Helldivers 2’s friendly fire “will never change,” because if it did the devs “would have to turn off bullet damage against enemies as well”

Helldivers 2’s CEO has reaffirmed the game’s commitment to friendly fire, confirming that the ability to completely one-shot your allies “will never change.”

In a response to a player asking that the system stick around in perpetuity, Johan Pilestedt said that Arrowhead would “never change” friendly fire, explaining that “if we turned off friendly fire we would have to turn off bullet damage against enemies as well. It’s the law.”

At this point in the game’s life, Helldivers 2 players are no strangers to friendly fire. Pretty much anything that’s capable of killing a bug or a bot is also capable of killing an ally, be that a badly-timed shotgun blast, a poorly-aimed Eagle Strike, or the roaming targeting system of a drone. To keep things fair, enemies can also succumb to the attacks of their own allies – but Pilestedt seems to be suggesting that if you want a bullet to hit your foe, you have to live with the fact that it can also hit your friend.

Whether this is simply another example of the developer’s entertainingly militaristic social media presence or a more literal explanation about how the game’s ballistics tech works, I’m not 100% sure. Suffice to say, however, this is not the first time that Arrowhead has literally stuck to its guns over friendly fire, which was a staple of the original Helldivers game. Despite the desire to keep PvP out of the game in an attempt to reduce toxicity, there’s been no suggestion that team-killing (whether accidental or otherwise) is going anywhere.

In galactic news, the war effort on Mantes is stalling – because no-one wants to fight the bots.