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Helldivers 2

Helldivers 2’s new bugs are bugged, so Arrowhead’s turning them off for 5 weeks to debug its bugged bugs’ bugs

Lincoln Carpenter

17 September 2025

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(Image credit: Arrowhead Game Studios)

The Into the Unjust update that hit Helldivers 2 earlier this month sent the tireless forces of Super Earth deep into Terminid territories. There, they were met with the Rupture strain: new varieties of burrowing bug enemies that proved to be an immediate source of controversy by mercilessly kicking people’s asses.

Rupture Warriors, the burrowing variant of the mainstay Terminid fodder, quickly became the most hated Helldivers hazard after players realized they were more lethal to mission hosts. While other players had a chance to dodge their lunges as they launched out of the dirt, host players found themselves repeatedly hewn into piles of wet chunks by an onslaught of unavoidable Terminid talons.
Rupture warriors are much easier to avoid if you aren’t the mission host from r/Helldivers
Earlier this week, Arrowhead deployed a patch to spare mission hosts from suffering disproportional Terminid violence. Unfortunately, rather than making Rupture Warriors less threatening for host players, the update made them just as relentless for everyone else.

Related Articles

As bugs and bad performance spoil an otherwise excellent Helldivers 2 update, Arrowhead CEO says its ‘technical debt is crippling’

Helldivers 2’s new hive world update is absolutely kicking my ass, and it’s just what the game needed

Wading into Helldivers 2’s new Terminid hives to blow up their hearts, all as hordes of bugs swarm you is, unsurprisingly, exactly as cool as it sounds

You’ll be shocked to learn, I’m sure, that players didn’t receive this news well.

Evidently, even with the Rupture Warrior lethality being more evenly distributed, the new bug varieties aren’t behaving as Arrowhead hoped. In an announcement posted earlier today, the studio said it would be putting the Rupture strain in prolonged time out so it can retune the behavior of their various bladed extremities and bile sprays.
“Our patch yesterday combined with other issues regarding the balance of the Rupture Strain have made them function in a way we did not intend,” Arrowhead said. “We’re going to take the Rupture Strain offline at 6pm today CEST. No other units will be affected. The improved Rupture Strain will be back online in 5 weeks.”
As of roughly four hours ago, Helldivers can once again roam the stars without the threat of something bursting out the sand and snipping off their limbs in the blink of an eye. For a few weeks, anyway. Then it’s right back into the bug blender—but at least the blender should be a bit more sportsmanlike. At the end of the day, that’s all we can ask.

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Lincoln has been writing about games for 11 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.

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As bugs and bad performance spoil an otherwise excellent Helldivers 2 update, Arrowhead CEO says its ‘technical debt is crippling’

Helldivers 2’s new hive world update is absolutely kicking my ass, and it’s just what the game needed

Wading into Helldivers 2’s new Terminid hives to blow up their hearts, all as hordes of bugs swarm you is, unsurprisingly, exactly as cool as it sounds

Helldivers 2’s upcoming patch will see you diving deep into Terminid nests where your stratagems won’t save you—also, the bugs have dragons now

Starship Troopers: Extermination implements a ‘total overhaul’ to its spawning system, adding a Left 4 Dead style AI director: ‘We realized that our original spawning system, while functional, was starting to show its limit’

‘PLEASE DON’T NERF COYOTE’: The new Helldivers 2 warbond has a fire-breathing rifle so good that players are begging Arrowhead to leave it alone

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