HELLDIVERS 2 beginner guide: what to know before your first drop

The short version

HELLDIVERS 2 is a third-person squad shooter from Arrowhead Game Studios, published by PlayStation Publishing LLC. It released on Feb 8, 2024 and sells for $39.99 USD with no active discount at capture time.¹

The store description frames it around squads of up to four Helldivers and explicitly warns that friendly fire is part of the design.¹ That single sentence explains most of the early frustration new players report: the game is not balanced around you never hitting a teammate.

What you are buying

This is a paid title, not a free-to-play client, so the $39.99 price is the whole entry cost rather than a storefront for cosmetics.¹ The listing carries a single genre tag, Action, and the supported-language block includes full voice-over in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish (Spain), Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese.¹

Platform reality check

The Steam listing we track supports Windows and nothing else.¹ If you are on macOS or Linux, this page cannot tell you whether the game works for you — there is no data for it in our capture, and we will not guess.

Can your PC run it

These are the developer's published requirements, copied from the store page rather than benchmarked by us.¹

	Minimum	Recommended
OS	Windows 10	Windows 10
CPU	Intel Core i7-4790K / AMD Ryzen 5 1500X	Intel Core i7-9700K / AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
RAM	8 GB	16 GB
GPU	GeForce GTX 1050 Ti / Radeon RX 470	GeForce RTX 2060 / Radeon RX 6600XT
Storage	135 GB available	40 GB available
Notes	64-bit required	SSD recommended

We do not publish frame-rate figures here. We have not run the game on reference hardware, and a number invented for a table is worse than an empty cell.

What long-term players are saying

The three quotes below are pulled verbatim from public Steam reviews and linked to the originals. They are not representative of every player, but they are all from accounts with hundreds of hours logged, which makes them useful signal about the current mood rather than first-day impressions.

This coming update is probably the most malicious I have seen yet. 1. Modders are extremely rare. The only "massive" issue would probably be people cheating in SC which you could mitigate some other way. 2. Rather than give actual mod support by separating Modded vs Unmodded games, you are choosing to rip out mods…

Modders gave me more QoL improvements in last couple of months than I got in two years in this game. I'm not even saying anything about them fixing the AI removing "arrowhead funny" teamkills and damage from guard dogs and blueberries. Or offering alternatives for other issues we had. Like bouncing. Because AH did…

I have played this cursed and glorious game for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of hours upon the PlayStation. Then I acquired another PlayStation. Then mine eldest offspring claimed my account, for it possessed many fine weapons. So I fled unto the second PlayStation. Then mine other offspring discovered that acco…

Two of those three reviews are negative and both centre on the same theme: changes shipped in a recent update and how the community reacted to them. If you are deciding whether to buy now, read the negative reviews from high-hour accounts first — they describe the game's current trajectory, not its launch state.

How to read the review score

At capture time Steam reported 826,746 English reviews with a Very Positive summary, which works out to roughly four positive reviews for every negative one.² A large, old, heavily reviewed game can hold a positive summary while a recent update is still being argued about, so the aggregate and the newest reviews can legitimately disagree.

Before you buy

What this page is not

It is not a mission walkthrough. We do not have a verified source for mission layouts, enemy spawn tables or weapon damage values, so we do not write them. When a source exists, the guide will say which one.