Sony Interactive Entertainment invested heavily in Arrowhead Studios’ Helldivers 2, and the game’s budget as well as development time were doubled over a period of nearly 8 years.
Speaking during a presentation at Nordic Game 2024, Arrowhead Studios Chief Creative Officer Johan Pilestedt revealed that Helldivers 2 was supposed to be in development for three years and ended up being completed in nearly 8 years. He mentioned that the studio grew from a team of 35 all the way up to 100 over the course of the game’s development.
Pilestedt said that Arrowhead Studios and PlayStation agreed that if the budget for Helldivers 2 was doubled, it would be better for the project. Ultimately, it paid off for both entities, though the game’s launch wasn’t without its issues. He highlighted the huge difference between Helldivers 2’s predicted peak concurrent user count of around 150,000 and the actual peak concurrent users of 750,000. He gave a shout out to the studio’s back-end team, who did a stellar job of being able to reach up to the much higher player target.
He also brought up the Steam and PSN account linking announcement for the PC version of Helldivers 2 backfiring, resulting in the community rallying and review bombing the game on Valve’s digital distribution platform. He added that it’s interesting for the game to be known as one of the most downvoted games on Steam.
Recently, Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Studios had expressed that the development team wants the game to be available worldwide on Steam, but there are restrictions in place from PlayStation, not Valve, that prevent it from happening. The studio’s CEO Johan Pilestedt explained that the developer had no idea about the recent regional restriction that had been applied to the Steam version. He mentioned that most developers were on a bank holiday, and that they found out later through the community. A similar statement was made by a Steam support representative when a user contacted them for a refund of their copy of Helldivers 2.
