Helldivers 2 dev promises new feature to tackle AFK player problem
Arrowhead Game StudiosArrowhead’s CEO has assured players that problems with Helldivers 2’s AFK squatters will be dealt with in an upcoming patch.
To Sony and developer Arrowhead’s surprise, Helldivers 2 immediately took the world by storm when it landed on PC and PS5 earlier this month.
The sequel has, consequently, struggled with server issues since launch, as a glut of players swarm in to take on bugs and bots for democracy. Some users combat the issue by server squatting – in other words, staying logged into the game even when they’re not actively playing.
Since this behavior steals spots from other waiting players, the community hopes Arrowhead will introduce an auto-kick feature for AFK users. Fortunately, the Helldivers crew is hard at work on doing just that.
Helldivers 2 auto-kick feature for AFK squatters is incoming
In a recent Twitter post addressing the much-coveted auto-kick solution, Arrowhead Game Studios’ CEO, Johan Pilestedt, told fans that the development team has already started working on a way to kick non-playing server squatters.
Pilestedt didn’t provide an actual timeline for the fix but noted that such a feature will probably go live in the “next patch.”
The executive addressed the matter in the following exchange on social media:
As Helldivers 2 players mentioned in a Reddit discussion, the release cadence for patches, thus far, suggests the AFK solution could arrive sooner rather than later.
“Given the speed of Patch Release so far we can hopefully await this very soon,” one user stated on the post in question.
While players patiently await the auto-kick patch, Helldivers 2’s user base continues its upward trajectory. On February 20, its concurrent player count on Steam managed to top that of Counter-Strike 2. Once better server stability enters the picture, reason suggests the Helldivers sequel will break even more records.
