance it and all that.
MW: You touched on this a little bit whenever we were talking about your history leaving Gamespot, but why do games deserve the type of in-depth, high production value documentaries that Noclip produces? Is “deserves” the right word?
O’Dwyer: Deserve is an interesting word. Because I think all creators of art should struggle to make what they make, and there should be no assumption that it deserves to exist. I feel like they need to earn it. The games themselves when they come out and they’re popular. They make their own audiences, right?
To me, one of the saddest things about playing a game you love is when you finish it. Especially games because you spend so much time with them. And sometimes that’s like a transitional period. Like a multiplayer game you play for a long time, and you play it less and less. Sometimes it’s super abrupt. Like a single player game you fell in love with, and then you eventually, woefully decide to do the final quest and then you finish it. And it sucks. I think providing something that we can allow people to enjoy a little bit more about the game and aspects of the game that they maybe wouldn’t have gotten by just playing the game like a facet or looking at it through a prism that they wouldn’t have got as a player. And also a way to show people who maybe didn’t play a game how this stuff is put together, and how difficult it is to make these things. I think people love games that they really enjoy. But I think you can love games that you didn’t enjoy. If you see how much work and craft and strife went into making it as well. So that’s kind of what we try to do, is expose not just the human element, but also the creative struggle that is there to make any game. and hopefully make people like the games that exist out there, the ones that play and the ones that don’t play a little bit more, maybe respect it a bit more, and maybe be more empathetic to developers. That was kind of our main mission for a while: to try and create a bridge of empathy between players and developers. Because I felt like there was a lot of animosity there. Yeah, for no reason.
MW: It’s been close to eight years since you left Gamespot to found Noclip. And in that time you’ve put out dozens of documentaries, including ones about some of your very favorite games. Where do you see Noclip eight years from now?
O’Dwyer: I’ve always been super honest with our Patreon community. It’s kind of where we get in the weeds about a lot of this stuff. I want to be doing this for as long as it makes sense for me to be doing this. I definitely wanna be doing it in eight years. Apart from my time at Gamespot UK and Gamespot US I’ve kind of always worked for myself. I was a freelance web developer when I was a teenager. I used to run my own companies. I like being in charge of shit, and I like making the business decisions as well as the creative decisions. And Noclip is like this perfect storm where I got to run the company. I get to make the documentaries that I enjoy making and work on ones that I know that I’m not interested in the games myself, but I know people will be interested in them. And it’s not a business that needs to grow much. And we’re remarkably stable on Patreon. We retain people for a long period of time. Whenever it gets boring, maybe you feel that itch of like, “Oh, is this getting a little bit tired?”Then I do the work and we as a team do the work to mix it up and make it interesting. That’s why we did the Hades series, because we were like, all right, let’s do something long form where we’re embedded, or let’s put all of our resources that we do into our big projects into weird indie games. Let’s make a 90 minute long documentary about Immortality. Like, who the fuck is going to watch that? How many people in the world have completed Immortality? Same for our Pentiment one. Or let’s let’s do a fucking two hour documentary about the Black Mesa mod. Let’s just keep it weird and keep things interesting.
I want Noclip to be around forever. As long as it’s needed. The only thing I can see is if at a certain stage developers are talking to players, and they don’t need Noclip anymore. Maybe in that world it disappears, and I come up with another thing that interests me. I want to outlast everyone. This is a bit of a sidebar maybe, for years and years and years I remember my struggle career wise was I needed a break into the games industry. And then once I got in, I was like, “Okay, now I need to figure out how to stay here for as long as I can and not do the job I don’t want to do.”And what happened to a lot of journalists is that you end up inevitably making a jump over to PR or marketing because you have a mortgage, or you have two kids that you need to feed and journalism work, the longer you’re in it, the more shaky the ground feels, right? It’s tricky. It’s not a 20 year career. You know what I mean? It’s very, very difficult to do that. And at that time there were very few people in the industry that had had long careers. So for me, establishing Noclip was also a way of establishing that I was in control of everything. And if this thing falls apart, then it’s on me. But I’m not going to get fired by some fucking hack who doesn’t have a clue about the work that I do because their VC boss is axing 20 people. And I’d seen that happen at Gamespot. I’d seen a bunch of really talented people get fired or way more talented than me, but they probably were earning more, and they got let go. So for me, it’s that I have no desire to get back into the regular workforce. And I think there’s no shortage of stories to tell.
MW: Absolutely. Yeah.
O’Dwyer: The games are coming out at a rate that is faster than us being able to document them. I’m surprised more people don’t do this, to be honest.
MW: It’s been two years since I suggested a documentary about the Sega Genesis game Marko or Marko’s Magic Football to you on Twitter, and you replied, “fukin hell”. So I was curious how soon I could expect that to be put out?
I waited two years for Danny to crush my spirit in two minutes.
O’Dwyer: Marko’s Magic Football. Yes, I’m googling. This is Soccer Kid!
MW: So this game, I have no recollection of how I came into possession of it. It’s one of those games I just remember loving. When you were doing Guilty treasures for Giant Bomb I was like, “If Danny asked me to do guilty treasures, I would talk about Marko because nobody knows this fucking game.” I don’t even know how I got it. It was made by Domark, who became Eidos.
O’Dwyer: Okay, so Domark was bought by Eidos. So they were a UK team. I don’t want to pop your bubble on this, but there was a game called Soccer Kid that came out in 1993. It was made by Chrysalis, who were a pretty big developer in the UK. You should Google pictures of Soccer Kid. It looks like a version of this that had a higher budget. This game came out a year after Soccer Kid, so I think this is a clone. Which look, back in the fucking mid 90s, right? I was playing Great Giana Sisters, I wasn’t playing Super Mario. Altered Beast on the Genesis? I didn’t have that. I played Shadow of the Beast on the Amiga. So there was plenty of this happening. But to me, this looks like they made a Soccer Kid clone.
MW: You just took a treasured childhood memory and stomped all over it.
O’Dwyer: And especially because Soccer Kid and this game, Marko’s Magic Football are a weird concept. It’s a 2D platformer where you don’t have a gun, you don’t jump on people’s heads. You literally kick a football.
MW: Yeah, you kick football. You bounce on it. There’s a button you press to summon it. So if you got up on a platform, I think you hit C and it would bring it back to you.
O’Dwyer: Everything you’ve just said is also in Soccer Kid.
MW: That’s incredible.
O’Dwyer: I’m so sorry. I got to play it. I could be wrong about the dates, but it does look like it came out afterwards.
MW: Do you ever have those games that just kind of show up in your house when you’re a kid?
