New Helldivers 2 Patch Will Kick AFK Players Taking Up Space

A new Helldivers 2 patch, out now on PC and PS5, fixes some bugs and improves performance in the critically acclaimed and super popular third-person sci-fi shooter. But more importantly, it will kick AFK (away from keyboard) players after a set amount of time. The hope is that this will help de-clog the busy servers, ideally letting others get a chance to play.

Helldivers 2 is a very good game, when you can play it. With hundreds of thousands of players all trying to spread democracy at once, the online co-op game has frequently been unplayable for many as its servers buckle under the extreme, unexpected load. And while it’s great that Helldivers 2 is so dang popular that the servers can’t keep up, the devs—Arrowhead Games—know that people would like to play it. (I know some folks who haven’t been able to consistently play Helldivers 2 for almost a week now.) So the team is trying to help make things better by kicking out folks who aren’t actually playing the shooter.

Released on February 22, Patch 1.000.11 for Helldivers 2 fixes a bunch of tiny errors and crash-related bugs, but the best news is this new function aimed at kicking idle players. Here’s the specific patch note:

• Implemented a functionality that will kick players who remain idle for 15 minutes back to the title screen.

Since the servers have become so busy, some players have started logging into Helldivers 2 and playing a few matches and then never leaving the game. Instead, these AFK players leave their consoles and PCs on and come back when they want to play. While this does allow them to always have access to Helldivers 2 (assuming the servers are online and their console or PC doesn’t shut off), it means a lot of people who want to play aren’t able to log in.

This AFK problem has grown so large that on February 19, Arrowhead’s CEO Johan Pilestedt confirmed on Twitter that he was talking to the team about implementing a change to kick AFK players in a future update. Seems that feature is now live in the game.

Of course, as some players have already pointed out, this won’t be a perfect solution. Players could attach rubber bands to their controllers or place heavy objects on their keyboards to simulate them playing Helldivers 2 while they go to sleep or work. Still, it’s better than nothing, and will hopefully let more people around the world get a chance to serve up some democracy via big bombs and machine guns.

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