This week, Helldivers 2 has seen a glut of gameplay leaks showing off officially unavailable stratagems, including of the upcoming mechs and, more recently, of a vehicle reminiscent of Halo’s famous Warthog. But what’s going on here? The community has a number of explanations.
#Helldivers2 Vehicle Gameplay 🤯⁉️🔥 https://t.co/dtdPtXvCw1 pic.twitter.com/AsptmJxhfS
— JayTechTV 𝕏 (@TheRealJTV4K60) February 29, 2024
Amid claims developer Arrowhead is randomly letting select players call in these unannounced stratagems, or jumping into the live game itself to test these new features, a perhaps more likely explanation has emerged: it’s the work of cheaters.
The devs are evidently enabling strats for select folks to try. Brilliant marketing tbh. These aren’t leaks. 🤣 https://t.co/uCzqbHOomj
— Gothalion (@Gothalion) March 1, 2024
Five days ago, redditor stodal posted a list of game file names they uncovered while digging through the game’s innards. It included reference to a potential third alien faction dubbed the Illuminate, mechs, the ability to call in AI-controlled soldiers, weapon customisation, new weapons, something called ‘ship bowling’, and even names of upcoming enemies.
Now, as more and more gameplay videos showing apparent leaked footage emerges across social media, the community is pointing the finger at cheaters who are working around Helldivers 2’s anti-cheat to unlock the use of some of these normally unavailable features in live lobbies.
Overnight, redditor Old-Improvement7331 said a player joined their game and had access to mechs and a vehicle for faster travel. “I can only assume he was cheating due to being able to spawn mechs for everybody from the party,” Old-Improvement7331 said. Posting screenshots of the incident, Old-Improvement7331 said they gave a mech a go, saying it “definitely” made the game easier.
A growing debate about datamining equating to cheating within Helldivers 2 has also emerged, which in turn sparked a response from redditor Flighterist, who provided useful context for what’s happening. Apparently unavailable stratagems such as the vehicle are already in the game itself, but not officially enabled. Knowing this, some players are going into the files of the game to unlock their use in any lobby. Flighterist warned more of these types of videos will emerge in the coming days as more players unlock mechs and the like.
The question now is whether Arrowhead will take action to prevent this from happening, or whether it is even able to. Cheating has been a problem for Helldivers 2 ever since the game came out earlier this month. This week, IGN reported on how cheaters were using hacks to add infinite ammo, increase speed, and, perhaps most worrying, obtain hundreds of samples from missions.
Meanwhile, there’s plenty to be getting on with (officially!) in the world of Helldivers 2, including the ongoing galactic war against the bugs and bots. As revealed this week, Arrowhead employs a “game master” who runs the Helldivers 2 campaign like a D&D dungeon master.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.