O’Dwyer: Oh yeah. It used to happen a lot more. Now we’re sort of previewed to hell about games. If anything, I think that’s why games like Balatro and and a lot of these indie overnight hits that come out of nowhere, like, I didn’t know anything about fucking Valheim. And then suddenly I played three months nonstop of Valheim. Or even Helldivers to a certain extent, even though that was a sequel. I think some of the most fun stuff is when there’s a game coming at that, you have no idea what it is, and suddenly people are saying, go play this thing, and then you’re like, “Oh, this is fucking crazy. Like, what is this? Yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing.” And you can do that one with these games that cost 15 bucks or ten bucks or maybe 20 bucks. You’ll take a risk. The reason we have all those previews is because people are spending 60 bucks, 70 bucks are like, “Well, I want to make sure I like this thing before I spend all that money.”
MW: Any closing thoughts, any messages that you’d like to send to the Hard drive Audience? Patreon.com/noclip? YouTube.com/noclip?
O’Dwyer: One of the things I really love about Hard Drive is that there is such a reaction to any cutting journalism out there, and I say that as somebody who, as an outsider, I don’t think the work that we do is not journalistic in nature necessarily. Sometimes we dip into those waters, but we have our hands full just trying to talk about the process and trying to be accurate and trying to preserve the history of it. But one of the things that really irks me about the reaction to a lot of modern games journalism is that there’s so much initial reactionary hatred to stuff. And there’s plenty of shit journalists out there in any field. I’m not saying everyone’s great at what they do, and there’s outlets out there that fuck up or that do it all the time. There’s outlets I don’t like and outlets I do like more than others. What I don’t like is when there’s really cutting criticisms of things that are pretty, you know, not black and white, but like pretty easy to see which way the wind is blowing or morally where we should maybe feel about these things, that there’s so much reaction to it. And one of the things I love about your publication is that it knows that. That’s the point. That’s part of it. We’re going to win you over. Similar to other satirical news outlets out there that like, we’re going to be extra smart about this, but we’re going to get you on our side by bringing you in, I guess, I’m making it fun. How do I best describe this? I guess, for whatever reason, it’s just the magic of a publication like yours is that it’s able to get around some of that stuff. I think that’s cool, and I’m not saying that other video game websites should use satire. That’s obviously not what they can do. One of the things I like about when I see your guys’ stuff shared around is that it’s usually in good faith. It seems to be. Which is pretty cool. It’s funny because it’s a way of getting people to care about things.
MW: Maybe thinking about it in a different way.
O’Dwyer: You’re putting a little bit of sugar on it. You lubing it up a little bit, you know what I mean? You’re making it easier to swallow or stick up your butt. I don’t know. Is this a suppository or a food analogy thing I’m doing? I’m not quite sure. I think what’s really cool about games coverage these days is there’s such diversity, not just in the types of people who are working at these places, but just in the ways we’re doing it. Which benefits everyone. We can run a thing like Noclip, which is pretty niche for what we do, but because we’re not like a weird outsider necessarily, there’s like all these different flavors of games, coverage. And I think that’s good for games. I think it’s good for getting people to give a shit more about games too. So yeah, it’s pretty cool, and I’m very flattered to be invited to talk.
CHICAGO — A moving scene unfolded today as beloved husband, father, and gamer Marcus Stanfoot was met with a 21 light gun salute as he was lowered into his final rest point. He was 52.
Marcus was eulogized by Moss Hudson, a close Steam friend who he had never spoken to outside of Destiny 2 sessions.
“Today we press F to pay respects,” said Hudson, “Marcus was as much of a gamer as you could get. He grew up in the age of arcades. He was one of the first to be diagnosed with Nintendo thumb. His Steam library was more voluminous than the Library of Alexandria. But now he has unfortunately run out of continues.”
As the gamers in attendance shed their tears, they pointed mint-condition NES Zappers to the sky with sunlight-deprived hands and fired in three volleys as if flocks of 8-bit ducks soared overhead. Duck Hunt was, reportedly, Marcus’s favorite game.
The funeral was catered with Marcus’s favorite food. Taco Bell. DoorDashed, the way Marcus preferred to receive it. Baja Blast was poured onto Marcus’s gravestone so that he could enjoy one final drink of the elixir that had fueled his gaming life for years. On his gravestone the succinct words were chiseled: HE DIED.
Marcus is survived by his wife, Sarah Stanfoot, and their six kids: Zelda, Lara, Pong, Riven, Gordon, and Doomguy. According to Sarah, Marcus’s death was as tragic as it was inevitable.
“He had a heart condition,” said Sarah. “He was told not to do any intense cardio or play any rage-inducing games. I told him not to play Only Up, but he always had this overwhelming drive to play every game he could. He fell down to the start of the game for the eighteenth time or so and that was it. Game over. At least he died doing what he loved.”
Marcus was buried with his beloved Razer Viper V2 Pro gaming mouse in one hand and a PS5 Dualsense controller in the other, as “he believed in unity between console and PC gamers,” according to Sarah. The original intention was to also bury him with his beloved Nintendo Switch, but Sarah still has her Stardew Valley save on it.
PHOENIX — Local gamer Gordon Bailey has begun reaching out to the gaming community for help after his way of life has been threatened by a video game implementing an optional mechanic that he doesn’t have to engage with.
After Bioware recently revealed that the next game in the Dragon Age series would have an optional mode that removes the ability for the player to die, Bailey took to social media in disbelief that a game studio would threaten his existence in such a blatant manner.
“Why would they do this? Why do they hate us so much as to do something like this,” tweeted Bailey to his dozens of mostly bot followers. “I obviously can only speak for myself but I know I’m not the only one whose life is affected by this callous move. I pride myself on only playing games on the hardest difficulty with one hand tied behind my back and never pausing so for them to make a game that caters to casuals is an attack on my very way of life. It’s like they don’t want me to exist.”
Bailey isn’t alone as many other gamers replied to his post in support.
“This is just the latest in a long line of incidents threatening our way of life,” replied Jackson Ryker. “As real gamers we are the most persecuted group in the history of the world and this is just another attempt to erase us from existence. No one has suffered as much as us but we will get through this and we will persevere. When this game fails they’ll see what a mistake they made in trying to be rid of us.
Bioware responded to the accusations in bewilderment.
“They know they can just not use the mode right? They don’t have to select it, we’re not forcing them, they can make it harder if they want.” said gameplay designer Bernard Morin.
Bailey further claimed he will not take this lying down.
“They can say what they want about this being optional but we all know they want everyone to use it and will do whatever they can to push it on us. Well I haven’t spent the last few years harassing and demanding people to play games on hard mode even if they don’t want to have this baby gamer mode forced on me. How dare they think they can do that, I will fight this. I should be able to play games however I want.”
At press time, Bailey has begun replying “git gud” to all posts praising the mode for making the game more accessible to more gamers regardless of ability or impairments.
OUTSET ISLAND — Do you remember the kid from Outset Island with the snot hanging from his nose? Well get ready to feel old because we caught up with him and he’s no longer a snot nosed kid, he’s a snot nosed man.
