How to play with a team of four players in Aliens: Fireteam Elite

Most cooperative shooter games stick with a three or four-player squad size, with only a few odd exceptions like Killing Floor. Aliens: Fireteam Elite sticks with the traditional formula, and lets players tackle its high-intensity missions in groups of three. However, community members have recently discovered an exploit that allows them to bypass the team size cap, and play the game in groups of four, seemingly without issues.

To queue up in a four-player squad in Aliens: Fireteam Elite, follow these instructions, courtesy of Reddit user Sev3nbelow:

1. Queue up with one other person in your group.
2. Then send an invite to another player from your friends list. They should not accept the invite yet.
3. Have a fourth player search for your current two-person lobby in matchmaking. This shouldn’t be too difficult, assuming they search for the exact same mission, difficulty, and Challenge Card rule combination.
4. Once that player has joined, the person you sent the invite to can accept it. They will be added to your lobby, resulting in a four-player squad.

You may be wondering if breaking the game’s format in this way could result in any issues or crashes. Surprisingly, it seems that Aliens: Fireteam Elite can handle a four-player lobby almost as well as it does a normal three-player one. The main difference is in some missing UI elements. Perhaps the game is already built to handle the group size because of the Rescue mission, in which the AI-controlled Hoenikker is present as a fourth squad member. Another explanation could be that a four-player option was planned for inclusion in the game and scrapped later on for balance and matchmaking reasons. Either way, Aliens: Fireteam Elite can clearly handle it, with the only drawback — albeit a big one — being the extra friendly fire players are bound to experience in larger groups.

If this exploit no longer works at the time you are reading this, it would mean Aliens: Fireteam Elite developer Cold Iron Studios has already patched it out. They actively monitor the game and release frequent hotfixes, and it seems unlikely an exploit of this magnitude would elude their attention for long.