Server issues may not be the only problem Helldivers 2 is facing at the moment as a glitch has cropped up that lets players infinitely spam Strategems with no cooldown whatsoever. The exploit appears related to the recent implementation of an anti-AFK function added to alleviate server capacity.
The “infinite Strategem glitch” in Helldivers 2 has come about after the Feb. 23 update which increased the server capacity up to 700,000 players. Alongside this change, devs Arrowhead Game Studios introduced an anti-AFK function that would kick players out of the game after a certain amount of inactivity, preventing players from hogging server space and keeping queue lengths long. That very same function may be causing further issues as players have today reported spawning into matches with weird question marks around their heads, no ammo, no grenades, and infinite Strategem use without cooldown.
In a clip posted on the Helldivers 2 subreddit, a player stands idly by while dozens of Mortar Sentries fire at enemies—far more than the allotted quantity a Helldiver is allowed to use. The infinite glitch appears to work for all Stratagem but comes with a cost; the player doesn’t hold a regular weapon and has a floating question mark on their back.
Others have recreated this glitch, discovering that after getting kicked multiple times in a row by the Helldivers 2 anti-AFK detector, joining a game again causes the infinite Stratagem and Reinforce bug to occur. One player cleared the bug by heading to their Armory and selecting their weapons again, but naturally, some have already decided that this is the best thing ever and have been using it to grind money and other resources on the game’s hardest difficulties.
One such occasion happened to me, as I encountered a player using so many Orbital Laser Strategems that the game’s performance tanked to below 30 FPS. Though Helldivers 2 is a co-op and not a PvP game, exploits and cheats can still ruin the fun or even cause your game to crash.
The Helldivers 2 developers have released two updates for the game thus far and Arrowhead is aware of the glitch, so the exploit is likely to be patched out soon. Even with all the bugs, exploits, and server issues, Helldivers 2 is doing mighty fine, as the game has peaked at over 450,000 players on Steam alone with developers at one point warning players to hold off buying the game for a short while until capacity problems were addressed.