New unofficial Helldivers 2 mods are bringing some iconic characters from your childhood into the M-rated interplanetary co-op shooter—and the game's creative director thinks it's "hilarious."
The YouTuber known as "ToastedShoes" recently uploaded a video, titled "Helldivers 2 but ruined with mods." In it, he plays Helldivers 2 on PC with his friends using community-made mods that show his character as Xbox's Halo lead, Master Chief, and pals as Disney's Buzz Lightyear and Starlord from Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy.
Together, the unlikely trio fights giant bugs modded to look like twisted versions of Lightning McQueen from Pixar's Cars movies, but with bug legs. Considering ToastedShoes' YouTube bio reads "I ruin people's childhoods for a living," it's not exactly surprising that Helldivers 2 wasn't spared from the comically creepy mods.
"I mean, this is hilarious," Helldivers 2 Creative Director and Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt writes on X in response to a clip from the video. "I'm impressed by the ability to do these mesh swaps given that the engine has no support for mods."
"At some point in life I really want to make a game with proper modding support," Pilestedt continues. "I do love modding communities as it's where I got my start as a game dev."
Pilestedt also reportedly said this week that he's still working with PlayStation and Valve to bring Helldivers 2 back to players in 177 countries who found it suddenly unavailable without a VPN this week.
PC gamers modding their favorite games for fun is a decades-old tradition—even though some game publishers take issue with them. Game mods that include other companies' IP, when unlicensed, could lead to DMCA takedowns. Plenty of games license IP for official crossovers, however, like Fortnite, which just added official Star Wars content to its third-person shooter game. These collaborations can be big money-makers for studios, unlike community mods, which are often developed and distributed for free online.
Some studios pursue and pull unofficial mods more often than others. For instance, Grand Theft Auto 5 developer Rockstar Games removed both a community member's AI NPC mod from NexusMods and killed his YouTube video on the topic over copyright concerns last year. But other mods—like this Starfield mod that adds an unofficial version of Mattel's Thomas the Tank Engine to the space exploration game—have been able to stay up on mod sites despite their obvious likeness to someone else's IP.
PCMag found a fresh version of a Master Chief skin mod for Helldivers 2 uploaded to Nexus Mods Thursday, which at time of writing has about 100 downloads. NexusMods has a form for DMCA requests and says its policy is to "take copyright violations seriously and will honor requests to remove content which contains property or materials used in an evident and unlawful manner."
Despite Pilestedt's support, it's unclear whether Helldivers 2 publisher Sony, Master Chief's owner Xbox, or Disney will let these mods remain on the internet. Regardless, it's fun to watch the mashup in action.