Leading up to the release of the Helldivers 2 expansion "Machinery of Oppression" we ran a Social Media ARG Campaign to build excitement.

The idea was that the Automaton legion (under the leadership of the, at that point unrevealed, Cyborgs) hacked Super Earths communication channels (aka our social media platforms) to try to stop the Helldivers from invading their homeland, Cyberstan.

What we wanted to achieve was to flip the narrative of the Helldivers as "Heroes" and show the atrocities they have committed by taking community-loved posters, videos etc. and flipping them to the Automaton point of view. 

We started with full take-overs of Facebook, X, Instagram, Discord and Youtube. We had created a version of the profile banners that was a parody of the Helldivers 2 keyart from the Automatons POV.

We decided to encrypt the automaton messages, as they are machines, to binary code which would then have to be translated from a bastardized version of Swedish to get their messages. Every post came with one of these encrypted messages that revealed more and more of what the Automatons wanted to achieve with the hack.



We then posted three fan-favorite posters from the game, remade as if it came from the automatons. Showing the Helldivers as the aggressors.

Hidden within these images were pieces of QR codes that, when put together and scanned, linked the community to a website with a puzzle that, when solved, led to a countdown.

Another piece of content we transformed was a scene from the intro cinematic. Taking what is probably the most beloved piece of Helldivers 2 media and converting it into Automaton propaganda was hugely successful and gave us the highest engagement out of any social media asset to this day.

Once the countdown for the website reached 00:00:00 the video of the cyborgs finally revealing themselves went live, at the same time as the video started playing in-game as well, completing the hack event.

During the social media takeover, we were regularly posting our official "Deep Dive Trailers" as well, to make these work together with the hack, we decided to position the videos as Super Earth Officials (developers roleplaying) managing to temporarily reclaim control of the platforms for only a few minutes to deliver important information to the Helldivers. These were divided into three pieces that followed the narrative of the hack and the game.

• Part 1: March towards Cyberstan
• Part 2: Attack on Cyberstan
• Part 3: Return of the Cyborgs

You can see the full videos down below