Helldivers 2's Galactic War has been going on for almost two months since the game’s release in early February. There have been a few exceptions, but players have been able to keep Super Earth’s Terminid and Automaton enemies in Helldivers 2 consistently pushed back to the far corners of the galaxy for now.

Ideally, this kind of collaboration among Helldivers 2’s community would be a cause for celebration, and it still generally is. However, the community’s success in the Galactic War seemingly comes with an unforeseen consequence that will eventually need to be addressed before it becomes a bigger issue than it already is.

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Over Half of Helldivers 2’s Galaxy Still Remains Unexplored

The main system in Helldivers 2 that determines which missions are available in the game is the real-time Galactic War. This war indicates where and when players will need to fight to maintain control of the entire galaxy against the growing enemy threats. So far, this back-and-forth effort has seen players fighting to liberate a small handful of sectors from the control of Terminids and Automatons. While the different difficulty settings in Helldivers 2 provide levels of challenges to overcome, players have surprisingly still been able to keep the war between Terminids and Automatons at a stalemate on all fronts so far.

Although it's impressive to see the efforts of Helldivers 2’s community banding together, this has limited the content that players can experience in the game to only what’s been available in the first few sectors. Consequently, the vast majority of the sectors in Helldivers 2 have remained unavailable to players this far into the game’s lifecycle. Allegedly, there are said to be rare encounters and other secrets that would only become available for specific moments in Helldivers 2’s Galactic War, but the community’s successful efforts are seemingly preventing them from experiencing any of these special encounters.

Whether these special encounters exist in Helldivers 2 and what exactly they consist of remains to be seen. Given the status of the Galactic War, it could be a while before these questions are ever answered.

Helldivers 2’s Popularity Is Potentially Its Biggest Enemy

According to the developers behind Helldivers 2, the Galactic War was always meant to be a flexible system that the developers would be interfering with to shape the tide of the war. This interference generally occurs in subtle ways like new personal and major orders in Helldivers 2 that motivate players to complete specific missions, but it’s assumed that the developers would be able to make more drastic changes if needed. However, one factor may have proven to be an unpredictable variable that the developers didn’t account for.

Given Helldivers 2’s record-breaking popularity, the community’s strength in numbers could potentially be why the Galactic War has remained at a relative stalemate so long after Helldivers 2’s release. So far, this timeline has created growing concerns about when the Galactic War will finally reach a turning point and shake things up for the game in meaningful ways.

Helldivers 2’s Galactic War Is a Ticking Time Bomb

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Players’ progress in the Galactic War this far has put Helldivers 2 in a tough situation. If players continue to fight over the first few sectors, this will leave a majority of the content in Helldivers 2 unavailable to the community, and this kind of repetition could negatively impact the game’s longevity. On the other hand, drastically rebalancing the Galactic War based on the community’s efforts at this point is a slippery slope that’s likely to cause some controversy of its own, potentially undermining players’ accomplishments.

Ultimately, Helldivers 2 will need to address the elephant in the room concerning the state of the Galactic War’s timeline sooner or later. Considering how delicate the situation is, the solution must strike a proper balance between honoring the community’s efforts while still gradually expanding upon the variety of content that players can experience.