Helldivers 2 director joins fans rallying around player "disheartened" to find the shooter's anti-cheat gets in the way of their accessibility tools

A Helldivers 2 player has been left "disheartened" to find the shooter's anti-cheat gets in the way of their accessibility tools as fans rally around them. 

On April 1, Steven Spohn - COO of Able Gamers and disability advocate - took to Twitter to share his experience playing the Arrowhead Games title while relying on accessibility tools. "I am very disheartened by my experience with @helldivers2," Spohn writes. "In order to play video games I use an infrared hat to relay movements I make with my head into keyboard presses. Helldivers 2 blocks the program from input. I have not met a game yet that blocks my hat, until now."

"But even worse, they also block Dragon NaturallySpeaking-My dictation program that allows me to use my voice to speak to my computer, and Comfort on-screen keyboard-a virtual keyboard that allows the mouse to push keyboard keys," the tweet continues. Explaining why this is happening, Spohn adds: "Effectively, an anti-cheat protocol is blocking assistive technology inputs from being read by the game. I don't have a solution for this."

I am very disheartened by my experience with @helldivers2. In order to play video games I use an infrared hat to relay movements I make with my head into keyboard presses. Helldivers 2 blocks the program from input. I have not met a game yet that blocks my hat, until now.But…April 1, 2024

To finish, Spohn says he wants to reach out to Arrowhead and work with them to get these things fixed, not just for himself but also for other players who also rely on similar accessibility tools and programs. "Anyone who needs any of those kinds of assistive technologies will not be able to liberate any democracy," he adds. 

Thankfully, it didn't take long for the Helldivers 2 community to throw their support behind Spohn. Very soon after the tweet was published, it made its way to the game's dedicated subreddit, where several other fans have also shared their support in the comments causing it to gain over 15,000 upvotes and jump