A bugged melee upgrade is turning patriotism into sabotage.
Super Earth’s most loyal foot soldiers have found a rather underhanded way to fight for democracy in Helldivers 2 by crashing the games of everyone else on the battlefield.
The culprit? The CQC-1 One True Flag. What started as a light-hearted update meant to let players dramatically plant the flag into enemies has turned into an accidental exploit. Thanks to a bug, placing the flag doesn’t just assert dominance. Instead, it kicks everyone else from the session, leaving the planter alone in glorious solitude.
Plant the flag, claim the mission
What’s especially cheeky is that the game doesn’t crash for the player using the flag. Only their squadmates get booted, giving the solo Helldiver full control of the mission without the hassle of cooperation. In short: plant the flag, crash the team, finish the objective solo.
Players across Reddit and Steam have been spotting the issue, and one post in particular sums it up neatly:
It's not just trolling: some are actually using the flag as a low-tech crash button to run solo missions, even in higher difficulties.
Brulla commented on the Reddit post saying, ”Lmao yay now I can kick people if I'm not the host," to which of others like MadJesterXII riding along, saying “Thank you for planting the seed of evil in our minds.” Of course, these comments were done all in good fun.
“Jokes aside, hopefully they fix this fast. I’ve already seen a troll drop into a game with the flag just to crash everyone out. They wrote “bye Felicia” in chat before planting it so they knew what they were doing,” xOdysseus_x wrote in response to Brulla's joke.
The irony here is that the One True Flag isn’t exactly a top-tier loadout choice. It's essentially the same as the Stun Lance, but without the stun, and it takes up your support weapon slot. Most players treat it as a fun bit of flair rather than a serious tool of war.
That said, with its newfound crashing powers, it might just be the most disruptive item in the game, albeit unintentionally. Arrowhead has yet to roll out a fix, but with reports piling up, it’s only a matter of time before this bug gets patched. In the meantime, if you see someone waving the flag a little too proudly, it might be best to steer clear.
