Things are not going well on Super Earth. Helldivers 2 players are in open revolt over the game’s October 20 update, which swapped its anti-cheat protection over to the already-controversial Easy Anti-Cheat software. The backlash has been brutal enough to tank the game’s Steam rating to a “Mostly Negative” score — just 37% positive across its last 10,000 or so user reviews — making it the community’s loudest revolt since the PlayStation log-in fiasco of 2024.
What the Update Broke
Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) has effectively broken much of the game’s modding scene. Many of the most popular mods are cosmetic or quality-of-life updates that don’t affect gameplay — one of the most downloaded is the Vanilla Plus Megapack, which fixes stratagem-toss physics, improves Hellpod steering and makes vaulting more consistent — and players argue these mods address issues Arrowhead should have fixed by now. Worse still, many users say EAC is blocking them from launching the game at all. Workarounds exist for some of these issues, but as Polygon puts it, anti-cheat software breaking a game that previously ran fine is perhaps the biggest driver of the negative reviews.
Why Players Are So Furious
There are two deeper problems. First, EAC is a form of kernel-level anti-cheat, meaning it gets near-total access to a user’s computer — something a meaningful slice of players simply don’t trust. Second, Helldivers 2 is a co-op PvE game, not a competitive PvP title, so many players don’t think the trade-off is worth it in the first place. And adding insult to injury, some players report that cheaters have already gotten around EAC anyway — with reports of “machine guns firing mini-nuke projectiles” and near-infinite Exosuit stratagem spawns — which has further fueled the feeling that this update was a huge whiff.
Arrowhead’s Reasoning
The Swedish studio has been open about why it made the switch. In a post on the game’s Steam page, Arrowhead admitted that its previous protection, GameGuard, “wasn’t as effective as it could have been,” and explained: “In the end we decided to take another path with EAC. EAC is an industry standard used in over 200 games, and we believe this will be an effective way to protect the Galactic War and will better protect fair gameplay and the integrity of the game.” On mods, the studio was conciliatory: “We know mods are part of the DNA of PC gaming and gaming communities as a whole. In general, we appreciate the creativity behind cosmetic and non-gameplay mods, which players can enjoy without negatively impacting those who play alongside them.” Mods that create unfair advantages may no longer function, and players who feel a non-malicious mod has been wrongly blocked are asked to reach out via Zendesk.
A New Hotfix Lands Mid-Controversy
While the revolt has raged, Arrowhead shipped hotfix 1.007.202 on October 29, focused on stratagem corrections: the AMW-20 APEX gets reduced caliber and improved demolition strength, the LAS-44 NOVA’s armor penetration is now correctly displayed, and the SG-22 Bushwhacker’s damage was corrected from the previous patch’s miscalculated values. A known-issues list includes an Xbox client bug that instantly disconnects players back to their ship after joining a PC host. None of it addresses the anti-cheat elephant in the room — which leaves the community asking the big question: will Arrowhead roll EAC back the way Sony backed down on the PlayStation log-in requirement? The studio has caved to player pressure before (this is, after all, the studio that won players over with a brilliantly chaotic co-op shooter in 2024), and there’s real precedent for a rollback. For now, though, managed democracy is getting review-bombed.