The boy whose real name is Zill has been living a quiet life in the 20 years since he first became famous for the long snot booger hanging from his nose.
“The truth is I never left the island. I like it here, I know everyone, I help my mom and dad with the pigs,” said Zill. “A lot of people might have thought that I’d be bolting off the island first chance I could due to my attention hog nature when I was a kid but I’ve matured a lot, I have responsibilities here. It’s been twenty years. I’m not that little kid anymore with a comically large and grotesque piece of snot hanging out of my nose, I’m a grown man with a comically large piece of snot hanging from my nose.”
When asked why he still chooses to have a large piece of snot hanging halfway down his body, Zill says it’s a piece of his identity.
“It’s what makes me stand out. It’s my thing. I couldn’t just be Zill, no one would remember Zill but everyone remembers Snot Nosed Kid. It’s a sad fact of life but no one remembers the random people around any given island, you need some sort of singular thing that defines who you are. You need to be the Elvis looking guy or the big swollen head guy or the pedophile guy.”
“We get a lot of tourists here now since it’s the home of the hero who defeated Ganondorf and they all immediately recognize me because of my snot. ‘You’re the annoying kid who always tried to follow Link around’ they say and if I was just Zill they wouldn’t know who I am, “Zill continued. Link interacted with everyone on this island, but outside of Link’s Grandma and sister, Sturgeon, Orca and I are the ones that tourists flock to. Yeah I’m in my late twenties now and have a job but the snot isn’t going anywhere.”
We tried to interview other residents to see what they’ve been up to in the last twenty years but Zill wouldn’t stop following us around.
BEND, Ore. — Local child Stephanie Vasquez has greatly disappointed her parents after she chose to buy a brand new Pikachu plush toy instead of the rare factory error Squirtle plush that was right next to it on the shelf.
Vasquez’s father Daniel made a Reddit post about the incident on r/kidsarestupid to lament about his daughter’s lesser IQ level.
“This is just an absolute nightmare as a father. You always want the best for your kids but it’s so demoralizing when your kid proves without a shadow of a doubt that they’re an absolute dumbass. I still love her of course but this makes it so much harder. When we got into the aisle with the Pokémon plush toys and I saw her face light up I was so proud of her because I was sure she was going to pick the Squirtle whose face was upside down but instead she grabbed the Pikachu right next to it and my soul left my body. She’s 8, she should be smarter than this.”
Vasquez’s mother Gina made her own social media post about the incident, asking her Facebook friends for recommendations on special schools to send their daughter.
“As many of you know by now Stephanie recently chose to buy a brand new perfectly normal Pikachu instead of the factory error Squirtle that was clearly more rare and valuable thus proving that she is of a much lower intellect than she should be. That Squirtle could have eventually paid to send her to a college that we now know she’d never get accepted to. We love our daughter and want the best for her so we are going to send her to a school that specializes in teaching really stupid kids. If any of you know of any schools that could help a kid who would so willingly make this purchase please, I implore you to give us recommendations.
Stephanie herself seems oblivious to the drama surrounding her purchases as her social media profiles are filled with photos of her with her new Pikachu plush in which she claims it’s her absolute favorite Pokémon and she loves him.
At press time, Daniel and Gina have gotten in contact with a brain specialist and plan on running various tests on Stephanie.
Sending friend requests via friend code in game currently does not work
Various issues to do with unintended Ballstics Shield behavior.
Players may be unable to be joined or invited to the game
Players added to the Recent Players list will appear in the middle of the list
Players may experience delays in Medals and Super Credits payouts
Enemies that bleed out do not progress Personal Orders and Eradicate missions
Deployed mines may sometimes become invisible (but remain active)
Arc weapons sometimes behave inconsistently and sometimes misfire
Most weapons shoot below the crosshair when aiming down the sights
Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but will deploy to its original location
Hand Carts ship module does not reduce Shield Generator Pack's cooldown
Bile Titan sometimes does not take damage to the head
Players may become stuck in the Loadout when joining a game in progress
Reinforcement may not be available for players who join a game in progress
Planet liberation reaches 100 % at the end of every Defend mission
Raise Flag of Super Earth objective does not show a progress bar
Mission count in the Career tab is being reset to zero after every game restart
Some weapons’ descriptions are out-of-date and don’t reflect their current design
Personal orders may not display correctly. (Kill 5.)
Happy Helldiving!
- Democracy Officer Baskin, filling in for Captain Carlberg
🛠️ PATCH 1.000.404 ⚙️ July 4
We have a hotfix coming from High Command!
🌍 Overview
This hotfix aims to resolve crashes and to reduce the number of people stuck in the hellpod drop-in loading screen.
🔧 Fixes
Fixed the 'Superior Packing Methodology' ship module upgrade (technically this was fixed on the server side and has been working since July 1st).
Fixed crashes and glitches occurring when dropping into a mission.
Fixed instances of players becoming stuck in the hellpod loading screen.
Fixed a crash that occurs after changing settings (this should be fixed for real this time, the last fix didn’t stick the landing and we have sent the responsible engineer to a Super Earth re-education camp).
🧠 Known Issues
These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.
Sending friend requests via friend code in game currently does not work
Players may be unable to be joined or invited to the game
Players added to the Recent Players list will appear in the middle of the list
Players may experience delays in Medals and Super Credits payouts
Enemies that bleed out do not progress Personal Orders and Eradicate missions
Deployed mines may sometimes become invisible (but remain active)
Arc weapons sometimes behave inconsistently and sometimes misfire
Most weapons shoot below the crosshair when aiming down the sights
Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but will deploy to its original location
Hand Carts ship module does not reduce Shield Generator Pack's cooldown
Bile Titan sometimes does not take damage to the head
Players may become stuck in the Loadout when joining a game in progress
Reinforcement may not be available for players who join a game in progress
Planet liberation reaches 100 % at the end of every Defend mission
Raise Flag of Super Earth objective does not show a progress bar
Mission count in the Career tab is being reset to zero after every game restart
Some weapons’ descriptions are out-of-date and don’t reflect their current design
Personal orders may not display correctly. (Kill 5!)
We have also activated new ship modules, Helldivers. Get in there and upgrade those super destroyers!
🛠️ PATCH 01.000.403 ⚙️ June 25
Small patch incoming from High Command!
🌍 Overview
For this patch, we have made improvements and changes to the following areas:
Crash fix related to the FAF-14 Spear
General fixes
General
Japanese language voice-overs are now available globally on PS5 (also on PC).
