Helldivers 2 tackles "grief kicking" in its massive August update: if you get kicked, you'll be the host of a new session with "all of the team's loot" intact

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This is a solution promised back in late May

Helldivers 2 screenshot showing a fully geared/armored diver standing with gun in hand as three jets soar the skies behind him
(Image credit: Arrowhead Game Studios)

A new Helldivers 2 update is making changes to counteract the ongoing issue of "grief kicking" in the third-person shooter.

Arrowhead just announced the Helldivers 2 Escalation of Freedom update, boasting new enemies, mission objectives, a higher difficulty level, and more, and it's out next month on August 6. Alongside that update is a quality-of-life change specifically intended to counter "grief kicking."

Katherine Baskin, social media and community manager at Arrowhead, writes on the PlayStation Blog that the Helldivers 2 dev knows "some players are using the team kicking to grief others." To counteract this, Arrowhead will introduce a feature where, if a player is kicked, they'll spawn into a new game session as a host, with "all of the team's loot" from the previous session they were kicked from, most importantly Samples.

"All items can now be picked up by the player before extraction. The squad doing the kicking will see a message in the chat widget that a player has been kicked, yet their loot remains unchanged," Baskin adds. "With these changes, all players have the opportunity to leave with all loot collected on mission, with no one Helldiver losing out," the community and social media manager adds.

Kicking has been an issue since shortly after Helldivers 2 launched earlier this year. If you played the shooter's higher difficulty levels with a group of strangers online, it wasn't uncommon to find yourself kicked if you weren't using weapons and stratagems designated as meta, like the Breaker Shotgun was at the time. Clearly this is an issue Arrowhead sees as ongoing, even if most players have calmed down regarding this harsh and arbitrary requirement.

Back in late May, a Helldivers 2 community manager noted that Arrowhead was working on a "solution" for players getting kicked by lobby leaders. Right around two months later, that solution is almost here.

As Helldivers 2 grunts are tasked with squashing 1 billion bugs, High Command not-so-subtly hints that "Terminid aggression and expansion may increase in response."

Hirun Cryer
Hirun Cryer

Hirun Cryer is a freelance reporter and writer with Gamesradar+ based out of U.K. After earning a degree in American History specializing in journalism, cinema, literature, and history, he stepped into the games writing world, with a focus on shooters, indie games, and RPGs, and has since been the recipient of the MCV 30 Under 30 award for 2021. In his spare time he freelances with other outlets around the industry, practices Japanese, and enjoys contemporary manga and anime.