The battle for Super Earth is raging on in Helldivers 2, as players fight to hold back the invading Illuminate fleet. A new controversy surrounding the invasion, though, has led to some frustration and a fresh flood of negative reviews.
To set the stage, the latest update for Helldivers 2 — Heart of Democracy — brought months and months of storyline building to fruition. The Meridian Singularity, a black hole formed during an operation against Terminids, had been flung towards Super Earth as the tip of the spear for an Illuminate invasion. The “Great Host” fleet flooded through the now-wormhole and onto Super Earth, turning the planet into a battlefield.
In the days since the update went live, players have fought to hold the various Mega Cities of Super Earth, which correspond to major cities in real-life. York Supreme, for example, corresponds roughly to New York, and Remembrance to Buenos Aires. As the invasion has continued, more and more cities have fallen; as of this writing, only Equality-On-Sea (Shanghai) and Super Earth’s capital, Prosperity City (Stockholm) remain standing.
As the invasion has approached what feels like endgame, a lot has happened. Helldivers players tend to “get into character” and play up the Major Orders, rallying behind different causes and calls to try and beat each new challenge that developer Arrowhead lobs at them. Some, for example, stopped playing matches on Super Earth to contribute to a new effort in another sector against the Automaton forces, which ultimately brought the DSS — a massive military orbital space station — back to Super Earth to assist with the defensive efforts.
With the Illuminate gaining ground and taking Mega Cities, efforts rallied behind Equality-On-Sea to make a last stand. Amid all this, there was a sense of comradery extended across nations; as more players dropped in to raise Equality-On-Sea’s percentage and hold it against the Great Host, memes and support flooded in. Even as the Illuminate focused efforts on the city, players held out and kept diving.
It’s all been fairly heartwarming and exciting stuff, the sort of emergent story that Helldivers 2 is quite capable of forging in its greatest moments; where developer storylines, player investment, and community efforts result in some really brilliant moments of cooperative war theater.
But Equality-On-Sea never hit 100%. From here, the situation gets a little more complex, and a lot rougher.
While players made a concerted effort to hold Equality-On-Sea against the continued onslaught, the current arc closed with the cities’ percentage meter at 99.9783% (keep that number in mind). Most Major Orders and operations in Helldivers are about completion, a binary success-or-failure state. As some have pointed out, though, there might have been confusion about what the percentage meter meant in the defense of Super Earth. Rather than “liberating” a city and re-taking it, players are holding it. So it stands to reason that Helldivers might not be able to “100%” the defense, because the Illuminate are continuing to invade.
This, alongside theories that the war is narrowing down to an ultimate showdown in Super Earth’s capital of Prosperity City, seems to be the main driver behind a new influx of negative reviews on Steam. As of this writing, roughly 2,312 negative reviews of Helldivers have been submitted to Steam in the last 24 hours compared to 324 positive.
Many of the negative reviews are in Chinese, and while the machine translation doesn’t seem accurate enough to quote, there are some recurring points one can easily glean: frustration over driving the narrative, the perception of a thumb on the scale from Arrowhead, and repeat mentions of “99.9783%.”
Here we go again! pic.twitter.com/z86PuaKvKd
— Helldivers NOW (@Helldivers_NOW) May 29, 2025
Now, it’s important to keep this all in context. Yes, there is a fresh round of negative reviews on the game, and it’s obviously a larger amount than the average trickle of reviews. It also still, at this moment, pales in comparison to the more-infamous review-bombing of Helldivers 2 from May 2024, where thousands upon thousands of negative reviews flooded in over PSN requirements.
Players are, broadly, understandably frustrated. This should be a peak in Helldivers 2 history, as both the culmination of a long-running storyline and one of the cooler in-game moments Arrowhead has concocted. I’ve spent some time diving on Super Earth, and it’s really an incredible feat. Arrowhead has nailed the feeling of holding out in these Mega Cities as massive, terrifying Illuminate forces rampage through, causing wanton destruction.
And because so much of this is all tied into national identity, the previous sense of international comradery has been tainted a bit too. Even as players, mods, and fan accounts have urged players to not get caught up in the controversy, it has put a tinge of a bad taste on this otherwise incredible moment.
As of this writing, Helldivers are still holding out across the Mega Cities of Equality-On-Sea and Prosperity City, with the former holding the higher percentage. It looks like the battle for Super Earth is entering its final phase, and the current order is simple: Hold Super Earth. Hopefully players can still hold out, seize victory, and celebrate the good in all this.
Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.
