Civil war breaks out in Helldivers 2 as players spawn infinite mechs to crash each other's games

A Helldivers 2 character stands before a sky filled with carrier ships and red dust
(Image credit: Sean M. / Arrowhead Game Studios)

Helldivers 2 players are pleading for people to stop using a newly discovered infinite Stratagem glitch that lets you shower planets in airstrikes.

Something went very wrong with the last patch and messed up how Stratagems normally work: Using a simple combination of inputs, you can now spam them until the game can't handle it anymore. There are videos of people spawning in dozens of ships and explosions that cause their frame rate to tank. Unsurprisingly, this has caused problems for public games. Also unsurprisingly, that's not stopping players from having a field day with it.

PC Gamer's Sean Martin gave it a shot himself (in a private lobby of course) and was able to fill the sky with machine guns, exosuits, and airstrikes with ease. It's so easy, in fact, that you could almost do it by accident.

"Had someone pop [in to say], 'Super Earth increased our defense budget,'" Reddit user Some_Responsibility said. "Then promptly nearly fried everyone's computer with orbitals, summoned nearly 10 mechs which got stuck on geometry, and like 10 Hellbombs before, I assume, [their game crashed]."

"I haven’t been able to play [for the] last 36 hours," Reddit user grimjimslim wrote.

A pinned post on the game's subreddit warns users that they will be banned for posting images or footage of the exploit. "We do not need hundreds of images and videos flooding the subreddit showing us your undemocratic explosions," moderator OmegaXesis wrote. "It's become a nuisance."

On Wednesday, an Arrowhead developer said the studio is aware of the exploit and are investigating ways to fix it. But many hours have passed since then and players have continued to disrupt the war against the Illuminate by ruining multiplayer lobbies.

"People who abuse this to crash other games fucking suck," Reddit user WhiteRaven_M wrote in one of many threads by disgruntled players.

In an ideal world, people would leave the chaos to private sessions, but some people cannot resist the urge to grief, especially when the exploit involved is this ridiculous. Hopefully, Arrowhead will swoop in with a hotfix soon so everyone can get back to protecting Super Earth.

Tyler has covered videogames and PC hardware for 15 years. He regularly spends time playing and reporting on games like Diablo 4, Elden Ring, Overwatch 2, and Final Fantasy 14. While his specialty is in action RPGs and MMOs, he's driven to cover all sorts of games whether they're broken, beautiful, or bizarre.

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