Shellshocked Helldivers 2 players so stunned by indiscriminate friendly fire from Stratagems they've begun to question if the Automatons are behind it

Helldivers 2 loves a bit of friendly fire and, while this mechanic has been around in various games since the year dot, its re-emergence at the heart of the current big thing has really captured some imaginations. After all, we live in a world where it feels like half the games you play seem afraid of putting up a fight.

But Helldivers? Half the time your problems seem to stem from your erstwhile companions in democracy, as they over-enthusiastically apply the game's explosive Stratagems in your general vicinity. There's not much of a middle ground. If a Helldiver gets caught in the middle of an orbital strike, near the vicinity of a mortar barrage, or between a turret and its target, that brave soul is now an ex-Helldiver. Reinforcements please!

So far this makes sense. I don't exactly love it when clumsy companions scatter my limbs to the four winds with a misplaced superweapon, but it gives the Stratagems an enormous «oomph» and sense of danger (and if I'm being honest, sometimes it's maybe a tiny bit my fault). But to certain players, something about this doesn't smell right… in fact, there's a whiff of those dastardly xenos to it.

As first spotted by GamesRadar+, there's a contingent of Helldivers that are so put-out by certain Strategems' tendency to blow up the wrong side that they're starting to think it's deliberate. The Mortar Sentry and Gatling Gun are particular targets of ire: in theory crowd-control tools that can suppress waves of foes, in practice often taking out the Helldivers it's supposed to help as collateral. 

«I was prone the other day and my Gatling aimed right at me,» writes Patient_Commentary. «Paused. And then lit me up. I laughed so hard.»

«That thing deliberately shoots at you without a doubt in my mind,» writes Ubiquity97. «Closest enemy was about 30m away and the mortar just shoots three at me and one at the enemy [...] It's just on some bullshit sometimes.»

Other Helldivers pointed out there are some pretty simple rules to follow. «If