Edit April 2024 - Oh look, they had a big corporation moment and shoehorned in the requirement for players to sign up for a PSN account - with Sony's notorious lack of security - and link it to their steam account. Supposedly in the name of security. Yeah checks out mate. This is the first I and most people are hearing of it. Not interested.

The game its self, for the most part, is great. Some of the best 3rd-person gunplay since MGSV; fun, challenging gameplay and mechanics. It's lacking much in terms of features and content compared to the first game - time will tell if that's addressed, but for the moment it's still very enjoyable.

The main reason for the negative review is that Helldivers 2 uses nProtect GameGuard - a kernel-level anti-cheat software, aka a rootkit - and widely regarded as amongst the worst of its kind. It runs at the highest possible level of privilege in your PC's system - enabling it to monitor files and control hardware. It acts as a keylogger, monitors which programs you have running, and still lingers after uninstallation..

Presenting a gaping security vulnerability, a huge invasion of privacy, degrading the performance of the game and having the potential to brick peoples' PCs - and not even preventing hackers from creating cheats for the effort - it's already a bit of a stretch for games that take themselves seriously as competitive arenas. Why the ♥♥♥♥ does a co-op game of all things need one?

Edit April 2024 - Oh look, they had a big corporation moment and shoehorned in the requirement for players to sign up for a PSN account - with Sony's notorious lack of security - and link it to their steam account. Supposedly in the name of security. Yeah checks out mate. This is the first I and most people are hearing of it. Not interested. The game its self, for the most part, is great. Some of the best 3rd-person gunplay since MGSV; fun, challenging gameplay and mechanics. It's lacking much in terms of features and content compared to the first game - time will tell if that's addressed, but for the moment it's still very enjoyable. The main reason for the negative review is that Helldivers 2 uses nProtect GameGuard - a kernel-level anti-cheat software, aka a rootkit - and widely regarded as amongst the worst of its kind. It runs at the highest possible level of privilege in your PC's system - enabling it to monitor files and control hardware. It acts as a keylogger, monitors which programs you have running, and still lingers after uninstallation.. Presenting a gaping security vulnerability, a huge invasion of privacy, degrading the performance of the game and having the potential to brick peoples' PCs - and not even preventing hackers from creating cheats for the effort - it's already a bit of a stretch for games that take themselves seriously as competitive arenas. Why the fuck does a co-op game of all things need one?