🔧 Fixes
Crashes
Fix for crash happening when players with unique hellpod patterns leave during hellpod launch cutscenes
Crash fix while aiming with the FAF-14 Spear
Misc fixes
Fixed corrupted text showing "?" for some characters when having Traditional Chinese language selected
Fix for Plasma Punisher being unable to shoot out of the SH-32 Shield Generator Pack and the FX-12 Shield Generator
Fixed so the Quasar Cannon has the correct change to its heat when on hot and cold planets
Fixed issue where Spore Spewer would appear purple on certain planets
Fixed some cases where pink question marks would appear in missions on various planets
Fixed Peak Physique armor passive not properly affecting weapon ergonomics
Fixed issue where available Operations were reset after player reconnected from getting kicked due to inactivity
🧠 Known Issues
These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.
Sending friend requests via friend code in game currently does not work
Players may be unable to be joined or invited to the game
Players added to the Recent Players list will appear in the middle of the list
Players may experience delays in Medals and Super Credits payouts
Enemies that bleed out do not progress Personal Orders and Eradicate missions
Deployed mines may sometimes become invisible (but remain active)
Arc weapons sometimes behave inconsistently and sometimes misfire
Most weapons shoot below the crosshair when aiming down the sights
Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but will deploy to its original location
Hand Carts ship module does not reduce Shield Generator Pack's cooldown
Superior Packing Methodology ship module does not work
Bile Titan sometimes does not take damage to the head
Players may become stuck in the Loadout when joining a game in progress
Reinforcement may not be available for players who join a game in progress
Planet liberation reaches 100 % at the end of every Defend mission
Raise Flag of Super Earth objective does not show a progress bar
Mission count in the Career tab is being reset to zero after every game restart
Some weapons’ descriptions are out-of-date and don’t reflect their current design
Release Captain Carlberg out
🛠️ PATCH 01.000.402 ⚙️ June 18
Good day Helldivers!Patch transmission incoming.
🌍 Overview
For this patch, we have made improvements and changes to the following areas:
Quality of life improvements
Crash fixes
General bug fixes
🔧 Fixes
Crashes
Fixed various crashes that occur when changing settings.
Fixed crash or corrupted font texture when changing languages.
Fixed a crash that occurs after exiting a mission.
Fixed a crash that occurs when opening the social menu with more than 100 friends. As a result we have also limited the friends list visibility to 100. You will remain friends with anyone over 100, but you may not be able to see them if they are offline.
Fixed crash social menu crash related to high number of blocked players and/or friend requests.
Fixed a crash when minimizing after changing fullscreen mode.
Fixed rare crash which could occur when picking up equipment.
Fixed a crash when a client interacts with a terminal in a waiting state after host migration.
Fixed a crash related to minefields.
Misc Fixes
Fixed issues with dodge and prone.
Fixed not being able to stand up while wielding the ballistic shield.
Fixed the Recoilless reload speed.
Fixed issue where users couldn't write a description on console when reporting a player.
Fixes vehicle preview not despawning in Warbonds when quickly scrolling through the catalog.
Fixed Spear not targeting several entities (spawners, compound objects, etc).
Sentries now have a higher destruction value so most explosions do not instantly destroy them regardless of the damage amount.
Fixed bug where operation progress would be lost when kicked due to inactivity.
The "Remove Friend" and "Block Player" buttons are now hold-to-confirm instead of a single click.
Fixed bug where dying would try to enter ADS.
Fixed a soft lock if you receive an interact emote while holding a grenade.
Fixed projectile to crosshair inaccuracies in ADS when the player is in different stances
Fixed broken player model in career tab when on someone else's ship.
Adjudicator: fixed incorrect recoil values.
Fixed armory terminals losing their functionality if the last client player who interacted with them leaves the host's ship.
Fixed missing localization for flying patrols operation modifiers.
Fixed issue where throwing knives could be left floating in the air.
Support for non-latin fonts in the game's install folder path.
Vehicle skins are now applied to all vehicle variations when equipping directly from Warbonds.
Fixed flag objectives not properly tracking a Helldiver’s position while on a Combat Walker.
Fixed missing description for the PH-202 Twigsnapper helmet.
Fixed the issue where the shuttle would clip through Bile Titans and terrain during landing sequences.
Improved performance on PS5 when CPU bound.
Fixes FX remaining when destroying Spore Spewer.
Ensure stim vfx remains on screen for the entire duration of the stim effect when med-kit bonus is present.
Fix for emote receiver players being able to use their weapons during emote animation
Hellbombs now get called down facing the player, rather than away from the player.
🧠 Known Issues
These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.
Sending friend requests via friend code in game currently does not work.
Players may be unable to be joined or invited to the game.
Players added to the 'Recent Players' list will appear in the middle of the list.
Players may experience delays in Medals and Super Credits payouts.
Available Operations are generated again after reconnecting after getting AFK kicked.
Enemies that bleed out do not progress Personal Orders and Eradicate missions.
Arc weapons sometimes behave inconsistently and sometimes misfire.
Most weapons shoot below the crosshair when aiming down the sights.
Plasma Punisher is unable to shoot out of the shield generators.
Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but it will deploy to its original location.
"Hand Carts" ship module does not reduce Shield Generator Pack's cooldown.
Bile Titan sometimes does not take damage to the head.
Charger’s butt does not take damage from explosions.
Players may become stuck in the Loadout when joining a game in progress.
Reinforcement may not be available for players who join a game in progress.
Planet liberation reaches 100% at the end of every Defend mission.
"Raise Flag of Super Earth" objective does not show a progress bar.
Mission count in the Career tab is being reset to zero after every game restart.
Some weapons’ descriptions are out-of-date and don’t reflect their current design.
End of transmissionRelease Captain Carlberg out
🛠️ PATCH 01.000.400 ⚙️ June 13
Freedoms Greetings Helldivers, I'm your host Release Captain Carlberg bringing you democracy's latest and greatest from Super Earths superior minds. Its a lot of information so lets dive in!
🌍 Overview
For this patch, some of the major areas of interest are
Visible Supply Lines & Attack Origins in the Galactic War.
Stratagem, weapon, planet, and enemy balancing updates.
Various crash fixes, stability improvements, and other updates.
Invite-only lobby creation.
The right most option in the Lobby settings. Currently only localized in English. Additional languages coming in the next patch
⚖️ Balancing
Goal with stratagem balance changes this patch:
With these balance changes we wanted to buff up some of the weaker stratagems to make them more viable and add more possibility for variety in the loadouts. We also changed a few to make them more consistent, but the goal was to keep a similar or higher power level.
We are looking into the stratagems more to see if there are any other stratagems that might need some buffs or changes to make them more viable. We also want to be better at explaining what our goals are with the changes, please see the linked blog post for more information.
A/MLS-4X Rocket Sentry
Decreased spread
Prioritize larger targets
Increased target distance from 75 to 100m
Decreased Rockets per salvo 2 to 1 (to get a better ammo economy)
Increased explosion radius from 1m to 4m
Decreased explosion armor penetration (Explosion can no longer damage heavy armored enemies. The projectile still has enough AP to damage heavily armored targets.)
