Helldivers 2 finally adds a much-requested AFK kick timer, stopping undemocratic glory hounds from twiddling their thumbs in perpetuity

Helldivers 2 continues to slowly grease the wheels on its war against bloated servers—in the past couple of weeks, I've gone from having a broken matchmaking system and an inaccessible game (even on weekday evenings) to something I can reasonably play most nights. Granted, I'm in a UK time zone, so I've got a hefty deployment advantage.

One part of the problem is that Helldivers 2 didn't launch with an AFK kick function, which has been causing its fair share of upset unfortunates faced with long queue times. A certain contingent of the player base has been logging on early, or simply not turning their PCs off overnight—an understandable response to impossible queue times, but also kind of a jerk move for jerks. No longer.

Patch 1.000.11 reads: «Implemented a functionality that will kick players who remain idle for 15 minutes back to the title screen.» That's a harsh time limit, though extreme times cause for extreme measures—and it could be something that's lifted when capacity is improved, which is definitely happening. Arrowhead Games' CEO wrote on Twitter earlier this week that the team's engineers were doing the equivalent of «tuning a Vespa to compete in F1».

While the AFK timer is this mini-patches' marquee feature, there have also been several crash fixes as well, which you can read below:

The patch notes also highlight a few known issues with fixes in the works, including the game's currently-busted armour values, mid-play disconnects, and the delayed deployment of our loyal Helldivers' well-earned rewards. 

It'll be interesting to see if these rapid-fire hotfixes do anything to stem the tide of negative reviews on Steam. Despite some pretty universal acclaim and a giant playerbase, Helldivers 2 is still sitting on Mixed at the time of writing, though that's to be expected when large swathes of the base can't access a game they paid for—even if the game's unanticipated success came out of left-field for Arrowhead Games.