The Game-Breaking Glitch Helldivers 2 Desperately Needs To Fix
The meteoric rise of "Helldivers 2" has been one of the most pleasant surprises of 2024. The game seemingly came out of nowhere, and with its over-the-top style and extremely addictive co-op gameplay, it has taken the world by storm. It's easy to see why people love "Helldivers 2," but the game's journey to the top hasn't been without a few rough moments. Not long after "Helldivers 2" debuted, the CEO of Arrowhead Games suggested players shouldn't buy it until the studio fixed the game's server issues. At the time, it was a challenge to get into a match and to stay connected through an entire operation. The servers are much more robust, but the game still has a few issues — including one bug that players have described as game-breaking.
Of course, you might expect to see a few bugs in a relatively new game from a developer that only has 120 employees. "Helldivers 2" isn't an early access game, but even new releases from AAA studios are prone to bugs. For the most part gamers have been patient with Arrowhead Games, but some glitches are more irritating than others. Unfortunately, there's a respawn glitch — or really, an anti-respawn glitch — in "Helldivers 2" that some have been experiencing since day one. The longer it goes without being patched, the more irritated even true "Helldivers" fans are becoming.
Helldivers lost in a flash
Picture this: You and your squad are behind cover while a group of Automatons are raining fire down. You pop out and manage to take one of them down, but then get killed by an unexpected explosion. No problem; your squad can bring you back. Except, it doesn't work when they try to respawn you. The dive goes on, and another of your teammates gets killed. She gets respawned without a problem, but you're still stuck in purgatory. Taking pity on you, your whole team sacrifices themselves, but you're still the only one who doesn't respawn. At that point, does it really matter if you all succeed or fail the mission? You're stuck sitting out no matter what, and all the excitement when you initially took the dive has evaporated.
Players have been reporting instances of this glitch off and on for quite a while now. Sometimes the bug only affects a single player in the match. Other times teams can be cut to ribbons by the bug, leaving only one or two squadmates left to finish out a mission. You might not experience the bug for weeks on end, and then it'll suddenly rear its ugly head. It's the kind of thing that can seriously dampen your enthusiasm for a night of Helldiving. Someone at Arrowhead Games are probably already working on a solution, but fans are also putting their heads together to try and figure out what's going on.
There's good news and bad news, Helldivers fans
Fans might have figured out what causes this anti-respawn bug to trigger. Before you get your hopes up, there still doesn't appear to be anything that players can do about it on our side of the screen. If fans are right about what's going on, then this is something that only Arrowhead can solve.
In a discussion about the bug on Steam, players came out in droves to say that they've been running into this issue again and again since day one. Since the bug is nothing new, some people have seen it happen enough to put together a working hypothesis. "The specific reason for it is when you're killed by something of such force that your body clips the terrain and something snaps," wrote one player. That could explain why particularly violent deaths — like getting hit by a teammate's orbit strike — seem to trigger the glitch more often.
Fans are desperately awaiting a fix for this problem, and though it won't get here as fast as anyone wants, we're bound to get a solution in the future. The "Helldivers" devs have proven that they're willing to own up to their mistakes. Arrowhead Games apologized for upsetting fans after some less-than-ideal fan interactions, and that issue didn't even affect gameplay. Arrowhead certainly knows about the issue, but it remains to be seen how long the issue will go without resolution. In the meantime, some of the folks in the forums are getting pretty antsy, with some saying they'd prefer a bug fix before more content rolls out.