Sightings of Helldivers 2 Illuminate faction on Galactic War map are "fake news", says Arrowhead boss

Helldivers 2's third enemy faction is maybe definitely possibly probably almost certainly about to be released, as players report sightings of the mysterious menace on the game's Galactic War map. Development studio Arrowhead, aka the glorious government of Super Earth, are downplaying the rumours as usual. They're claiming (via in-game broadcast) that the fleeting appearance of a weird purple blob on the map screen is actually the result of fluids leaking from the corpse of a long-dead comms technician, stranded on a server farm somewhere. Who to believe? Ah, if only we had some means of shedding light on the reports. Some way of Illuminating the situation.

In case you didn't play the original Helldivers and therefore didn't get that reference, Helldivers 2's third faction are pretty much guaranteed to be the Illuminate, a returning armada of evil squidlikes with Tesla beams and cloaking devices and tripod mechas. The trail of evidence for this begins with an in-game broadcast about Illuminate sightings back in February, which Arrowhead/Super Earth described as the "work of dissidents". Arrowhead have also added weapons to the game which seem designed with Illuminate biology in mind. And then there was that Major Order which resulted in the creation of what lore-divers speculate may be a wormhole to whichever dire dimension the Illuminate currently hail from.

To all this, add a brace of "leaked" character models and in-game sightings of uncertain provenance. The purple blob on the Galactic War map (which is adorned with the Illuminate iconography of a circle within a circle) seems like it'd be easier to fabricate than actual enemy models - I've just had a look and it's not showing up in my game. But then again, Arrowhead have officially acknowledged it, with Arrowhead's CEO Shams Jorjani describing it on Xitter as "fake news".

I haven't played Helldivers 2 for a while, mostly for the usual reason that like certain species of shark, my journalist brain has to keep swimming forward or suffocate, but also because I tend to play solo, and there's a point after which that ceases to be much fun due to the difficulty. I'm also getting a bit weary of the Illuminate teasing, which is why we haven't covered certain other recent hints and rumours - it's not quite Winds-of-Winter-level delayed gratification but it's getting a bit old.

In other news, Arrowhead recently announced a new approach to balancing Helldivers 2 after one particular update upset players so much they started letting the Automatons win. Are you playing much at the minute?