Helldivers 2 Chinese community valiantly holds the line to save 'Super China,' then flogs Arrowhead with negative Steam reviews for capping liberty at 99.9783%

The Helldivers 2 community proves once again that the sun never sets on Super Earth. In the wake of the Illuminate's ghastly invasion of our home planet, divers have spent a week trying and failing to save its megacities from annihilation. All except one.

While it's been an exciting two weeks to play Helldivers 2, the Second Galactic War could not be going worse right now. Eagleopolis and York Supreme have fallen, and for a while, it looked as if resources were spread too thin to outpace the invading forces on the cities that remain.

Then the unexpected happened: A huge wave of reinforcements, believed to be the concentrated efforts of Chinese players, kept pushing back the Illuminates at Equality-on-Sea (a Super Earth city located roughly where actual Shanghai is), with the city's control reportedly dropping as low as 20% before fighting back up to 50% during Asia's active hours.

Chinese Helldivers have continued to spread democracy so hard that, this morning, the city's control meter sat at a whopping 99.9783%. It was a touching moment of international unity, with Chinese players showing up on the Helldivers subreddit to swap war stories as their English-speaking brothers-in-arms thanked them for holding the line.

Unfortunately, things have taken an unusual turn in the last 12 hours. Many were disappointed to find out Equality-on-Sea's control meter topped out at 99.9783% despite the huge push from players. Total control was impossible, which has led to some players believing Arrowhead won't allow the planet to be totally liberated because it doesn't suit its story. The backlash has even led to an influx of over 3,000 negative reviews on Steam: Helldivers 2 currently sits at a "Mixed" recent reviews rating, with many reviews coming from Chinese s referencing the 99.9783% cap.

The whole thing appears to be a misunderstanding, possibly exacerbated by poorly explained mechanics and bad translation. As many have pointed out, Equality-on-Sea cannot be fully liberated because, storywise, it's still under constant invasion by the Illuminate Overships visible from orbit. So while the community has kicked the squids back as far as they can go, they're not totally gone by design.

Some Chinese memes from r/Helldivers

The mini-review bomb (not entirely driven by the EoS debacle, mind you, as I saw plenty of recent reviews complaining about bugs) has eroded the good vibes. Some jerks are getting nasty about the whole thing, as you'd predict. Meanwhile, some self-proclaimed Chinese divers are trying to explain why they feel cheated.

"[The Equality-On-Sea defense campaign] has drawn a lot of attention in the Chinese gaming communities and even outside of the gaming community due to the ion of the Chinese Helldivers, who are now proudly fighting side by side with helldivers coming from everywhere including the US and European countries despite IRL political differences," wrote Reddit Valkyrie_Yukikaze.

"However, as the campaign has drawn in a lot of attention, there is an influx of new players who did not fully understand the game, who only care about defending the EoS until the final victories. Such excitement did not [go over] well when they found out that EoS can't be completely retaken as it is a defense campaign to finish off the Illuminate invasion fleet. Add on to that, the Chinese translation of the game on the defense percentage makes it seem like the city can be completely taken back from the invasion, which is certainly not helping."

This is just one view on the matter, but that all sounds pretty reasonable to me. I know a few million English-speaking Helldivers who'd be enormously pissed if they believed a weeklong battle had amounted to a rugpull—a review bomb would just be their opening salvo.

Valkyrie_Yukikaze went on to add that they believe Chinese players are also miffed because it appears as if Arrowhead is playing favorites with its megacities, wanting all of them to fall except for Prosperity City, Super Earth's capital, which just happens to be located in Arrowhead's home country of Sweden.

To be clear: This is pretty obviously true. The capital city would be the natural climax for this chapter of Helldivers 2's ongoing story, though Arrowhead has been known to change course based on community action.