Increased total damage from 420 to 570 damage per shot
R-63 Diligence
Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 10% to 25%
* Some enemies have durable body parts that receive only a portion of base damage from projectiles
Other
Updated Recoil stance modifiers: We made changes to the recoil stance modifiers to make them more consistent and also reward being prone more. Almost all of them will improve the recoil and only a two have been made worse (and only by 10%).
See the blogpost for a more detailed description.
🎮 Gameplay
General
Removed operation modifier AA-Defenses: Reducing the stratagem slots by 1
We want to look over the operation modifiers in the future. Right now there are too few of them which become repetitive and the ones we have do not create variety or promote different playstyles. For now, we removed this one because it only encourages the players to bring the best stratagems and does not promote variety
Disabled the Retrieve Essential Personnel defend event mission for the time being
This is to give the mission the proper attention and care that it deserves as it is now deemed not fun enough or performing as we want it to.
Super Samples
Super samples now spawn on difficulty 6. The reason for this change is that we feel that their existence only on difficulty 7+ forced some players to play the game on a harder difficulty than they wanted to comfortably play on. We do however still want a gating of them but a less punishing one.
The SEAF Artillery stratagem is no longer blocked by stratagem jammers or Ion Storms, and is available after the mission timer ends and the destroyer leaves close orbit.
Enemies in melee range of the gates in the Evacuate High-Value Assets mission will now attack it more consistently.
Added the ability to chat from in-game menus and mission loading screen.
Updated some first person crosshairs to improve readability.
The spike plant that appears on certain planets has been reworked.
No longer causes bleed or stamina drain if hit by the plant explosion or spikes.
Now “pops” three times sending spikes everywhere, dealing increased damage.
Fire Tornados
Fire tornados have had their behavior changed, they should no longer feel like they actively respond to player movement, and should move more randomly.
While a fire tornado storm takes place, enemy vision is reduced. Player vision is unaffected.
*Fire tornados being more random should result in more variance in situations players find themselves in. Tornados are significantly less likely to pile up and overlap on extraction points or objectives, and will generally be a bit easier to deal with.
Tremors
Tremors have had their spawning tweaked to be slightly more random.
Tremors have had their epicenter size and effect range increased.
*These changes should result in more situations where enemies away from the player get stunned, as well as reducing how consistently the player has a tremor occur next to them.
Ion Storms
Added additional VFX for Ion Storms.
Visibility
A lot of planets have had their fog amounts tweaked to be a bit less harsh and dense, to provide less fatigue from constantly fighting on planets with bad visibility. We still intend there to be foggy planets with worse visibility, but the balance was a bit off.
Desert planets such as Erata Prime, Chort Bay, Hellmire, and similar.
Highlands planets such as Varylia 5, Matar Bay, Oshaune, and similar.
Artificial light sources have had their intensity rebalanced and reduced across the board to fix situations of lights completely blinding the player.
Unexploded Hellbomb
The unexploded malfunctioning hellbombs that can sometimes be found on planets will now explode immediately if hit with strong explosions or heavy weaponry. They will still have the same delay if hit by small arms fire or weaker attacks.
Vegetation
Vegetation that’s large enough to slow the player now has an extra function. When inside the vegetation helldivers will be harder to detect, reducing their detection range by enemies. This effect stacks with other detection reducing effects such as nighttime, being crouched or prone, or things such as the scout armor passive.
Enemies
Acid Effect
The acid effect applied by hunters, bug mines, etc. now allows you to sprint while under the effect and slows you by 30% instead of 50%. Duration has been increased from 3 to 4 seconds. These changes are intended to make it less punishing for players to be slowed while fighting the Terminids, This allows us to use it in more places without making the experience very punishing, for example the Bile Spewers.
Armored enemy balance
We have toned down the amount of heavily armored enemies like Bile Titans, Chargers on higher difficulties and instead spawn more hordes of smaller enemies, the difference should be quite noticeable and the amount should be at least 30% less than before during bug breaches. We have also toned down slightly how many Hulks that spawn for the Automatons. Our intent is to ease up on the demand of anti-tank weapons and by having more of the other enemies give a better incentive for the group to bring stratagems and weapons that take care of hordes.
Patrols
Patrol spawning is now back to how it worked before patch 01.000.300 with some slight tweaks so that the levels are less empty if you are far away from important locations with enemy presence.
Stunning
Medium and large sized enemies now don't get stunned as easily. This will not affect the stratagems that stun, and will mostly just affect how easily the Pummeler can stun larger enemies
🐜 Terminids
Bile Spewer and Nursing Spewer
Spewers will now get slowed if they lose their legs.
Spewer puke now applies the acid effect.
Spewer puke now can only damage helldivers up to 4 times per second and the helldiver cannot take damage multiple times from the same projectile. This should reduce instances where you are instantly killed by it.
Bile Titan
The Bile Titan’s head is slightly less durable against weaker anti-tank weapons. It's not a large change, and will mostly matter for weapons like the railgun.
The Bile Titan’s puke can now only damage the helldiver 4 times per second and the helldiver cannot take damage multiple times from the same projectile. The damage is still very deadly so running through their puke is not recommended. Their puke now also has a bigger spread.
Charger Behemoth
The Charger Behemoth is now joining the battle on higher difficulties, it can now also take more damage than before. This enables us to spawn fewer chargers but still retain the difficulty.
Chargers
Will now only show bleedout effects from the body if the bleedout state has started. It can still show bleedout effects from the mouth without having started the bleedout state.
🤖 Automatons
Hulk Scorcher
The Hulk’s flamethrower now does less damage and cannot damage helldivers more than 4 times per second. In addition, the helldiver cannot be damaged multiple times by the same flame projectile. This should reduce instances where you are instantly killed by it.
Automaton Tanks
The Tank armor value on the front has been lowered to be the same as the non-vent sections on the rear of the tank. The intent was initially that it was supposed to be more armored in the front, but the visual language did not show that.
The vents on the back of the Tanks turret still has the same armor value as before, but will check for explosion directions correctly now.
The damage of exploding automaton jump packs has been decreased by 50%, it will still set you on fire though.
🌍 Galactic War
Introducing Supply Lines & Origin of Attacks
Supply lines were previously not shown on the Galactic War map to reduce clutter and improve readability. However based on the feedback from our community we have made an implementation showing them on the map. This solution tries to maintain the general readability while still exposing the system to players in game.
You will now also be able to see which planet an attack is originating from, potentially allowing for the community to stop the attack at its source.
We have also updated visuals in the sector and planet info pop-ups.
🔧 Fixes
The FAF-14 Spear targeting has been reworked and should now function much better. However it has lost the ability to target Automaton Spawners, this is not intended and will be fixed in the future.
Intense Heat and Extreme Cold environmental modifiers will now affect the Quasar Cannon’s reload speed and will show correctly in the HUD.
Reload speed on Cold planets -2.5 sec
Reload speed on Hot planets +2.5 sec
The radar pulse that detects enemies on the mini-map is now visible.
