After players reject stratagem three times, Helldivers2 developers snap and demand that they kill 1.5 billion enemies as punishment or suffer the MD-17 anti-tank mines.

Helldivers 2 has foisted the poor, unwanted MD-17 Anti-Tank Mines strategy on players once again. These mines, ready since April, were rejected by the community at least three times. No, really:

• Helldivers 2 players are ignoring the MD-17 anti-tank mines in favor of the RL-77 Airburst Rocket Launcher.
• May: The same players have to kill 2 billion Automatons in order to get anti-tank mines. They fail to do this.
• June: Patriots have a choice to make. They can either get the MD-17 Anti-Tank Mines, or save sick videogame children. They chose to save the children.

Avoiding these mines, which are objectively a new gameplay element that players choose to receive, has become a running gag, and Arrowhead Games quietly admitted defeat.

In-game, an announcement reads: "High Command has ordered a review of the effectiveness of the current mine stragaems." "To enable this evaluation, Helldivers have been ordered to kill or destroy the targeted number Liberty's enemies", that is a whopping 1,5 billion foes and far too little to kill them in.

The kicker? The failure state is a new stratagem that is a direct upgrade for the entire player base.

Super Earth's might has beaten 720,000,000 foes, but that's still only 50%. The Major Order is down to one day, which began on Friday, 2 August. The galaxy's best aren't spreading the democracy fast enough. But given how exhausted Arrowhead Games is, watching these mines collect dust, I can't but wonder if this short timeframe has set them up for failure.

Divers did kill 2 billion bugs a day in April. However, this was during the height of the game's popularity when Helldivers 2 averaged around 250,000 thousand Steam users daily. Currently, the peak for a 24-hour period is 38 654. Even though the game is still very successful in terms of live service metrics, especially if it's made by a smaller company, it operates at a fraction of its capacity.

The player base is still smugly satisfied, as if they were ill-mannered children watching their teacher's meltdown. I say this with the utmost respect, because it seems that Joel had to give them an impossible task, not enough time for them to complete it, and use the stratagem to punish them, just to get the mines in their hands. AgentNewMexico, a Reddit user, said: "Honestly, Kudos to the Community for making this Arrowhead’s solution to give us the mines... Well done, Everyone." "Stand proud, Divers. Our meme is strong."

Joel is probably doing the players a favor by releasing this update. However, given the fact that mines are not used much in the current metagame, I'm wondering if the beefier version of the mines will be played.