Helldivers 2 players decry broken ricochet changes, then realise it's probably just shrapnel from the now-deadly Eruptor

Helldivers 2's latest patch introduced a new wrinkle into your average diver's shoot loop—deadlier ricochets. As the patch notes read: «Shots that ricochet from heavy armored enemies will now properly hit the Helldiver who fired them. Trigger discipline is highly recommended.»

In essence, ricochet shots didn't used to harm you—now they do. This has, naturally, led to a lot of tinfoil helmet speculation about what actually is and isn't a death by ricochet. 

While some players report only one or two deaths to their own bullets over the course of thousands of fired shots, there's one common denominator featured in nearly every clip of a soldier blowing their own head off: The Eruptor.

This beastly explosive rifle debuted in the latest Warbond, and it's a bit of a monster. Its shells explode in a wide blast that not only has a concussive detonation—it spits out a ton of shrapnel, as well. Which is what's happening in clips like these.

As investigative redditor Zenbast points out in a thread: «The shrapnels probably travels way too far and it needs to be reduced, but people need to understand that's an issue with the Eruptor specifically, because of a side effect of making people vulnerable to their own rounds.»

In fairness, it's not as if the ricochet changes are perfect. While it's not 100% clear if they're related, there is currently a bug with the Punisher Plasma where it'll make your head pop like a watermelon if you fire it with a shield active, as seen below. It'd stand to reason that the shield was causing the Punisher Plasma to ricochet upon firing before—but because your own ricochets weren't hurting you, it wasn't a problem.

However, this might not be entirely related to the ricochet changes. In a message on the game's Discord, senior game designer Alexus Kravchenko writes: «The plasma projectile now has a proper hitbox. Coincidentally, that's the reason it overlaps with the shield gen backpack now.» So it could be that, or a little bit of column A, a little