Helldivers 2 patch fixes PS5 hosts accidentally giving damage boosts to their fellow patriots, continues to tackle crashes

The patriots at Arrowhead Games R&D have been busy working on Helldivers 2 fixes—the latest batch of which just dropped this morning. A bizarre quirk of the game engine that was giving PS5 players (and their squadmates) an unfair advantage has been nixed, restoring weapons-grade equality between the platforms.

In case you weren't aware, here's the run-down: For some time, damage in Helldivers 2 has been inconsistent. PS5 players, for example, have been able to two-to-three tap bile titans with the railgun. Fascinatingly, this bug was based on the game's host rather than the platform it was being played on—PS5 players under a PC host would get the intended PC damage values, and vice-versa.

As you might imagine, this causes some problems. PS5 players by-and-large have been forming habits and an entire meta based around their own skewed damage numbers—particularly if they've been hosting their own games—while both PC and PS5 players have been baffled by tanky enemies changing flimsiness between deployments.

That should be sorted now, as the patch notes read: «Fixed an issue that resulted in different damage being dealt to enemies between PC and console players.» It'll be interesting to see if this shifts the game's weapon balance any, since the Railgun was still pretty strong on PlayStation-hosted games.

Other than that, Arrowhead seems understandably focused on nixing crashes, which plagued the community a while back. While the list of known issues (such as misaligned scopes) grows, it makes sense to address problems that are stopping players enjoying the game at all first and foremost. 

You should now crash less on the loadout screen and during extractions—also when throwing grenades, migrating hosts, escorting civilians, and deploying to missions. There have been more general crash fixes and stability upgrades behind the scenes, as well. 

Lastly, fixes to the game's armour passives are live, though the notes don't mention specifically which sets were fixed beyond