Helldivers 2 players have strong feelings about the planets they’re fighting to defend in the game’s ongoing galactic war. First there was Malevelon Creek, which became a notorious hotspot for players, after it was dubbed “Robot Vietnam” due to its flame-spewing robots, jungle setting, and significant difficulty. Despite the fact that I’ve described an abject nightmare, players developed a bit of a sentimental attachment to the planet, and its many subsequent rises and falls provided great dramatic fodder, not to mention material for the community to turn into memes. Malevelon Creek became a celebrated locale, and the developers eventually gave it a holiday. Now, players have developed an intense relationship with another planet, but things couldn’t be more different.
You see, Helldivers 2 players fucking hate Hellmire.
There has never been a shittier planet. Think of the worst possible place in the world, multiply it a few times, and sprinkle in some of your least favorite people, and you still wouldn’t come close to the ire folks feel towards Hellmire. Hellmire sits clear on the other side of the galaxy from Malevelon Creek, which could not better encapsulate the vast difference in how players feel about the two. You know what they do have in common though? Fire.
Hellmire is a planet held by the bug-like Terminids, and you’d think they would have given up or died off just having looked at it. Hellmire, unlike most planets, is plagued by firestorms, which literally make the surface look like a visualization of Hell. Sure, it’s honoring its namesake, but could it be any less a pain in the ass? It’s not bad enough that I typically drop into Hellmire on high-difficulty operations with overwhelming odds and bugs popping out of every possible hole in the planet, but I also have to worry about not catching fire on a world whose whole deal is the endless flames scorching it.
Places like Hellmire are especially harrowing because a balance change (which desperately needs fixing) recently made by Arrowhead Game Studios increased the damage of fire from all sources, making any drop onto the planet an even greater ordeal.
At the moment, there’s a major order promoting the defense of a number of planets across the entirety of the galaxy. Hellmire is among them, and when I checked on its liberation status earlier today, it was at a paltry number. It was a number so pathetic (almost as sad as the number of players actively playing on Hellmire at the moment) that I don’t even want to repeat it here. By comparison, another planet in the same system was well on its way to freedom and enjoying a healthy concentration of players. Meanwhile, the Helldivers reddit has been flashing with occasional calls to outright “glass” the planet to…solve?…the problem of its liberation.
According to the community, “nobody wants Hellmire,” and it’s hard to argue with the numbers. The general consensus seems to be very “fuck Hellmire,” which could spell a bit of a funny issue for the community and developers, since Hellmire is such a focal point of many strategic pushes. It’s to the point where players are frequently joking about just hitting the bricks and abandoning the planet entirely, and it seems to be turning into a reality, which might throw a wrench in Arrowhead’s flexible war narrative.
Hellmire’s arduousness very much seems like the point of the planet, but it also feels like player sentiment, which has soured a bit in the last several months, has seemingly settled on Hellmire as its latest target. That, and it’s got to suck to eat shit to bugs and fire tornadoes repeatedly. Maybe we’ll see Hellmire completely fall, or maybe we’ll see Arrowhead adjust to the community’s feelings and pivot away from it for a time. Hopefully, the studio fixes the fire damage to curb that whole side of the equation entirely. I’m begging you, Arrowhead. My crops are on fire.