What you need to know
- Update: One of Arrowhead's community managers, Thomas "Twinbeard" Petersson, has offered an update on the studio's progress towards fixing the bug. He notes that "there's not much good news," but says that "it's being worked on continuously" and has assured players that it's one of the developer's "top issues at the moment." Read the full update below for his complete statement.
- Helldivers 2 supports crossplay between its PC and PS5 versions, but since its launch last month, it's only worked in quickplay matchmaking.
- This is because a bug has prevented players from accepting friend requests from people on other platforms, making crossplay with friends impossible.
- Developer Arrowhead Game Studios confirmed on Friday morning that it was able to reproduce the bug in testing, and that it's working to "determine the root cause" of the issue and "find a solution."
- Hopefully, this means that the bug will soon get a fix, which would in turn allow Helldivers 2 players to use crossplay to enjoy the game with their friends.
Update 3/19/2024 at 6:20 p.m. PT / 9:20 p.m. ET: One of Arrowhead's community managers, Thomas "Twinbeard" Petersson, has given Helldivers 2 fans an update on the studio's progress towards fixing the crossplay friend request in the game's official Discord server. Though he says that "there's not much good news" yet, he's assured players that "it's being worked on continuously" and that it's one of the developer's "top issues at the moment." Here's his full statement:
"The bad news is that there's not much good news.
The good news is that this is still, and possibly even more so, one of our top issues at the moment. It's being worked on continuously and was discussed at length internally earlier today. Many of you have asked us to update you even if there's not much to say, and since pretty much all communication is better than the silent treatment, hopefully this is better than nothing.
You're not being ignored. We wouldn't be here without you. We truly get that this is both sad and extremely frustrating for those of you who are affected. We ask for patience. No bad joke or military lingo this time, just this."
Fans were happy to see that Helldivers 2 supports crossplay between its PC and PS5 players when the game came out last month, but unfortunately, the feature hasn't been working fully in the red-hot PvE co-op shooter for quite some time. That's because right now, there's a bug stopping players from accepting friend requests sent by Helldivers on a different platform, making crossplay with friends impossible.
Thankfully, developer Arrowhead Game Studios has been looking into this issue for the last few weeks — and on Friday morning, it confirmed that it was able to reproduce the bug in testing and that work is ongoing to "determine the root cause and find a solution" in the official Helldivers Discord server.
Here's the full statement from Arrowhead Community & Support Team member Baskinator: "We successfully reproduced the issue preventing crossplay players from accepting friend requests. Our programmers are working to determine the root cause and find a resolution. As soon as we have more info, we'll update you! 🙏"
Hopefully, this means the bug will finally get fixed soon, allowing PC players to play with their buddies on PS5 and vice-versa. Helldivers 2's in-game friend code system is very simple and makes taking advantage of crossplay a breeze, so everyone is looking forward to the day when it actually works like it's supposed to.
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While crossplay has been functional since launch, it's been limited to matchmaking only because of this problem. That means that PC and PS5 players have been able to play together in quickplay lobbies or while calling for reinforcements with SOS beacons, but not by adding and joining each other directly.
Notably, this update from Arrowhead comes a few days after the studio released a patch for Helldivers 2 that addressed several issues with its high-difficulty gameplay. Changes included reduced Charger and Bile Titan spawn rates, as well as the removal of the Electronic Countermeasures stratagem (the one that scrambled your stratagem codes) and a nerf to Charger head health. The tough-armored Terminid can now be killed with one rocket launcher shot to the head, instantly making the Expendable Anti-Tank and Recoilless Rifle stratagems more viable against the bugs.
In other news, Helldivers 2 players are fighting to carry out the game's latest Major Order, which is to liberate all four planets in the Umlaut Sector in a week's time. The Major Order expires on the morning of March 19, but three of the worlds have already been freed — in fact, Meridia was liberated as I was writing this. if the community successfully establishes control of Erata Prime as well, it'll be able to activate the Terminid Control System and use Super Earth's deadliest bug spray to keep all four planets infestation-free permanently (though Joel the Game Master may have other plans).
The ongoing war effort has been aided greatly by the arrival of Helldivers 2's Cutting Edge Warbond on Thursday, which added several new energy and arc weapons that've proven to be quite effective against the Terminid hordes. Of these, my favorite so far is the LAS-16 Sickle, an automatic rifle that rapidly fires laser bolts. The new Exosuit mechs we earned last week by kicking the Automatons off of Tien Kwan are good against the bugs, too, as their rockets and streams of heavy machine gun fire generally make quick work of anything you encounter in the field.
Helldivers 2 is available now for $39.99 on both PS5 and PC, and so far, it's one of the best PC games of the year. Notably, the game also supports cross-platform play between PS5 and PC.
