Like a moth drawn to a flame, Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt can't help but tease the future of Helldivers 2 every time he logs onto Twitter.

Today, after a cryptic tweet about giving Super Earth citizens "more officially regulated and mandated freedoms," Pirestedt replied to one fan's concept of a tripod minigun with an interesting insight into another unannounced "Helldivers 2" gun.

"Gatling guns as support weapons are cool, but only if they accurately represent insane recoil. I might do that, but it would require some really cool mechanics," Pilestedt replied to one fan.

"To kill the recoil, you could add a deployable tripod that kills your own mobility and means a 3 second deployment time, 3 second pack up," replied Twitter user FedNet23." If in undeployed mode, the recoil should be savage unless the second player holds the second rail to help keep it stable."

"This was the HMG idea," Pilestedt replied, quickly tweeting: "Never mind, there is no such thing as HMG."

Pilestedt does not clarify what "HMG" stands for, but presumably he is referring to a heavy machine gun that does not currently exist in Helldivers. Well, it no longer exists. This is not the first time such a weapon has appeared; in the hours immediately following the launch of Helldivers 2 in February, several players reported seeing a support weapon stratagem called "MG101 Heavy Machine Gun" in the unlock menu. A few hours later, it apparently disappeared, but not until they took a screenshot of the in-game description. According to that description, the HMG is "an extremely powerful but unwieldy machine gun with intense recoil. Unlocked at level 12, it is positioned between the autocannon and the railgun.

The deleted in-game description only shows the back of the HMG, but its appearance is perfectly consistent with another strange icon that disappeared from the game in a recent update: in Helldivers 2, for several weeks the regular machine gun was represented on the map with an icon that looked nothing like it. on the map. As one Reddit user captured, the mismatched icon depicts a large gun with a round top and tripod. It is very similar to the concept shared by Pirestedt.

So when will HMG see the light of day? It is odd that hours after the game went live, this weapon was ripped from our hands; was the HMG scrapped altogether, or will it return in another form?

I can see it going in some interesting directions. If a "heavy" machine gun could penetrate heavy armor like the Charger or Hulk, it would instantly become the most powerful automatic weapon in the game. It would make sense if such a sturdy gun could not be controlled from the hip. The need for a second Helldiver to soften the recoil might mean something to fans.

Now that Helldivers 2's galactic wars are in a lull after a chaotic few weeks, there is much speculation about the game's future. The continued leaking of unannounced APCs and baby carriages to the public match may suggest that the first vehicles will soon be available, but it is unlikely that game master Joel will be handing them over.