Helldivers 2 Devs Refuse To Turn off Friendly Fire Because It’s Funny

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Avinash Jaisrani

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Helldivers 2 is the latest live service game to capture the industry’s attention. Its success story is no surprise, with the co-op shooter still staying at the top of Steam’s best-sellers.

However, like any healthy community, the Helldivers player base has had much debate about balancing and updates. A common request is the option to disable friendly fire, but Arrowhead Game Studios has no intentions of removing this feature.

Why it matters: Friendly fire can sometimes prove to be an annoyance for serious and hardcore players.

In a recent interview with PlayStation Blog, Creative Director Johan Pilestedt explained the thought process behind friendly fire.

For starters, this element adds more believability to the experience. From his perspective, bullets being able to decimate massive bugs should also be able to kill humans in the Helldivers 2 universe.

Things should be consistent and therefore, we must have friendly fire.

-Johan Pilestedt

However, he also finds that friendly fire can lead to unexpected moments of levity in Helldivers 2. He points to examples like players accidentally carpet-bombing their friends, which allows Arrowhead Game Studios to explore themes of dark humor.

Such moments are a major part of the game’s current popularity since they can often lead to viral reels and videos on social media. We have run into our fair share of cheesy friendly-fire moments, whether it be intentional teasing or unintentional kills.

We can explore the dark humor of these situations.

-Johan Pilestedt

Arrowhead Game Studios is fully committed to its game design decisions. The team has refused to add PvP to the game in an attempt to maintain the wholesome vine of this co-op experience.

All of this seems to be working since many have flocked to the more expensive digital editions as a means to support the developer.

Despite the developer’s explanation, many fans remain adamant that friendly fire negatively impacts the game. However, for every point of contention, the player base finds several reasons to enjoy the game, keeping it afloat among Steam’s current best-sellers.

Avinash Jaisrani

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