Following the controversial reveal of the new Masters of Ceremony Warbond battle pass and what is undoubtedly a major tease for the game’s next update, fans of Arrowhead Game Studios’ award-winning co-op shooter Helldivers 2 now find themselves in the middle of quite a large alternate reality game (ARG) that’s currently ongoing.
The ARG kicked off this morning with a surprise “STATION-81 // OFFLINE _ [ REBOOT ]” livestream that displays a live feed of a Super Earth control terminal, along with a new STATION-81 account on X (Twitter), a renaming of all the moderators of the Helldivers 2 Discord to “SATCOM#X” (where X is a number), and new “s81-satcom,” “s81-input,” and “s81-output” channels within that Discord. You can join the Discord here and join your fellow Helldivers in working to solve the puzzle (more on how it works shortly).
So far, the ARG has been progressed by players entering codes or commands into the input channel en masse, then checking the output channel and the live feed to see if what the entered is valid and also what it does, if so. For example, earlier this morning, fans noticed the profile pictures of the renamed moderators displayed codes in braille, and the numbers they gave were used to help “log into” the terminal.
![STATION-81 // OFFLINE _ [ REBOOT ] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/QChlgNJvbZk/maxresdefault.jpg)
Throughout the day, slow and steady progress has been made in figuring out what the terminal controls and what needs to be done. At the time of writing, the console is providing access to four space stations presumably around Super Earth; STATION-81’s antennae array was realigned an hour or two ago with directional commands, resulting in the gathering of data that was then uploaded. This resulted in the recalibration of one of four “datablocks.”
Evidently, the goal of the ARG — or, at the very least, this part of it — is to recalibrate all four datablocks, with each of the other stations presumably having one. However, thus far, players haven’t figured out how to access the systems of STATION-82, STATION-83, or STATION-84 in order to start actually achieving this. Once they do, though, I expect things will start moving a whole lot faster, as whatever eventually works for one station will likely be similar to what’s necessary for the others.
At the moment, around 8-9,000 people are watching the livestream, and I’m sure a huge portion of that audience is also actively working on trying to solve the ARG in the Discord. Again, you can help yourself by joining and sending commands to the input channel; make sure to keep an eye out for helpful notices from players about which ones have already been deemed invalid.
As for what the ARG is going to reveal once it is finished, there’s no doubt in my mind it’ll be centered around the inevitable Illuminate invasion players have been worried about ever since disturbing secret messages were found in March and we “defeat” the Illuminate by stopping the planet-destroying Meridian Singularity. Perhaps we’ll get an advance warning of what’s coming with a new trailer.
The new Masters of Ceremony Warbond is coming out May 15 — two days after an in-universe party being held “in the light of the Singularity” is scheduled — and if I was a betting man, I’d wager all my Super Credits that that’ll either be the day of or a day or two after a full squid invasion force surges through the wormhole and begins assaulting the colonies around it…and perhaps even Super Earth itself.
For now, though? All we can do is continue chipping away at the puzzle of this ARG, and fighting on the Terminid and Automaton fronts until the Illuminate’s resurgence. I’ll be sure to update this article if there are major developments or the ARG gets solved in full.
Helldivers 2 stands tall as one of the best PC games and best PS5 games to play if you’re into co-op shooters, intense sci-fi action, goofy physics antics, and goofy satirical writing. It’s typically $40, though you can often get it for less if you shop around for discounts. Right now, the best one is CDKeys’ sale that shaves almost $10 off the price, allowing you to get the bombastic title for just over $30.
