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Every soldier’s goal in Helldivers 2 is to drop into a mission, complete every objective laid out by High Command, and extract successfully. Some valiantly prefer accomplishing operations solo, while others enjoy finishing objectives with a full squad. Both are entirely valid ways to play the game. What’s not reasonable, though, and ruins the spirit of Managed Democracy is when a few traitorous individuals decide to kick you before extraction. Or, even worse, kill you while you’re already in the dropship.
Picture this: you just spent half an hour killing bugs, closing up nests, finishing tasks, and dodging fire tornadoes in Hellmire. You reach the extraction point first, so you boot up the terminal and call in the dropship. After a few minutes of fighting off oncoming Terminids hellbent on not letting you escape their domain, the Pelican swoops in, guns blazing, getting ready to touch down and save you and your squad from being overrun. You rush into the aircraft, thanking your lucky stars that the nightmare will soon end.
But as a last, completely unpredictable surprise, one of your teammates decides to shoot you while you’re sitting utterly defenseless in the dropship. As soon as you die, everybody else trudges into the Pelican, and it lifts off into the sunset, leaving you to contemplate life so far as a Helldiver. We wish this scenario were merely fiction. But unfortunately, extraction killing (and kicking) has become a recent trend in Helldivers 2.
Several Reddit posts have popped up in the past few days complaining about being kicked or team-killed just before extraction in Helldivers 2. Although some of these incidents had cause, whether it was accidentally killing or taking the host’s weapon, most seem to have been done out of pure malice. u/xplosivshroom even shared a clip of another player purposefully shooting them while they were sitting unaware inside the Pelican. Luckily, they were hosting the game and immediately kicked the perpetrator, but some players haven’t been as fortunate.
Sadly, with no way to counteract these acts of treacherous violence, the incidents and complaints will likely only keep on mounting. Hopefully, Arrowhead Game Studios can find a solution that doesn’t compromise endgame scenarios. Otherwise, distrust may become ingrained in every Helldiver platoon, and we could eventually end up losing the Galactic War.
