Helldivers 2 CEO admits he’s “not great at the game,” but Arrowhead doesn’t “base design on if I get my ass handed to me”

Helldivers 2 players are getting their butts whooped in light of recent nerfs and are responding with the heat that’s been taken from them, but divers aren’t alone in the struggle – Arrowhead Game Studios’ CEO is also not faring well while trying to turn bugs into ash.

Helldivers 2 has been through a bumpy ride in relation to buffs and nerfs and everything in between, as developer Arrowhead has sometimes swung too far in one direction in its quest for almighty balance. After nerfing various fan favorite weapons to the point of community frustration, a series of buffs turned the flamethrower, among others, into a beastly tool capable of melting Chargers in their shell.

While Helldivers 2’s Escalation Of Freedom update made massive changes to the popular co-op shooter by adding new enemy types, an eerie swamp biome, and social menu fixes, it also bought a couple of nerfs back into the fold. The most recent patch made flame work more realistically so it now no longer goes “through various bodies/objects where bounce off would be the expected behavior, like on armors and static objects.”

Over on Twitter, Arrowhead’s recently-minted CEO Shams Jorjani said he had also “just got my ass handed to me on [difficulty] 9 with the flamer,” which one Reddit thread thought might be a sign that Arrowhead would backtrack on recent, flame-related changes. 

Jorjani then jumped into the post’s comments to clear up that he’s “also not great at the game” and usually played on lower difficulty levels. “But luckily we don’t base design on if I get my ass handed to me or not,” he continued. “We’ll keep looking at the feedback, data and tweak things continuously to make things more fun/better.” With so much discontent, we should see at least see some flamey tweaks coming.

For now, check out everything included in the fiery Helldivers 2 Freedom’s Flame Warbond.