Escalation of Freedom, Helldivers 2's latest update, hasn't gone down well with fans, so much so that players are protesting by letting the Automatons win.

Last week, Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead released one of the game's biggest updates in a while, and quickly players felt unhappy with the nerfs, resulting in the game sliding down to a mixed rating on Steam. Even Arrowhead's CEO says a lot of the devs themselves are unhappy with how things have gone down. And while those Steam reviews are obviously one way players are expressing their frustration, as spotted by GamesRadar, there's another, possibly even more drastic tactic being taken up. Evidenced by a popular post on the game's subreddit, and the unofficial Helldivers 2 galaxy map, many players are simply refusing to take down any Automatons, and now the robot baddies are getting worryingly close to Super Earth.

"Though it takes the last drop of my blood, I will see the galaxy freed once more and if I can not save it from your failure Managed Democracy, then let the galaxy burn!" wrote a user in Reddit, obviously still trying to stay in character as many players have down since the game launched earlier this year. Another user even notes that players refusing to play resulting in the bots in the bots encroachment towards Super Earth is actually quite "realistic" because of the nerfs, saying "Sucky guns and outclassed artilery lose wars! So, we can't defend Super Earth because our enemies have better weapons than us and Super Earth can only produce crap for us to fight with."

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