Helldivers 2's biggest update yet announced, with higher difficulty, new bugs, and more

Helldivers 2 will receive its biggest update yet in August, bringing higher difficulty, greater mission variety, and more.

Escalation of Freedom is the name of the update, which will arrive on 6th August. Details have been provided on the PlayStation Blog from social media and community manager at developer Arrowhead, Katherine Baskin.

The update will also add new enemy types, including a favourite from the first game, and will make steps to mitigate the problem of grief kicking.

Fitting with the title, the update will introduce Combat Rating 10 as a new higher difficulty of Helldiving. "Super Helldive is our most challenging, most relentless dive difficulty level yet, and we hope that this is going to give players the intensity they're looking for on the battlefield. And with a great challenge comes greater rewards," said Baskin on the blog.

New mission objectives and bigger enemy outposts will be added too, with new Super Sample rewards. The mission objectives will be available on other difficulty levels, not just CR 10.

Next up are new enemies, including the Impaler from the original Helldivers with its huge tentacles and the new Spore Charger that's like the regular Charger but shrouded in fog. There will also be the Terminid Alpha Commander, a supercharged version of the Brood Commander.

As for Automatons, new bots are on the way like the formidable Rocket Tank and more.

The swamps will see a makeover too, with rolling fog, blackened trees, and a haunted atmosphere.

Lastly, Arrowhead is looking to deal with grief kicking, where some players are using the team kicking to grief others.

With the update, the developer is introducing a new system where kicked players are spawned into a new session as the host with all loot from the previous session intact, while players in the previous session will receive a message in the chat widget.

"With these changes, all players have the opportunity to leave with all loot collected on mission, with no one Helldiver losing out," said Baskin. "We're committed to making changes that will improve the player experience and encourage healthy, cooperative gameplay."

Major fixes to the social menu are also coming to ensure playing with friends is easier.

Helldivers 2 is the fastest-selling PlayStation game ever, with 12m copies sold across PC and PlayStation 5 since its release - as revealed in Sony's financial results in May.

This forthcoming update also backs up comments from Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani that a story mode won't be happening in Helldivers 2.