Okay, so yesterday, I tried to hop into Helldivers 2 with my buddies, and boom, hit a wall. “Connection Error: Unable to Join Game.” Seriously? We had a whole night planned!
First thing I did? The classic. I restarted the game. Nope, still stuck. Then, I went full IT Crowd on it and restarted my PC. Still nothing. Ugh.
Troubleshooting Time
Next, I checked my internet connection. Everything seemed fine there. I could browse, stream videos, no problem. So, it wasn’t my Wi-Fi acting up.
I then went online to see what the others were doing. I skimmed through some forums, and a few people suggested verifying the game files. I use Steam, so for me, I went into my Steam library, right-clicked on Helldivers 2, went to “Properties,” then “Local Files,” and clicked “Verify integrity of game files…” It took a while, but it found some problems. Steam re-downloaded a couple of files.
I was hopeful. Really hopeful. Launched the game… and… still the same error. ARGH!
I dug deeper. Some folks were talking about firewall issues. So, I went into my Windows Defender Firewall settings and made sure Helldivers 2 was allowed through. It already was, but I toggled it off and on again, just in case. You know, gotta try everything.
Still no luck. I was getting desperate.
I even tried changing my DNS settings. I’d heard that using Google’s public DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) could sometimes help. Changed those settings in my network adapter properties. Rebooted my router for good measure, even though I knew I’d done nothing to it, why not?
Launched the game AGAIN. …And…. STILL NOTHING! I was about to throw my keyboard across the room.
One Last Thing…
Finally, just as I was about to give up, I saw a post mentioning something about “crossplay.” I’d enabled it before, and I vaguely remembered some earlier issues when this feature first launched.
I went into the Helldivers 2 game options, under “Gameplay”, there it was: “Crossplay.” I toggled it OFF.
I launched into the game and went to my friends list to join the request of my friend. It worked! Holy moly, FINALLY! I have no clue why this fixed it but for some reason it worked.
So, after hours of troubleshooting, it turned out to be the crossplay setting (for me, at least). I have no idea why that made a difference, but it did. We finally got to play, even though we lost a good chunk of the evening to this nonsense.
Lesson learned: If you’re having connection issues in Helldivers 2, try disabling crossplay. It might just be the weird, random fix you need.