Most of Automatons weapons have now gotten tighter limits to how much the projectile they shoot can deviate from its weapons muzzle angle. What this means is that situations where devastators shoot sideways and similar should be fixed.
The weapons of the Exosuits are now allowed small adjustments in the angle they fire their projectiles versus their muzzle angle. This should make their weapons more accurate.
Ballistic shield now collides with grenades.
The unblock button should no longer disappear from the social menu.
Blocked players can no longer join the blockers lobby through recent players.
Fixed a bug where enemies killed, missions played, and missions completed stats would not be properly displayed in armory.
Fixed issue where the player can throw an unlimited amount of grenades by pressing the "Quick grenade" button right after closing the Stratagem menu.
Helldiver now also switches to the last active weapon when out of grenades, fixing the issue where they would be holding a stratagem ball without the stratagem menu being open.
Fixed some text overlap in various locations.
The burning effect applied to the player when a combat walker dies is now a normal burn. The intent is that you should be able to escape it alive. But you will be on fire so hit the ground!
The extraction shuttle can no longer take damage preventing extraction. New high grade materials directly from Super Earth R&D have been utilized.
On PC you can now navigate the super credits menu with “WASD” keys
Fixed an issue where sample count in missions were incorrectly displayed
Levels no longer generate with blocked areas preventing player progression.
Your Ships bridge is no longer cast in perpetual shadow.
Reduced situations where blue stratagems would bounce when placed next to the detector tower.
The warbond menu now displays correct emote & victory poses in the thumbnail.
War Medals cap is now displayed in the UI.
Fixed a bug where the Helldivers armor could appear invisible for other players.
Refined player reporting UI.
Fixed issue where Helldivers could be launched into the air if close to a Bile Titan or Factory Strider corpse.
Fix for Factory Strider sometimes spawned an extra model after being destroyed.
Reduced situations where helldivers could spontaneously die while walking into seemingly walkable valleys on some planets.
Fixed rare issue on arctic planets where players could spontaneously die close to large bodies of water.
Fixed Pelican-1 sometimes leaving immediately after any player gets onboard.
Fixed bug where helldiver could get stuck in grenade idle state after throwing grenades
Fix Superior Packing Methodology not working for other peers.
Recent Players list will now include hot-joining players.
Relaxed disconnection policy for PC users.
Fixed an issue where previous sessions' player names might not be saved correctly when restarting.
Defend event attack origin now visualized when hovering the planet with the defend event or the attack origin planet.
Implemented outlines for previously poorly readable texts.
Crash Fixes
General crash fixes.
Fix for a crash that could occur when applying wounds to multiple enemies.
PlayStation Only: Fixed an issue that would sometimes cause a crash when switching between Quality and Performance mode.
Fix for a crash when a player leaves after all their railguns have exploded.
Fix for crash that could occur when rejoining a previous session
Fix for crash that occurred when trying to throw a snowball in ADS mode
Fix for potential crash when loadout is aborted during hotjoin.
Fix for rare crash linked to leaving a session while aiming a weapon.
🧠 Known Issues
These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.
Sending friend requests via friend code in game currently does not work.
Players may be unable to be joined or invited to the game.
Players added to the 'Recent Players' list will appear in the middle of the list.
Players may experience delays in Medals and Super Credits payouts.
Spear targeting is unable to target Automaton Spawners.
Enemies that bleed out do not progress Personal Orders and Eradicate missions.
Arc weapons sometimes behave inconsistently and sometimes misfire.
Most weapons shoot below the crosshair when aiming down the sights.
Plasma Punisher is unable to shoot out of the shield generators.
Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but it will deploy to its original location.
Helldiver may be unable to stand up from crouching when surrounded by enemies.
"Hand Carts" ship module does not reduce Shield Generator Pack's cooldown.
Bile Titan sometimes does not take damage to the head.
Charger’s butt does not take damage from explosions.
Players may become stuck in the Loadout when joining a game in progress.
Reinforcement may not be available for players who join a game in progress.
Planet liberation reaches 100% at the end of every Defend mission.
"Raise Flag of Super Earth" objective does not show a progress bar.
Mission count in the Career tab is being reset to zero after every game restart.
Some weapons’ descriptions are out-of-date and don’t reflect their current design.
BR-14 Adjudicator has incorrect recoil values
May Liberty always guide your pathRelease Captain Carlberg out
🛠️ PATCH 1.000.305 ⚙️ June 1
🔧 Fixes
Fixed an issue causing enemies to spawn on the drill during the Operation: Enduring Peace order mission.
🧠 Known Issues
These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.
Players may not have the option to send, accept or decline friend requests.
Players may not have the option to Block other players.
Blocked players are not added to the Blocked Player list or prevented from joining games.
Game may crash if the player changes the text language while on a mission.
Players may experience delays in Medals and Super Credits payouts.
Players may occasionally receive excessive XP.
Enemies that bleed out do not progress Personal Orders and Eradicate missions.
Arc weapons sometimes behave inconsistently and sometimes misfire.
Most weapons shoot below the crosshair when aiming down the sights.
AR-61 Tenderizer deals too little damage and is not in the final state we are intending.
Spear’s targeting is inconsistent, making it hard to lock-on to larger enemies.
Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but it will deploy to its original location.
Helldiver may be unable to stand up from crouching when surrounded by enemies.
"Hand Carts" Ship module does not reduce Shield Generator Pack's cooldown.
Some players might become stuck in the Loadout when joining a game in progress.
Reinforcement may not be available for some players who join a game in progress.
Planet liberation reaches 100% at the end of every Defend mission.
🛠️ Patch 1.000.304 ⚙️ May 14
Greetings fellow Divers! Small patch deploying to a Super Destroyer near you
🌍 Overview
For this patch, we have made improvements and changes to the following areas:
Crash fixes
Misc fixes
🔧 Fixes
Crashes
Fixed a crash triggered when the host left after a player hot joined.
Fixed an occasional crash in the Loadout menu.
Fix for a rare crash when transitioning to or from the ship.
Misc Fixes
Fixed players getting stuck on the mission summary screen when the host leaves.
Fixed the issue of non-purchased Super Credits not being visible in the Warbond Overview screen (only relevant for Japanese release).
Optional account linking now available in the Account section of the in-game settings.
Fixed 'Steam AppId supplied invalid or not allowed' being shown due to a different error.
Fix attachments on weapons showing up as purple question marks in the tutorial in some cases.
Airburst proximity explosion is now triggered only by enemies & Helldivers.
The AR-61 Tenderizer now has the correct color scheme.
🧠 Known Issues
These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.
Players may not have the option to send, accept or decline friend requests.
Players may not have the option to Block other players.
Blocked players are not added to the Blocked Player list or prevented from joining games.
Game may crash if the player changes the text language while on a mission.
