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Helldivers 2 is the bug-squashing sensation that's sweeping the nation. Skyrocketing to popularity in a way that the first Helldivers could only dream of. And in a way that caught me off guard if I'm gonna be honest, I barely gave it much thought when it was shown off. Despite that, Helldivers 2 has already surpassed God of War as Playstation's biggest launch on Steam and has easily eclipsed its top-down predecessor in terms of popularity.

The best surprise of Helldivers 2 was that despite its kernel-level anti-cheat system, something that normally kills Linux support, the game ran on Steam Deck. Though not without issues initially with running it on the Decks Game Mode due to said anti-cheat affecting Game Mode but Valve quickly put out a Proton Hotfix to solve it.

As a result of this change Valve has now rated Helldivers 2 as steam deck playable Playable on Steam Deck. The reasons for the playable rating being due to small text that may be difficult to read and the need to manually configure graphics to get good performance on Deck. As for those settings I don't own the game myself so I had to rely on the word of ProtonDB, where Helldivers 2 is rated as Gold for Linux support.

According to ProtonDB it appears that a mix of Low to Medium settings with FSR set to Ultra Quality can get a mostly solid 30FPS performance. Which is pretty good for a handheld like the Steam Deck. I have no idea if this is for OLED Deck or LCD Deck however so you may have to experiment on your own to figure out the settings that work best for you.

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If you do want to buy it's available from:

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Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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About the author -
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A humble Steam Deck owner and fledgling Linux user in general. I've always been interested in Linux replacing Windows as the primary PC gaming OS. But it was always a mess of frustration, drivers, and not knowing which kernel was best. When SteamOS3 and Steam Deck hit the scene however, I realized the true potential of Linux as a gaming platform.
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8 comments

Cybolic Feb 15
Well, I'm glad the choice is here, but I'm already soured on the game from its DRM introduction.

Has anyone here played it; is it any good? Watching that trailer got my hopes slightly up from the Paul Verhooven-ish "Are We The Baddies" intro, but the rest of the gameplay seems to completely drop that tone, so it looks like just another bro-shooter. Is there more to it?
Liam Dawe Feb 15
Quoting: CybolicWell, I'm glad the choice is here, but I'm already soured on the game from its DRM introduction.

Has anyone here played it; is it any good? Watching that trailer got my hopes slightly up from the Paul Verhooven-ish "Are We The Baddies" intro, but the rest of the gameplay seems to completely drop that tone, so it looks like just another bro-shooter. Is there more to it?
I'll likely have my own write-up on some thoughts next week. But so far: it's fantastic (Desktop Linux), having a huge amount of fun with it.
Termy Feb 15
Yeah, i still don't trust that they won't intentionally break/block proton due to it not properly supporting the rootkit.
pytrys Feb 15
Quoting: CybolicWell, I'm glad the choice is here, but I'm already soured on the game from its DRM introduction.

Has anyone here played it; is it any good? Watching that trailer got my hopes slightly up from the Paul Verhooven-ish "Are We The Baddies" intro, but the rest of the gameplay seems to completely drop that tone, so it looks like just another bro-shooter. Is there more to it?

Medium / low is not very stable in the heat of battle and fps drops a lot. I am going with everything Low and FSR Performance and even then it fluctuates between 22 - 41 fps.
Quoting: pytrysMedium / low is not very stable in the heat of battle and fps drops a lot. I am going with everything Low and FSR Performance and even then it fluctuates between 22 - 41 fps.

Hello everyone, first post here!

As for Helldivers 2 performance on the Steam Deck, I've heard that the SteamOS tweaks by A.B.T. can help quite a bit.

Is that true?

Can anyone around here confirm?

I would try myself, but I'm quite new to the CLI, therefore I would like to get a confirmation from experienced Linux users around here first.

Thanks in advance!

PS:

I don't know if direct links are allowed on here, but you can find the article I'm talking about easily with a search engine of your choice:

It's on Medium with the title "Here are some (possibly) useful tweaks for SteamOS on the Steam Deck".

Once again, thanks and looking forward to any replies from you guys!
Quoting: CybolicWell, I'm glad the choice is here, but I'm already soured on the game from its DRM introduction.

Has anyone here played it; is it any good? Watching that trailer got my hopes slightly up from the Paul Verhooven-ish "Are We The Baddies" intro, but the rest of the gameplay seems to completely drop that tone, so it looks like just another bro-shooter. Is there more to it?

Feels like one of those things you need to dive deeper into to get. I just wanna get something to play with the boys.
14 Feb 17
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Quoting: CybolicHas anyone here played it; is it any good? Watching that trailer got my hopes slightly up from the Paul Verhooven-ish "Are We The Baddies" intro, but the rest of the gameplay seems to completely drop that tone, so it looks like just another bro-shooter. Is there more to it?
A couple friends and I decided to buy it last night, and we proceeded to play for about 6 hours straight, despite some problems the servers were having processing your gear unlocks. It's lovely fun with friends. Has that cooperative action feel from the old days of Halo, except in simpler form. It's also similar to Outriders, yet again, a bit more simplified. It just felt really fun and cool to play. On a side note, I was pleasantly surprised that the trigger feedback on my PS5 controller worked in this game! Very rare on PC. Overall, I highly recommend it to co-op players who like games like Halo, Outriders, Borderlands, Division, and others like those.
Brokatt Feb 19
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Player count reach 409k yesterday on Steam. Arrowhead have a hectic week a head of them.


Last edited by Brokatt on 19 February 2024 at 10:33 am UTC
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