Cheating in online games is a longstanding issue, and Helldivers 1 & 2 are no exception. Many titles including Helldivers 2 are shipped with anti-cheats. Despite the employing nProtect GameGuard, there were cheaters from day one.
Cheats for Helldivers 2 can grant players invulnerability, unlimited stratagems to call down, unlimited ammo, and can even allow access to unreleased stratagems hidden in the game’s files.
A viral video showing “Joel,” a game master from Arrowhead, dropping an unreleased APC vehicle into a player session was actually a cheater impersonating the well-known Arrowhead GM.
Most importantly though, many of these cheats allow players to manipulate the number of samples extracted at the end of a mission.
GameGuard Controversy, and Arrowhead’s Response
Before the game’s release, players on the Steam Forums and r/Helldivers called for a boycott unless GameGuard was removed. This led to a significant number of negative reviews on Steam, causing Helldivers 2 to launch with a “Mixed” rating.
Despite these protests, the game launched with the anti-cheat system intact and quickly became one of PlayStation’s most successful titles, selling 12 million copies within just three months of its release.
In a Reddit post, the game’s technical director, Peter Lindgren, explained the reasons behind implementing an anti-cheat system in Helldivers 2. He also addressed related concerns about privacy, security, and performance.
“HELLDIVERS 2 is a co-op/PvE game, why do we even need Anti-Cheat?
That’s a great question, and there’s two related but separate points to it:
– Peter Lindgren, Arrowhead’s Technical Director, in a post to r/Helldivers
First, we want everyone to have a great time playing HELLDIVERS 2, with friends, ex-friends or randoms. What we’ve seen in some of our and others’ games is that rampant cheating tends to have a very negative effect on players openness to playing, especially with randoms.
There’s an anecdote from HELLDIVERS 1 I’d like to share:
When we released HELLDIVERS 1 on PC there was effectively no anti-cheat implemented. Additionally HELLDIVERS 1 uses a peer-to-peer networking model, and that means, from a security perspective, each game client will blindly trust each other.
Shortly after release we noticed there was a cheat going around which granted 9999 research samples. Unfortunately any non-cheaters in the same mission would also be granted 9999 research samples. These non-cheating players now had their entire progression ruined through no fault of their own.”
How Cheaters cheesed the Latest Helldivers 2 Major Order
On Friday, a new Major Order was issued that required players to gather samples from specific Terminid-occupied planets. This order required millions of samples to be collected as a community, and at normal pace would have likely taken all weekend.
However, an unknown number of cheaters were able to cheese the Major Order, completing it within just a few hours. While no one has claimed credit yet, screenshots shared by the cheaters have been circulating in the community.
Unfortunately, it seems one of Lindgren’s main concerns has come true.
“Second is the Galactic War. There’s this huge metagame going in the cloud which all players (and game clients) participate in. Even though we have other countermeasures in place, a cracked game client could make it easier to disrupt the Galactic War, which would sour everyone’s experience.”
– Peter Lindgren, Arrowhead’s Technical Director, in a post to r/Helldivers
So far Arrowhead’s only response has been an in-game message that pops up when a major order has been completed.
The Community’s Response
Some players find it amusing that the Chaos Divers were not the ones responsible for the failure of this major order.
While others voiced dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of the anti-cheat system.
Lindgren acknowledged it’s impossible to completely eradicate cheating, explaining that anti-cheat systems are simply there to make it more difficult.
“As a final note, on an open platform like PC it’s not possible to stop cheating from ever happening. Someone with the skills, dedication and resources will ultimately succeed. The point of anti-cheat is to make it more difficult and time consuming to develop cheats.”
– Peter Lindgren, Arrowhead’s Technical Director, in a post to r/Helldivers
Moving forward, it will be interesting to see how Arrowhead handles major orders involving sample collection, and whether they will issue similar orders in the future or if they’ll ever address the cheating problem.