[I’m tired from work, and lazy, so I’m re-posting this from the Steam forums. I think I’m remembering correctly that Ranger DLC was in the original PC version’s ‘basic version’, the $19.99 version. And then at some point it was removed. If I’m wrong, I’m sure someone will correct me 
]
While I don’t expect Arrowhead do do anything to commemorate it, Dec. 7 is Helldivers’ 2nd anniversary as a PC release on Steam. So I’ll commemorate it! 
A few things I remember…
- Folks who “prepurchased” Helldivers got to play it online during the Friday-Sunday period of Dec. 4-6, 2015. The catch was even if you bought Digital Deluxe, NO DLC items whatsoever were activated for the “prepurchase weekend play” event.
I thought this was great, to be honest (I bought the DD version). Put all of us on the same playing field and without all those DLC toys, sometimes you really had to scrap and strategize to overcome higher diffculty battles. And no all terrain boots for anybody, so we all had to figure out ways to make do on snow maps. Only the one Exosuit, limited vehicles, no omnipotent AT turret. Sometimes limitations are more fun, imho. I may actually suggest this in the ‘Suggestions’ forum – have a weekend event with certain limitations in place.
- I had great fun those first few days in particular, and added so many new folks to my friends list. To this day, the vast majority of folks on my Steam friends list I met through Helldivers. Truly nothing else I’ve played here – including other co-op titles like the Left 4 Dead games and Kiling Floor 2 – has given me as many Steam pals as Helldivers. ːsteamhappyː
imho, the things that non-fans complain about – friendly fire, screen lock – are really the biggest factors in encouraging people to work together, and at least much of the time, become friends. Along with the simple gameplay mechanic of helping an injured fellow player up off the ground. I mean, in real life probably no stranger’s going to dash through a hail of gunfire, grenades and tank fire to help me, but in Helldivers that occurred and occurs like in every game.
-
The “base” PC version released in Dec. 2015 with the Ranger DLC pack included for FREE (https://helldivers.gamepedia.com/Ranger_Pack): LHO-63 Camper rifle, Humblebee UAV drone and Ranger Uniform. Thought that was a great little gift to “early adopters.” To this day, I don’t know why the Ranger DLC pack was eventually removed from the base version of Helldivers on PC.
-
To me, the announcement of a PC version was an utter and pleasant shock/surprise. I’d bought a PlayStation Vita just for Helldivers in spring 2015 because it seemed like the perfect game for me. It was OK online in that form but I just can’t really recommend online Vita play from a stability standpoint. Trying to toss grenades by swiping the Vita’s rear touchpad was also, um, imprecise.
Probably it shouldn’t have surprised me given Arrowhead’s development of Magicka on PC, and that its separate dev team’s Gauntlet reboot launched on PC first. I guess I was just surprised that Sony supported releasing Helldivers on PC, and I’m glad they did
So anyway…
Happy 2nd Anniversary on PC/Steam, Helldivers!
May your global campaign outlive all of us. Not to be morbid… 
