Helldivers 2 player demonstrates the best reason for kicking a toxic teammate

Kicking players from matches is almost always frowned upon in the Helldivers 2 community. But “almost” is a key word here, since sometimes, it’s the only way out—as demonstrated by one player who was robbed of over 80 samples and lost an hour of progress.

The player said they had “no regrets” after kicking a toxic player during a Helldivers 2 mission on the maximum Helldive difficulty. The story, posted in an April 24 Reddit thread, describes a player completely ignoring the three other Helldivers trying to complete all of the side objectives and collecting samples. Instead, the player rushed the main objectives and ended up calling in the extraction while the others were on the far side of the map, and then proceeded to leave the mission without them and all the samples. While still in the evac, the host kicked them out of the game so they didn’t get anything out of the hour-long mission.

Players replying to the thread supported the original poster wholeheartedly, saying that toxicity and such behavior have no place in Helldivers 2. Some others recounted stories of their own where they were forced to pull the trigger and kick players out of their game for various reasons. “I’ve done this twice to the people who like to call all their offensive Strategems on the pelican when people are still trying to get to it,” one player said.

The Helldivers 2 community has a stark stance on kicking players from games, as during the game’s initial stages, some players were chasing the meta and kicking everyone left and right if they didn’t have the right tools for the job. One thing led to another, and kicking has generally become stigmatized in the game. However, sometimes when there is no other way to reason with players, it may be the only way out.