Arrowhead Patches A Sniper Rifle, Says Nothing About Helldivers 2 Anti-Cheat Backlash

Arrowhead Game Studios pushed Helldivers 2 patch 7.2.2 on October 29, and the notes open with a fix for the AMW-20 APEX rather than anything to do with the anti-cheat that set the Steam reviews on fire.

According to the post, the rifle's demolition strength was too low, its caliber made damage dropoff too steep, and the armory showed the wrong armor penetration. Arrowhead dropped the caliber from 60 to 20 to lower that dropoff, and says the rifle can now destroy covers and container doors in line with similar weapons like the Anti Material Rifle and Autocannon.

For context, Arrowhead rolled out Easy Anti-Cheat on October 20 alongside the Scope of Authority Premium Warbond, and that day alone brought 265 positive and 1,667 negative reviews. A hotfix on October 22 fixed a crash when players joined or left a squad.

Since then the numbers have not recovered. The last 3 days show 805 negative and 276 positive reviews, or 74% negative, up from 71% when the previous article ran and a long way from the 14% negative before this started.

Players are not posting about sniper damage dropoff. The most helpful reviews this week say the new anti-cheat blocks people from launching the game, with one reviewer with 285.7 hours writing, "Not only should we change the Anti-Cheat on and PVE game."

Another player summed up the core objection in one line: "Why does anti-cheat even matter in a co-op non-competitive game...?" A reviewer with 1,553.3 hours also says the change hit players who used mods to fix long-standing bugs, while not stopping actual cheaters.

Nothing in the posted 7.2.2 notes addresses launch errors, modding, or whether Easy Anti-Cheat is staying in its current form. The October 20 blog framed the switch around fairness and players manipulating the Galactic War, and no official post since has walked that back.

A rifle got a rework. The review score did not.

The daily figures have cooled from that first spike, with October 29 at 54 positive and 137 negative, but negatives still outnumber positives every single day since the update. If you were waiting for Arrowhead to talk about the anti-cheat itself, the Steam page is still silent on it.

What players are asking for is clear from the reviews: a working launch for those reporting errors and an answer on mods.

Steam reviews, day by day

The story so far

• 2026-10-27: Arrowhead Game Studios Deploys Easy Anti-Cheat, Players Flood Steam With Negatives

Sources: Helldivers 2 on Steam (user reviews), Helldivers 2 developer announcements. Figures checked 2026-10-29 14:31 UTC.