Helldivers 2 players rush to find “Karl” after deleted post from official account, which is certainly not “an illegal Automaton broadcast,” but may be a crossover hint

Deep Rock Galactic’s developer is back at it again

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After accidentally tweeting out a message in binary code asking about some “Karl,“Helldivers 2’s developer has denied that the message was an “illegal Automaton broadcast.”

Arrowhead Game Studios is never one to break character, broadcasting game news from behind the ‘Ministry of Truth,’ and that trend continues today. The Helldivers 2 Twitter account tweeted out a string of binary code which, when put through a machine translator, comes out to “Where is Karl?” The perplexing message was deleted roughly an hour later.

Now, the game’s Twitter account is pushing back at the strange message, denying that it’s an “illegal Automaton broadcast.” In the tweet below, with Arrowhead once again in character, the developer denies that Super Earth’s communications were hijacked by Automaton forces for their propaganda needs.

The Ministry of Truth would like to dispel any rumours that Super Earth deep-range transmissions were intercepted with an illegal Automaton broadcast today.SEAF comms teams identified a minor systems fault that resulted in a quick burst of static interference. Please disregard.April 10, 2024

So the transmission definitely wasn’t an illegal Automaton broadcast, and itdefinitelywasn’t a hijacked Super Earth deep-range transmission, which begs the question: what was it? Arrowhead, or rather, the Ministry of Truth, isn’t keen on answering that question right now, telling social media followers and Super Earth soldiers to simply “disregard” the message entirely.

Of course, this almost certainly means that the Automatons are up to something. You might recallHelldivers 2’s director personally disavowing footage of flying Terminids, right before flying Terminids joined the co-op shooter. The director also downplayed blue lights flashing across the game’s sky as fake,right before blue lasers entered the shooteras a very real force. Not to be undemocratic, but sometimes you’ve got to trust your eyes.

Naturally, everyone’s wondering who this enigmatic Karl character is. One prevailing theory is that it’s a Deep Rock Galactic reference - the co-op game has an unseen character called Karl supporting its player characters, and what’s more, the officialDeep Rock Galactic Twitteraccount responded to the Helldivers 2 tweet above, writing “we don’t know either” in binary.

This isn’t the first time Helldivers 2 and Deep Rock Galactic have cropped up in the same sentence. Last month, players favorably compared the two shooters, leadingDeep Rock Galactic’s developer to gush about Helldivers 2and propose a collaboration between the two games. Maybe this is the beginning of a fruitful partnership for two certified co-op hits.

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Hirun Cryer is a freelance reporter and writer with Gamesradar+ based out of U.K. After earning a degree in American History specializing in journalism, cinema, literature, and history, he stepped into the games writing world, with a focus on shooters, indie games, and RPGs, and has since been the recipient of the MCV 30 Under 30 award for 2021. In his spare time he freelances with other outlets around the industry, practices Japanese, and enjoys contemporary manga and anime.

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