In response to complaints from players about slow or missing medals, Helldivers 2 community manager Twinbeard said the game's reward system will get an “overhaul” in the future that should make the awarding of medals for completed major orders faster and more reliable.

Complaints about missing medals have been kicking around for ages. Arrowhead Games CEO Johan Pilestedt touched on the topic in February, for instance, saying the studio was able to “mitigate” the issue but not resolve it completely. 

It's a testament to the game's popularity, and the fact that medals generally do arrive eventually, that players have been relatively patient and understanding about the whole thing, but complaints have continued to pile up on Reddit and the Helldivers Discord. It's a problem Arrowhead is well aware of.

“System is very slow and needs a serious overhaul,” Twinbeard said earlier today on Discord (via GamesRadar) in response to one player who said they're missing over 100 medals. “Medals are being rolled out, it's just veeeeeeery sloooooow.”

“The problem hasn't been so much the system being slow as it has not working properly,” he said to another.

Later in the day, he posted a message addressing the issue more formally in the HD2-Announcements channel, promising that medals are still being rolled out, and more importantly that bigger changes are coming that will hopefully put an end to the problem once and for all.

“Medals for two of the latest three major orders have now been shipped,” Twinbeard wrote. “The last remaining batch will roll out in 11 hours (if Hammertime does its thing; if not, 11.00 AM CET April 10th).

“We will also do an overhaul in the future of the system handling these requests, as it's frankly about as reliable as a solar-powered watch in Malevelon Creek.”

In a subsequent reply, he clarified that the awards system is being changed, but not the medals themselves. He also said that the delay in rewards is simply because “the system is lagging,” and is unrelated to the recently renewed Automaton invasion that has everyone scrambling to fend off a vengeful robot tide.

For now, if you're missing medals, the only real option is to wait and keep your fingers crossed. Pilestedt suggested in February that restarting the game might help move things along, but it might not too. I ran into the problem with delayed medals during my Helldiving days and it was mildly alarming at first, but after an overnight wait they showed up as intended. Still, a proper fix will be welcome: Helldivers 2 is still posting monster numbers, and all those stalwart defenders of managed democracy deserve the rewards they've earned.