Helldivers 2's Devoid of Liberty Update Sends You Into the Void, and the Game Just Hit PS Plus Too

For months the Void has been sitting on the Helldivers 2 galactic map like a black stain nobody was allowed to touch. That changes now. Devoid of Liberty, update 7.0.0, went live on August 12 on PS5, PC and Xbox, and it finally sends Helldivers toward the source of the Illuminate corruption instead of just holding the line against it.

Arrowhead picked quite a day for it. Alongside the update, the full game joined the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog, so Extra and Premium members can now download Helldivers 2 on PS5 at no extra cost. Between this and the Warhammer 40,000 Warbond that dropped the same day, squad queues are about to get very crowded.

Video: PlayStation on YouTube

What the Void actually brings

The planets near the Void have been permanently mutated, and the closer they sit to it, the stranger they get. On them you will find a fresh set of objectives: destroying Illuminate spires and gateways, running data reconnaissance, and infiltrating Illuminate structures as a team. New secondary objectives round it out, from eradicating Void mutations to extracting research materials, and you can now open a second extraction zone on the map when the first one is a death trap.

Two new enemies crawl out of all this. The Wretch is fast and nimble, dodges your fire and leaps at you, the kind of thing that punishes a wandering aim. The Crusher is the opposite problem, a slow death march of a unit that soaks heavy damage and regenerates unless you keep pouring fire into it without pause. Neither is a reskin, and both are built to break the crowd-control habits players have settled into against the squids.

Backup, level 300 and the little fixes

You are not going in alone this time. SEAF platoons can now appear as a planet modifier, arriving by dropship to fight alongside your squad with stim pistols and heavy machine guns. They patch you up, they hold ground, and yes, you can salute, shake hands with, and hug them. After the losses of the Battle for Super Earth, that hug lands harder than it has any right to.

Progression gets a real bump too. The level cap jumps from 150 to 300 with 15 new ranks, each carrying its own title and icon. The emote wheel doubles from 4 to 8 slots, assisted reloads have been reworked so either the shooter or the helper can carry the backpack, and the GATER vehicle got a proper engine swap. There is even a Super Merch store now, where completing in-game achievements unlocks real merchandise you can buy.

Our take: this is the most ambitious free update Helldivers 2 has shipped this year, and pairing it with the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog drop is smart timing rather than coincidence. New players get the whole galaxy for free, veterans get a genuinely new frontier, and Sony gets a very healthy player count. There is also a community carrot: kill 500 million enemies before August 18 and everyone unlocks four Helldiver PlayStation avatars. Knowing this community, that number will fall early.