Helldivers II initially had five-player squads

But it turned out one player was just sat around doing nothing all the time.

When we think of co-op games, four appears to be the magic number. Left 4 Dead, Vermintide, Helldivers II. All of these games focus on 4-player squads teaming up to fight against some form of horde-based threat. However, Helldivers II was initially a bit different.

Revealed in a recent anniversary stream for the game (thanks, GamingBolt), developers Mitch Ayre and Patrik "Fluffy" Lasota said the game was initially intended for five players. "Helldivers 2 was originally designed for five people, actually," Lasota said. "That was Johan's call because he had thoughts around 'when you're four people playing and a fifth joins you, suddenly you're a three-stack and a two-stack, and it creates this imbalance. But if it's five people and someone joins then you're two three-stacks, and with three groups instead one becoming a pair.'"

"Unfortunately, as we played with it, it just didn't work," Lasota explained. "It turned out that when you're five people, someone is always just standing around, not really participating in the action. It also gave you a whole lot of flexibility in your team's stratagem loadout. So it just turned the game into... you really didn't have to make any choices when it came to stratagems. But I say the biggest thing was that someone was always just standing around and idling instead of participating in the game, which prompted us to remove it a few years in [development]."

While we might think that having the potential for more Helldivers joining a mission would be fun, it perhaps would feel a bit too bloated having a fifth person along for the ride, especially if they're not able to fight for sweet Liberty and instead just idle around.