# Helldivers 2

50 Hacker News commenters recommended Helldivers 2 and 34 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 1.9 years (3 owners).

**Verdict:** Players recommend it for fun, polished gameplay that lasts hundreds of hours. Critics point to a bloated install size and a buggy, janky experience.

## Why people recommend it

- Fun core gameplay (3 comments): "It tends to be buggy as hell but the core game experience is hilariously fun." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45887700)) "I put hundreds of hours into HD2 and had a tremendous amount of fun." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46136780)) "it was an massive success because of how fun it is" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46233697))
- Long playtime for the price (4 comments): "I think Helldivers is a good deal for entertainment even if you only play it for under 10 hours." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46238192)) "It's the kind of game where some people spend thousands of hours in, well worth the $40 to them." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46241990)) "I have a LOT more hours into the game so from my perspective my $40 has paid quite well." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46235440))
- Stable, runs well across platforms (4 comments): "i experience far fewer crashes and instances of weird behaviour than friends on Windows or Xbox" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45793828)) "As someone with 700 hours in the game, I've played the game both on Windows and Linux." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46235253)) "Works perfectly. It crashes less often than it does for my friends who play on PC!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46470551))
- Polished design and physics feel (4 comments): "they've nailed the physics-ey feel so hard that it's a defining feature of the game" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46231899)) "If anything, it's a testament to how good a job they've done making the game." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46233033)) "players appreciate high quality, tactile and grounded world interaction" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48808737))

## What people warn about

- Huge download and install size (4 comments): "over 6x the size with so little benefit for such a small segment of the players is very frustrating" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46233825)) "It's a shameful tragedy of the commons if you bloat your game 6x because you think your customers don't have enough SSD space for their active games." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46236842)) "Their technique makes it so that the normal person with a ~base SSD of 512 GB can't reasonably install the game." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46237138))
- Buggy and prone to breaking (3 comments): "it has always worked just fine, besides it being a deeply janky game regardless of OS" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46472327)) "A lot of issues are to do with the fact that the game seems to corrupt itself." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46236160)) "The game is notorious for breaking things constantly." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46135611))
- Poor technical decisions, no benchmarking (4 comments): "what they did was remove an "optimization" they had implemented without ever once benchmarking and realising it was making things significantly worse" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48606014)) "they did absolutely zero benchmarking beforehand, just went with industry haresay, and decided to double it just in case." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46230810)) "they just didn't really understand industry recommendations or what they were doing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46140953))
- Rootkit anti-cheat, Windows-only kernel (2 comments): "helldivers2 kernel component only runs on a normal windows install" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46460770)) "There's no reason for a game like Helldivers 2 to require anti-cheat at all, let alone the rootkit variety." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46109504))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Triple-A Minesweeper](https://hackerapproved.com/p/triple-a-minesweeper.md): 40 recommend
- [Quake II](https://hackerapproved.com/p/quake-2.md): 33 recommend
- [Red Dead Redemption 2](https://hackerapproved.com/p/red-dead-redemption-2.md): 28 recommend
- [Grand Theft Auto (1997)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/grand-theft-auto.md): 28 recommend
- [The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt](https://hackerapproved.com/p/witcher-3.md): 25 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Helldivers 2", https://hackerapproved.com/p/helldivers-2/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).