Helldivers 2 Review Bomb: What Easy Anti-Cheat Broke

Checked: October 31, 2026. Daily counts from Steam's review histogram for app 553850, pulled that morning (Steam's appreviews endpoint redirected to the store front page, so the counts come from the histogram and the store page); Arrowhead's Steam posts, studio blog and support site; reporting from FRVR, PC Guide, Insider Gaming, GamingOnLinux and Zero1Gaming. We could not read Arrowhead's Discord or X, and we found no statement from PlayStation.

Steam's review chart, before and after October 20

Chart: GameBrief. Source: Steam review histogram for Helldivers 2, checked October 30, 2026.

Positive reviews did not collapse: about 115 a day before the patch, about 140 a day after it. Negative reviews did the damage. Before the patch the game drew about 18 a day; from October 20 to 30 it averaged about 560. The wave peaked on day one and has eased since, but October 30, the latest full day, still logged about two thumbs-down for every thumbs-up.

This is at least the third time players have done this to Helldivers 2. The first came in 2024 over a PlayStation account requirement on PC, and Arrowhead later answered it with an in-game "Review Bomb Cape" (Insider Gaming). The second hit in May 2026, when the monthly histogram shows 4,434 negative reviews against 3,446 positive and Windows Central logged a Mostly Negative recent score. If you want to see how a bomb keeps distorting a score months later, our Slay the Spire 2 review walks through three of them.

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What Arrowhead changed on October 20

Arrowhead posted "Changing anti-cheat in HELLDIVERS 2" on Steam at 06:00 UTC on October 20 and made the switch the same day: "Transitioning from GameGuard to Easy Anti-Cheat today, October 20th." Update 7.2.0, Devoid of Liberty, went live three hours later with EAC and the Scope of Authority Warbond (patch notes). Modders got no lead time.

The studio's case is specific. Its GameGuard setup "wasn't as effective as it could have been," and cheaters were "affecting pick-up rates, and even going so far as to manipulate the war itself," the shared Galactic War every squad plays into. Arrowhead calls EAC "an industry standard used in over 200 games."

It also warned players. Mods that affect other players "may no longer function," and some harmless cosmetic mods would need updates from their makers. The FAQ says hardware requirements did not change and that Steam Deck and Linux play still works. It asks players to report any non-destructive mod that EAC blocks through support on Zendesk, while admitting Arrowhead "cannot determine what's safe vs. unsafe to use."

Image: Devoid of Liberty 7.2.0 patch notes (Arrowhead Game Studios)

What players say Easy Anti-Cheat broke

Mods first. Cosmetic mods still load, but any mod that adds or changes scripts now stops the game from booting, FRVR found, and PC Guide reports the same split. That took out Custom Galactic War, the community project with custom missions, maps and multi-faction battles. Its team told fans "EAC has effectively put a stop on CGW for the time being."

Another casualty players keep naming is CowboyBingus's Vanilla Plus Megapack, a bundle of quality-of-life fixes with 58,815 unique downloads on Nexus Mods as of October 31, last updated October 18. Its parts read like a bug list: Hellpod Steering Unlocked, Better Stratagem Bounce, Consistent Vaulting, Clickable Scrollbars. In a Discord message shared on r/Helldivers on October 22, the modder said EAC "prevents unsigned DLLs from loading into the game" and that messing with EAC is not something they want to do. A Steam reviewer with 373 hours put it plainly on October 29: "honestly RIP i'll miss bingus he made the game playable."

Then there are players who cannot get in at all, some of whom say they never used mods (ixbt, Zero1Gaming). One error reads "Failed to connect to the Easy Anti Cheat network." A reviewer with 96 hours wrote on October 30: "Anti-cheat killed gameplay; I cannot launch game thanks to Arrowhead." Cloud players are a third group: reviewers on Boosteroid and similar services say they are locked out, and one says support told them the game does not support virtual machines.

Not every review is about EAC. Players also say the trailer for the new R-40 Sightline showed it killing an Automaton Hulk with one shot to the eye, something FRVR says the gun cannot do in game. Others question the premise and ask whether a co-op PvE game needed a stricter anti-cheat at all.

Arrowhead's response so far

As of October 31, Arrowhead has not addressed the reviews. Insider Gaming reported on October 29 that the studio had not commented, the Steam news feed since October 20 still holds only patch notes, and the studio blog has nothing on EAC. Hotfix 7.2.1 on October 22 fixed a crash when a player joined or left a squad. Patch 7.2.2 on October 29 retuned the AMW-20 APEX, corrected the armor-penetration label on the LAS-44 NOVA, fixed two rare crashes and removed two music tracks. Neither mentions EAC.

The one direct answer sits on the support site. "My game is crashing after the switch to EAC!", which we reread on October 31, lists steps to try "while we work on a fuller fix from our side":

1. Purge every mod file, including the ReShade and OptiScaler DLLs in the game's bin folder.
2. Delete the Helldivers2 folder under %appdata%\Arrowhead\.
3. Run GGuninst.exe from the game's EasyAntiCheat folder and delete any leftover GameGuard folder.
4. Install Windows updates and update all drivers.
5. Restart the PC (restart, not shut down), which the article calls "the main fix for any 0xc0000142 error."
6. Verify the game files in Steam.

If that fails, the article says to delete the game's bin and data folders and verify again, and to send Player Support the memory dump if a crash handler offers one. Arrowhead has given no date for the fuller fix. Readers are not impressed: on the morning of October 31, only 49 of 454 votes on the page called it helpful.

The mod side is muddier. The launch FAQ invites players to report blocked harmless mods to Zendesk. A support reply dated October 23, posted to r/Helldivers on October 26, told a player who did exactly that: "we do not provide support for mods of any kind for Helldivers 2." The same week, CowboyBingus wrote: "Arrowhead has already informed me that, despite the engine update, they do want to support mods like my own." Both can be true, but nothing official promises a path back for script mods.

Our take

Arrowhead had a real problem: cheats that touch the Galactic War spoil it for squads that never cheated. The rollout is what earned the reviews. EAC went live the morning it was announced, the launch crash still has only a workaround, and the support desk's answer on blocked mods sits awkwardly with the FAQ. If you play on PC without mods, try the support steps before you write the game off. If you play through a cloud service, wait. If your squad wants a co-op shooter in the meantime, we found Mycopunk worth it for a group, and Far Far West runs on the same mission-contract structure. For a different kind of review trouble, see the bot-review scandal in our Starsand Island review.

References

• Changing anti-cheat in HELLDIVERS 2, Arrowhead Game Studios on Steam, October 20, 2026
• Devoid of Liberty: 7.2.0, 7.2.1 and 7.2.2 patch notes, Steam
• My game is crashing after the switch to EAC!, Arrowhead support
• Helldivers 2 on Steam and its review histogram
• Arrowhead Game Studios on X
• Helldivers 2 gets hit by yet another review bomb, FRVR, October 21, 2026
• Helldivers 2 is getting review-bombed on Steam after major change to anti-cheat breaks mods, PC Guide, October 28, 2026
• Helldivers 2 Gets Review Bombed After Moving to Easy Anti-Cheat, Insider Gaming, October 29, 2026
• Helldivers 2 switches over from GameGuard to Easy Anti-Cheat, GamingOnLinux, October 20, 2026
• Helldivers 2 Easy Anti-Cheat Error Fix After Patch 7.2.0, timesaver.gg, updated October 30, 2026
• Helldivers 2 Liberty Day Rifle Hit by Anti-Cheat Issues, Zero1Gaming, October 27, 2026