When defending the Super Earth, several players want to play solo, even though the game mostly promotes a co-op experience. But the problem is, you can never exactly play this game alone even after you change your matchmaking settings to Friends only. While this may work out for players whose friends haven’t purchased the game or who don’t have friends on Steam, for many that isn’t an option. So here is what you can do to set up a private lobby in Helldivers 2.
How to Make a Private Lobby in Helldivers 2
At the time of writing this article, you cannot set up or make a Private lobby in this game. This is because the only two Matchmaking Privacy options that are available are Public and Friends Only.
The problem with Friends Only is that it weirdly isn’t restricted to your friends only and also lets mutual friends join your game. So even if your lobby is not set as public and you are playing with just one another friends, that leaves the lobby for two more players open. Now, if some of their friends come online and decide to join them. The game allows it even though it was your lobby/party. So currently, there are these workarounds that you can try:
- Go Offline on Steam: In your Steam settings you can change your Online status to Offline, this can help by not showing you in their games. Thanks to Riggs on Steam forums for this suggestion you can check their comment in this post here. Open Steam and click on the Friends tab, now change your Online Status to Offline or Invisible. However, the problem is in-game you don’t magically disappear, when your friends access the globe in search of missions they can still join you.
- Play at Odd times: This is a bizarre solution but if you know the schedule of your friends then you can time your play session in such a way that you are done with your missions when they are offline.
- Change your Steam Username: Again this isn’t a bulletproof solution but your friends might avoid joining a random from their Friends list.
- Go to Steam, click on your account name drop-down, and choose View Profile.
- Click on Edit Profile.
- Now, under the General tab.
- Click on Profile Name and change it to something your friends might not recognize you with.
Remember the above workarounds are just some tricks to avoid having your friends join you. So until the game releases the option to accept players into your party or a separate private lobby feature in matchmaking, you can’t completely prevent them from joining your matches.
That is all you can do to make a private lobby work in Helldivers 2. While you are here also check out our other guides for it on how to close bug holes, get the Arc Thrower, and get the Recoilless Rifle.