Nobody is doing live service better than Helldivers 2 because Arrowhead makes expansions, not just updates

Helldivers 2 should be boring by now. Across 220 hours I’ve scrapped thousands of bots, curbstomped armadas of Illuminids, and exterminated enough bugs to fill a small country. I’ve unlocked every base weapon, stratagem, and most ship upgrades.

I’ve seen every planet biome 100 times over, memorized the procedure of every mission type, and can recite the triumphant extraction song in my sleep. I don’t spread liberty every day or even month, but I wouldn’t dare uninstall Helldivers 2. My Super Earth leave is never long—the itch always returns.

Nobody is doing live service like Arrowhead, and I’m not just talking about the Galactic War. The liberty posting, the roleplay, and managed democracy are ingenious tools of storytelling that keep the community grounded in Helldivers’ unserious world, but Arrowhead’s not-so-secret sauce to keeping people like me interested is simple: Other games get updates, but Helldivers 2 gets frequent, significant expansions.

The expansion, or its cousin the DLC pack, is rare outside of Destiny or Blizzard these days, but paid add-ons are how developers used to justify supporting games for years after their release. The practice fell out of fashion once cosmetics became the currency of live service games.

It’s an industry-wide shift that’s had some positive outcomes, like how we no longer divide player bases by who owns which map pack, but it’s also had a flattening effect on what developers focus their resources on. Cosmetics aren’t just the stuff games sell so that it can keep making cooler, gameplay-relevant stuff for free anymore, they’re the primary focus—the modern Call of Duty, Battlefield, or Fortnite home page is a smorgasbord of battle passes, legendary skins, brand collaborations, extra-expensive editions of battle passes, and monthly memberships that are treated with more importance and reverence than the things I actually care about, like maps and modes.

Arrowhead is doing the total opposite with Helldivers 2. The meat of every update is something that you can actually play. New planets. New biomes. New mission types. New foes. New species. New stratagems. New vehicles. New tools. Even its cosmetics carry passive abilities that can define a playstyle. This stuff lasts—the appeal isn’t as fleeting as a Fallout battle pass or Simpsons map that disappears after a month. You may miss a historic battle in the Galactic War, but gear sticks around forever.

It’s not all free, but a lot of it is. That’s the real genius of the Helldivers 2 approach to expansion: Arrowhead has found a happy middle ground between the gameplay it sells and the gameplay it gives away.

Last week, a free update added an overwhelmingly powerful tank as part of a new storyline that continues tomorrow with a new “bot city” biome, cyborgs, and likely new mission types. At the same time, Arrowhead released its 20th Warbond, the $10 Siege Breakers pack that includes an explosive sledgehammer, belt-fed grenade launcher, and personal bubble shield. Compared to the average battle pass, most Warbonds are a sweet deal. Plus they never expire, further associating them with regular ol’ DLC.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the contents of the average Helldivers 2 Warbond are more interesting than the guns and attachments that Call of Duty, Apex Legends or Battlefield 6 pump out alongside a glitzy battle pass. It takes ages to make this stuff, and Arrowhead can probably throw more of its resources toward ensuring they’re special. After all, folks are paying for them, and they directly support the studio.

You could argue Helldivers 2 has an unfair advantage over other games that regularly top the Steam charts: it’s purely PvE co-op, so Arrowhead doesn’t have to consider balance as seriously when it’s designing new stuff. “Pay to win” isn’t really a thing, though power creep certainly is.

To that, I submit a skill issue: Arrowhead chose to make the greatest, most expandable kind of multiplayer videogame there is, and it started with a powerful $40 foundation. I guess the takeaway here is that people want to buy full, complete games again, and they’ll happily keep supporting them if they’re great.