Players may experience delays in Medals and Super Credits payouts.
Players may occasionally receive excessive XP.
Enemies that bleed out do not progress Personal Orders and Eradicate missions.
Arc weapons sometimes behave inconsistently and sometimes misfire.
Most weapons shoot below the crosshair when aiming down the sights.
AR-61 Tenderizer deals too little damage and is not in the final state we are intending.
Spear’s targeting is inconsistent, making it hard to lock-on to larger enemies.
Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but it will deploy to its original location.
Helldiver may be unable to stand up from crouching when surrounded by enemies.
"Hand Carts" Ship module does not reduce Shield Generator Pack's cooldown.
Some players might become stuck in the Loadout when joining a game in progress.
Reinforcement may not be available for some players who join a game in progress.
Planet liberation reaches 100% at the end of every Defend mission.
Release Captain Carlberg out
🛠️ PATCH 01.000.303 ⚙️ May 8
🌍 Overview
For this patch, we have made improvements and changes to the following areas:
Crash fixes
🔧 Fixes
Crashes
Fix for common crash related to damage over time use
Fix for very common crash related to hot joining quickplay session that become full
This unfortunately means that hot joining players won't show up in the recent players list until they drop down to the planet, or not at all if they leave from the loadout.
🧠 Known Issues
These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.
Players may not have the option to send, accept or decline friend requests.
Blocked players are not added to the Blocked Players list and are not prevented from joining games.
Reinforcement may not be available for some players who join a game in progress.
Helldiver may be unable to stand up from crouching when surrounded by enemies.
Game may crash if the player changes the text language while on a mission.
Players may experience delays in Medals and Super Credits payouts.
Enemies that bleed out do not progress Personal Orders and Eradicate missions.
Arc weapons sometimes behave inconsistently and sometimes misfire.
Spear’s targeting is inconsistent, making it hard to lock-on to larger enemies.
Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but it will deploy to its original location.
Explosions do not break your limbs (except for when you fly into a rock).
Area around Automaton Detector Tower makes blue stratagems such as the Hellbomb bounce and be repelled when trying to call them down close to the tower.
Planet liberation reaches 100% at the end of every Defend mission.
Some weapons in the tutorial have missing parts presenting as question marks in some cases.
Hot joining players won't show up in the recent players list until they drop down to the planet, or not at all if they leave from the loadout.
Release Captain Carlberg out
🛠️ PATCH 01.000.302 ⚙️ May 7
A democratic day to you Helldivers and CitizensToday we bring you yet another patch addressing various freedom hampering issues
🌍 Overview
For this patch, we have made improvements and changes to the following areas:
Some weapon and enemy balancing
Crash fixes
Social Menu issues
DoT damage fix
Misaligned scopes fix
General fixes and improvements
⚖️ Balancing
Primary, Secondary, & Support Weapons
R-9 Eruptor
Increased explosion damage by 40 and removed shrapnel from the explosion
This is to avoid cases in which players would randomly one-shot themselves or their teammates in a huge radius around the explosion
Enemies
Increased Shrieker sight and hearing range slightly.
Increased Gunship hearing range slightly.
🔧 Fixes
Gameplay
We have fixed issues with the way Damage-over-time effects were being applied. This should fix issues where only the network session owner could apply them, and other cases where they would be applied inconsistently.
Firing the Punisher Plasma while wearing a shield backpack no longer damages the Helldiver
Fixed issues with some weapon scopes not being aligned in First-Person-View.
The sound when stimming no longer plays while being interrupted
Major orders with the “Kill task” now track score correctly. Previously it counted the entire squad’s kills once for each player, meaning it would multiply the score by the number of people on the mission; this is now amended.
Helldivers can no longer land on tall rocks in the “Horde Defend Missions”
Helldivers can no longer land on top of bug pillars in Deactivate Terminid Control System missions
Fix for the reinforce stratagem not being present if a Helldiver leaves the session before readying up and then hot joining the active session
Crashes
Fixed a crash that could occur when all players were dead on the “Deactivate Terminid Control System” mission
Fixed a crash that could occur on game shutdown
Fixed a crash that could occur when leaving the mission and rejoining
Fixed a crash that could occur at the end of cutscenes
Fixed a crash that could occur when diving into missions
Fixed a tutorial crash that could occur on PC when ALT+Tabbing
Fixed a rare crash that could occur when using beam weapons
Fixed a rare crash that could occur for players on startup when using VPN
Fixed a soft lock that could occur if the player would open the text chat while having the stratagem menu open
Other general crash fixes
Social Menu fixes
PC players adding friends through friend codes can no longer show up as “Unknown”
Fixed overlapping footers inside menus
Steam friends should now be visible in Social Menu, even though Friends List is not set to Public in Steam Privacy Settings
Recent Players list will now include hot-joining players
Players are now able to unblock players that were not in their friends list beforehand
Fixed issue with empty friend-names in Social Menu
Lobby privacy mode text updates immediately when changed
Player names longer than 26 characters should now update properly in the Social Menu
Fixed issue where non-host players could kick others indiscriminately including the host
Other
Total purchased counter on the right side of the Robotics Workshop section no longer displays 7 / 8 despite all stratagems being purchased
Resolved some edge cases related to Steam AppId related errors on login
🧠 Known Issues
These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.
Players may not have the option to send, accept or decline friend requests.
Blocked players are not added to the Blocked Players list and are not prevented from joining games.
Reinforcement may not be available for some players who join a game in progress.
Helldiver may be unable to stand up from crouching when surrounded by enemies.
Game may crash if the player changes the text language while on a mission.
Players may experience delays in Medals and Super Credits payouts.
Enemies that bleed out do not progress Personal Orders and Eradicate missions.
Arc weapons sometimes behave inconsistently and sometimes misfire.
Spear’s targeting is inconsistent, making it hard to lock-on to larger enemies.
Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but it will deploy to its original location.
Explosions do not break your limbs (except for when you fly into a rock).
Area around Automaton Detector Tower makes blue stratagems such as the Hellbomb bounce and be repelled when trying to call them down close to the tower.
Planet liberation reaches 100% at the end of every Defend mission.
Some weapons in the tutorial have missing parts presenting as question marks in some cases.
Release Captain Carlberg wishes you continued success in your democratic endeavors
Not a whole lot of meat in the latest Helldivers 2 patch on May 2, but it does fix some bad crashes that occur at inopportune times, especially after the previous patch.
Those issues with cross-platform friends and cross-play invites continue to persist, for what seems like months now.
Read more further down below, to find out about other issues that have NOT been resolved yet. Check out the rest of our guides for potential fixes on some of them, if you continue to be denied your right to deliver democracy.
🛠️ PATCH 01.000.301 ⚙️ May 2
Auspicious day all Helldivers out there.
Small patch rolling out before the weekend!
