Helldivers 2 hotfix 7.2.3 fixes PC crashes on boot and exit, unblocks some mods

Arrowhead released Helldivers 2 hotfix 7.2.3 (version 01.007.203) on November 11, and it is one worth grabbing. If the game crashed on you at boot in Windows, on exit, or when you got hit by poison or gas inside Hive World caves, this patch targets exactly those three crashes. It also gets certain cosmetic mods working again after they stopped functioning.

What hotfix 7.2.3 fixes

According to the official notes on Steam:

• Boot crash: fixed a crash that could occur on boot when the game had issues with writing permissions on Windows.
• Exit crash: fixed a crash that could occur while exiting the game.
• Cave crash: fixed a crash when receiving status effects such as poison or gas in Hive World caves.
• Fire in caves: fire did not work and could not spread inside caves, and that is now fixed.
• Level generation: in Hive World caves, large assets could spawn outside the cave and block mission progression and stratagem call-ins.
• Cosmetic mods: fixed an issue preventing certain cosmetic mods from functioning.

The cave fixes matter more than they might seem: on November 3, Arrowhead announced that Terminid cave networks now run beneath more biomes across the galaxy. This is also not the first stability fix of this stretch: on October 22, hotfix 7.2.1 fixed a crash that happened when another player joined or left the squad.

The mods context comes from the November 10 developer blog, where Arrowhead acknowledged concerns about the impact the move to Easy Anti-Cheat, which arrived with Update 7.2.0 on October 20, had on unsupported mods. The 7.2.3 notes do not say which mods are back, only that certain cosmetic mods work again.

What you need to do

Just update the game on Steam. The notes do not ask for any extra steps, suggest no settings changes and mention no changes to performance, fps or system requirements. If you were hitting the boot crash tied to write permissions, the fix comes from the game side: Arrowhead did not publish a manual workaround for it.

Helldivers 2 PC requirements

The requirements do not change with this hotfix. This is what the Steam page lists:

Storage appears that way on Steam, with a different figure in each column. The game is Windows only.

Which cards run it

Every GPU we checked clears the minimum. Measured against the recommended requirement, the RTX 2060, the RTX 3060 and the RX 6600 XT grade B (Solid), while the RTX 3070 and RX 9070 XT reach A. The GTX 1660 Super, RTX 3050 and Arc B580 land at C, between minimum and recommended. The GTX 1060 6GB, GTX 1650 and RX 580 clear the minimum but grade D against the recommended: the game runs, but it will struggle. Grades assume 16 GB of RAM.

On Steam Deck, Valve rates it Playable. The details are on the Helldivers 2 Steam Deck page.

Can your PC run Helldivers 2?

Here is how your rig grades against Helldivers 2 and the first game in the series:

Game	Rec. GPU score	Rec. RAM	Min. RAM	Your PC
HELLDIVERS™ 2	14,300	16 GB	8 GB	?
HELLDIVERS™ Dive Harder Edition	1,300	4 GB	4 GB	?

The full game page shows your grade against the recommended requirement and which upgrade raises it the most.

Sources: Hotfix 7.2.3 on Steam, Helldivers 2 on Steam, November developer blog, Update 7.2.0, Hotfix 7.2.1, New caves and Terminids