Helldivers 2 Steam Player Count Surpasses GTA 5, Starfield; Devs Cap Concurrent Players to Stabilise Servers

Helldivers 2, the latest co-op shooter from Arrowhead Game Studios, is a smash hit. The game, which released February 8 on PS5 and PC, has surpassed popular titles like Grand Theft Auto 5, Destiny 2, Starfield and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in all-time peak concurrent players on Steam. Owing to its ballooning player count, however, the third-person shooter has faced persistent server issues, with developers working to issue fixes. Now, Arrowhead Games Studios has reportedly capped its concurrent players to around 450,000 to improve server stability.

According to a report from Eurogamer, Helldivers 2 developers have been forced to cap its permissible concurrent player numbers. Arrowhead Game Studios made the announcement on the game's discord server, which itself has paused invites for new members.

A screenshot of the discord post was shared Sunday by popular gaming news account Wario64 on X. The post addressed the server issues plaguing Helldivers 2 players and stated that the team was “working around the clock” to issue fixes. "Earlier tonight we had server-related issues with a concurrent player spike," the team said. "This led to some mission payouts failing, some players being kicked to their ships, or being logged out," the post said. "Therefore, we've had to cap our concurrent players to around 450,000 to further improve server stability. We will continue to work with our partners to get the ceiling raised," the announcement added.

The team also advised players to restart the game to get things back up to sync in case they were facing progression-related issues.

Helldivers 2 has been a surprise hit, with the game experiencing unexpectedly high player interest and consequently high player counts in the days following its release. The game, published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, was launched simultaneously on PC and PS5 and beat expectations to emerge as a success. According to SteamDB charts, the game is currently the sixth-highest played game on Steam, with 186,205 concurrent players at the time of writing. The game's all-time peak concurrent player-count has touched 409,367 players, making it 24th most played game of all time on the platform, beating the likes of GTA 5, Monster Hunter: World, Starfield, Counter-Strike, Destiny 2, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Halo: Infinite.

Earlier this month, Arrowhead CEO and Helldivers 2 creative director Johan Pilestedt, in a response on X, confirmed that the game had sold around 1 million copies and was “blowing through the estimates.”

Helldivers 2 is a third-person multiplayer shooter, which lets players squad up in up to four-player co-op matches and take on massive alien bugs and terminator-style killer cyborgs.