🌍 Overview
For this patch, we have addressed some crashes as well as performance improvements following the decline from the last patch:
Performance improvements
Crash fixes
🔧 Fixes
Fix for a crash that could occur during the post mission end screen
Fix for crash which could occur when destroying automaton tanks.
🧠 Known Issues [Unchanged since patch 1.000.300]
These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.
Damage-over-time effects may only apply when dealt by the host. We expect to have this fixed in the next patch.
Reinforcement may not be available for some players who join a game in progress.
Helldiver may be unable to stand up from crouching when surrounded by enemies.
Game may crash if the host leaves while dead and rejoins the same play session.
Game may crash if the player changes the text language while on a mission.
Various issues involving friend invites and cross-play:
Friend Request cannot be accepted when the requesting player changed their username before the request was accepted.
Cross-platform friend invites might not show up in the Friend Requests tab.
Players cannot unfriend players befriended via friend code.
Players cannot unblock players that were not in their Friends list beforehand.
Players may experience delays in Medals and Super Credits payouts.
Enemies that bleed out do not progress Personal Orders and Eradicate missions.
Scopes on some weapons such as the Anti-Materiel Rifle are slightly misaligned.
Arc weapons sometimes behave inconsistently and sometimes misfire.
Spear’s targeting is inconsistent, making it hard to lock-on to larger enemies.
Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but it will deploy to its original location.
Explosions do not break your limbs (except for when you fly into a rock).
Area around Automaton Detector Tower makes blue stratagems such as the Hellbomb bounce and be repelled when trying to call them down close to the tower.
Planet liberation reaches 100% at the end of every Defend mission.
Release Captain Carlberg signing off
If you missed the previous patch notes, read all about it right here:
STEEPGROVE WATCH — A local player character has begun to suspect that the elaborate, multi-stage side quest given to her by the nameless local apothecary is a cover for a pyramid scheme, frustrated sources confirm.
“It started off pretty standard,” said Cirrus, an adventurer. “The Apothecary asked me if I could go into a nearby cave and bring him back some weeds so he could perfect a potion recipe. I figured it would be an easy way to get some experience points. I think I loaded 40 saves just trying to get past the giant larvae man guarding the cave.”
“For all that trouble, I was expecting a pretty hefty reward, but the apothecary just told me to go find his reclusive former mentor and convince him to start selling potions,” Cirrus added. “Now I have to track down more random NPCs who are all on different sides of the map and rope them into this potion scam.”
Cirrus is not the first protagonist to fall prey to The Apothecary’s scheme.
“I had to sidetrack my companion’s heart wrenching quest to regain his honor and dignity after a lifetime of war left him a shell of a man because of these stupid potions,” recalled Leila, who discovered the sidequest on her third playthrough. “I barely remember what the main quest is. This is no longer an open world action RPG, this is a thankless sales representative simulation. I don’t even know what the potion does because the apothecary won’t let me have any until I find six recruits.”
Fellow NPC and side quest giver The Shopkeep provided further comment on his coworker’s behavior.
“He ruined it for the rest of us. None of these new heroes of the realm want to do side quests anymore because they think we’re trying to trap them into some kind of ponzi scheme,” said The Shopkeep. “I swear I really am just a humble shopkeeper who needs your help to solve the mystery of my missing wife. And I will actually reward you with 150 gold pieces and a neat gun if you complete the quest! My sidequest won this game a fucking GLAAD award, but everyone’s too busy looking for those stupid weeds.”
At press time, Cirrus has finished the quest and been rewarded with one vial of the potion, which provides +1 to perception until her next rest.
REDMOND, Wash. — Earlier today, Nintendo announced that each Nintendo Switch 2 will come preloaded with Joy-Con drift upon release.
“We know a lot of you were disappointed with the Joy-Con drift in the original Nintendo Switch,” said Doug Bowser, President of Nintendo of America, during a Nintendo Direct stream. “I lost sleep knowing that so many console players weren’t getting the full Nintendo Switch experience. That’s why with our new console, I personally promise that each and every Nintendo Switch 2 will come preloaded with Joy-Con drift. No one should have to play the latest edition of Mario Kart without unintentionally steering into a wall.”
Before the excitement of preloaded Joy-Con drift could wear off, Bowser shared more juicy details about the upcoming console.
“I’m also here to announce the return of a beloved staple to many Switch players. You’ve been shouting for it since its original release in 2017,” Bowser said, grabbing the ear of every Hollow Knight fan within a 250-mile radius of the stream. “Today, I can finally announce that we at Nintendo are proud to welcome the return of the flimsy Nintendo Switch kickstand. You asked. We answered. Take that, Steam Deck!”
Even with these huge announcements from the Big N, some gamers left the Nintendo Direct concerned about the future of the company and its new console.
“Do you guys ever think we deserve this? Like really. Nintendo feeds us slop because we just lap it up, no questions asked,” started one highly upvoted Reddit post on r/Nintendo. “Yeah, the day one Joycon drift and the return of the flimsy kickstand are awesome, but where the hell is my next-gen Starfox? It’s been two whole console generations since Star Fox Zero. Where is Fox McCloud, Doug? You can wave all these fancy bells and whistles in our face, but until I see some proof of life on the series, I cannot commit to a Switch 2.”
At press time, Bowser had been stuffed in the trunk of a car by a masked militia of angry Hollow Knight and Star Fox fans.
BANDITS’ COVE — Following a failed attempt to destroy a bandit hideout in obscure PlayStation 2 action RPG “Mythos III: Spilea,” enemy bandits had begun repeatedly attacking the main character’s fallen corpse, sources claim.
“Whooo! Yeah! How do you like that?” cheered an unnamed bandit, repeatedly shooting at the player’s lifeless body as if it was still a threat. “This will show you not to mess with us!” With this, the bandits briefly paused to reload their rifles before they continued shooting.
“I guess it’s cool they give you a ‘cinematic’ shot of your death and all, but to be honest, it felt excessive,” complained player character Vivian Credit, watching the bandits’ assault as she floated, incorporeal, waiting to respawn. “Honestly, it would even be more satisfying if they celebrated over my corpse. Or at least they could walk away. But instead they just keep attacking, like they don’t even realize you’re dead. I mean, I won’t be dead for long, but still.”
While the bandits remained enthusiastic, not all of the game’s NPCs were enthusiastic about such irrational behavior.
“Aye, me crew be loyal, but they ain’t much for conversation,” said Bandit King McGee, the intended boss at the end of the failed sidequest. “I told them to be on the lookout for intruders, but I didn’t mean all the time. I be tryin’ to talk to them at lunch, ask their plans for the weekend, but all they ever want to say is ‘Huh? I heard something!’ I know we be bandits, but there be more to life than attackin’ adventurers who invade the hideout, ye know? The hideout be safe, though. Suppose I can’t complain about that.”
At press time, every shopkeeper in the game was still waiting patiently for the arrival of their only customer.
