Helldivers with a flair for the dramatic (or psychotic) got good news yesterday when Arrowhead announced that, "thanks to some groundbreaking military research into pointier flag tips," the CQC-1 One True Flag melee weapon in Helldivers 2 "can now be proudly planted directly into enemies—dead or alive." Arrowhead described the heraldric upgrade as "absolute democracy" and I certainly can't argue with that, but there is one small problem: Players are reporting that planting the flag now crashes the game.
The surprise twist, as noted by reddit Sad-Needleworker-5990 (via Kotaku), is that planting the flag doesn't cause your game to crash—but everyone else does.
WARNING: planting a flag will crash everyone's game (except for you) from r/Helldivers
You can probably guess where this is leading.
"Yay now I can kick people if I'm not the host," redditor Brulia_ threatened.
"Now I can say 'THY END IS NOW' and strike the flag, crashing everyone's games and peacefully playing alone," NotBreadyy wrote.
"Had some guy call me in with an SOS and crash me while I was dropping," Carl Silverhand wrote on Steam. "Nice feature to include."
What makes all of this even more amusing is that the One True Flag is kind of useless. The Helldivers community considers it a meme weapon because it's functionally identical to the CQC-19 Stun Lance, but eats up the support weapon slot and also doesn't stun. That means you can carry heavy firepower—a heavy machine gun, an anti-materiel rifle, a rocket launcher, that sort of thing—or you can be a mobile beacon of Super Earth symbology, but not both.
For most players, that's not a tough choice, and the fact that bringing the flag along means leaving far more useful weaponry at home will (or at least should) protect most players from the worst impulses of their fellows. But the sheer power of the One True Flag in its new, unintentionally imbued form will no doubt heighten its attraction for some, too. I haven't seen any reports of a massive wave of flag-fragging yet, but I do wonder if it'll stay that way once word starts to spread.
In any event, Arrowhead knows there's a problem: The studio said on the Helldivers Discord that it is "aware of issues surrounding the One True Flag and are investigating a fix," and will post an update as soon as possible. In the meantime, please, for the good of your fellow Super Earth heroes don't be planting any flags—and if you happen to see a wrongthinking Diver bringing a flag to the fight, well, maybe keep this little bit of advice from vibebell in mind.
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