Helldivers 2 players are subjected to sarcastic propaganda praising their 'undeniable tactic brilliance' when the 'blob abandons a nearly won objective for no apparent reason

Folks, it seems we may have democracy'd this one a little too near the sun. If you haven't been following along, Helldivers 2 introduced the Democracy Space Station (DSS), which, after a brief hiccup when it kept blasting the soldiers into low orbit, mainly served to empower the freedom fighters with eagle bombings and special powers -- guided across the galaxy by the vote. The wish for greater control over the battlefield has been granted, but the eagle claw still curls.

Arrowhead, not me, included those quotes. You may have noticed that Gaellivare, while technically meeting the conditions of the major order (to hold Gaellivare and kill 500 million Terminids), is currently under automated control.

Helldivers 2's biggest "mission failed" has been achieved so far, and it all started with a gamble. If you're not familiar, these are specific goals provided by Arrowhead Games which allow players to save entire planets at once. As the dispatch read at the time:

"Enemies launch their attacks from a planet that is the origin of the attack. Liberating the origin planet immediately ends the enemy attack. In the current operational context liberating Mastia will end the current Automaton attacks on Gaellivare."

Things looked pretty good initially--Helldivers voted for the station to head over to Mastia, and surely with their help it'd be smashed. They began fighting tooth and nail as the democratic station... uh... slowly drifted to Gaellivare, when Mastia had reached around 70% liberation.

It seems that the hive-mind (this is not a metaphor; I am not a bug lover traitor) followed the DSS to Gaellivare, much like certain types of mould find their way to food. I went to helldivers.io to overlay the graphs of both planets' player counts so you could see exactly when everyone decided to mess up. The red line is Gaellivare.

The gambit failed and Mastia's percentage of liberation plummeted, leading to this sarcastic dispatch from Super Earth's high command:

"The Helldivers, under the Democratic direction of DSS, demonstrated undeniable tactic brilliance. They once again proved why they are the Galaxy's elite fighting force. Their efforts held back the Automaton assault long enough for emergency evacuation efforts to be made to save many citizens. Many of whom had aided in construction of the spacestation." The word "success" is also in air quotes. Ouch.

The community is somewhere in between laughing at the satire and holding their heads in their hands. One player wrote on the subreddit of the game: "This game has demonstrated something that very few games have ever done: the incredible degree to which average players do not read and do not care."

CaptainExplosions, an aptly named user, wrote in a separate thread: "SEAF Command gave an orbital battlestation away to a bunch utterly disposable, propaganda-hyped cannon fodder, with zero strategic aptitude and an average age of recruitment of eighteen. Of COURSE, it ended up being a complete shitshow. It would be like giving command of an aircraft carrier to three freshmen classes and telling them to give orders by popular vote."

The situation is not much better on Discord, with many users complaining about the "blob", which is the apparent phenomenon where the community of the game just follows the DSS as a toddler would follow their collective parents. Men in Black has a quote that I find very apt: "A person knows how to be smart." You know that people are stupid, panicky and dangerous animals.

I'd much rather have this kind of result cause frustration than end up with developer-caused failures like the Menkent Line. This is a good sign that Arrowhead should rethink how they communicate the importance of strategic goals in their UI, but it's also objectively funny. Joel gave everyone the tools to succeed but, the truth is, we're just a bunch ants with guns and we follow the blob's orders.