How to join a public game in Helldivers 2

If you don’t want to head into the fiery pits of alien hell alone but don’t have any squad mates to recruit, here’s how to join a public game in Helldivers 2.

How to play with random players in Helldivers 2

There are two ways to play Helldivers 2. You can set up your own lobby and invite friends into your Super Destroyer or join a public game. For those who find it impossible to successfully influence your friends to purchase Helldivers 2, the Quickplay feature lets you join anyone who attempts to matchmake. You must first set your Matchmaking Privacy to public in the Gameplay Settings.

Setting your Matchmaking Privacy options to public lets you join anyone in a mission. Head over to the Galactic War console in the War Room of the Destroyer to join a public lobby. Open the console and select the Quickplay button (this is square on the PS5). Exiting this screen will cancel the matchmaking search.

Then, wait until a game is found. You won’t need to select any mission to start, nor does your ship need to orbit a specific planet. Once you have joined a server, the mission will launch, allowing you to select your loadout. You can also join any public game where an SOS beacon has been sent out for you and others to join the fight. These appear as white icons dotted around the planet, with a small signal and player names of those already in the server.

Helldivers 2 has been breaking Steam records, and the hard-working developers at Arrowhead Game Studios have struggled to increase the server size. But they’re constantly chipping away at the issue. Their most recent patch notes include details on how they’ve resolved some quickplay matchmaking issues and even “implemented an automatic retry mechanism to quickplay” to try and get players into the action even quicker. Hopefully, they find the fixes sooner rather than later. We’ve got a galaxy to liberate.