Helldivers 2 Team Weighs In On Game-Breaking Money Glitch
"Helldivers 2" may be a phenomenal game, but that doesn't mean it's glitch-free. When the game initially launched, the developers warned people not to buy it for a short time while they worked out the kinks in the game's servers. Things have since improved dramatically, but fans still run into glitches like rogue items appearing in the shop and the occasional respawn issue. It probably goes without saying that while players are fighting the bugs throughout the galaxy, the people at Arrowhead Game Studios are keeping themselves busy dealing with the biggest bugs still facing "Helldivers 2." That includes a glitch that some players fear could essentially topple the game's economy.
Considering Arrowhead's work to smooth out the game's rough spots, you might be surprised to learn that when a fan raised a concern about the aforementioned glitch, Arrowhead seemingly responded by blowing off the issue.
Money, money, money
"Helldivers 2" is (thankfully) not a free-to-play nightmare, but it definitely leans into the live service model more than some people might prefer. The game has a premium currency called Super Credits that can be used to buy things like Warbonds, in-game packs with new armor, weapons, and stratagems to take into missions. Super Credits can either be bought with real money or unlocked/looted in the game. However, one particularly passionate Helldiver reported a Super Credit-related glitch in the game's official Discord. Adopting the semi-official phrasing of Arrowhead's own tongue-in-cheek social media posts, the gamer wrote, "A Lot of Antidemocratic Players uses [sic] glitch for free easy farming Super Credits. STOP IT NOW and SAVE DEMOCRACY." They went on to explain that a number of YouTube tutorials are teaching people how to farm an infinite amount of Super Credits.
An Arrowhead community manager quickly replied to the comment, saying, "We're aware of this undemocratic behaviour. Thanks for doing your sworn duty and reporting it, though. Hooah!" Notably, the community manager didn't say that Arrowhead is actively working to fix the issue. One might assume that the developer is already hard at work cracking down on the Super Credit exploit behind the scenes, but considering how busy Arrowhead already is — and how tedious the farming method really is — some think the devs might not even be too worried about it. Some bugs appear to be more important than others, and at least at the moment, Arrowhead is prioritizing fixing issues that directly impact gameplay, rather than ones that are potentially hitting its bottom line.
Infinite wealth, but at what cost?
So how does this glitch/exploit work? After finding a supply drop containing Super Credits in a mission, players can force quit out of the game, relaunch it, and drop back into the mission to find the same drop ready for a second collection. You can do this as many times as you want, essentially making for an infinite amount of Super Credits. It all sounds bad, but here's the thing: Players can already find two or three supply drops, each containing 10 Super Credits, in every single mission. In the time that it takes you to farm the currency, you could just as easily stock up by actually playing the game. Some people are going to have the patience to spend hours and hours reloading the game for free Super Credits, but it would take a critical mass of players with monkish patience to actually tank the game's economy. Still, it's an example of people gaming "Helldivers 2" in a way that was never intended, which always ruffles feathers in the player community.
Arrowhead has specifically designed the live service elements of "Helldivers 2" to be as unobtrusive as possible. If you're keeping up with the game's ongoing war campaign, then you're probably already unlocking enough free Super Credits to buy every Warbond that gets released. This exploit is really only helping players who don't have enough free time to gather Super Credits while playing normally, and are those people really going to sacrifice their precious game time to farm a premium currency that isn't even very expensive in the first place? It's no wonder Arrowhead has seemingly put this issue on the backburner. The devs will no doubt worry about shoring up the Super Credit supply somewhere down the line, but not right away.