Story Round-Up
- Helldivers 2 took almost a decade of development, as revealed by Arrowhead CEO John Pilestedt.
- Pilestedt states that the key inspirational factors for the game were Serious Sam and Aliens vs Predator.
- Following its launch, the game has achieved a total of 220,000 concurrent players, with over 150,000 being on Steam.
The explosive fun players are having with Helldivers 2 didn’t materialize overnight. Johan Pilestedt, Arrowhead CEO, revealed in a tweet on X (formerly Twitter) that the team poured almost a decade of heart and soul into crafting this comedic chaos. If you want accurate figures, it’ll be 7 years and 11 months.
Helldivers 2 finally launched! That’s 7 years, 11 months, and 26 days of my life spent creating a game that truly becomes a ridiculous homage to my favorite movies and childhood books,” Pilestedt exclaimed in a recent post. “Thanks to everyone who’s joined the hilarious struggle of being a totalitarian soldier!”
Based on that, it’s fair to say that Helldivers 2 entered development right after the launch of its top-down predecessor in 2015 on PlayStation and PC. If you’re curious about Pilestedt’s key inspirational factors, it turns out that the credit goes to Serious Sam and Aliens vs Predator as he explains, “This game had been brewing in my head ever since friends and I tried modding Serious Sam and AVP to capture that unique experience and humor.”
The effort seems to have paid off as the game made landfall on PC with a peak concurrent player count of nearly 156,000 according to SteamDB. Factoring in the users on PlayStation 5, that number goes over 220,000. It’s clear to see why the devs are excited to keep building on this winning formula.
Speaking of the future, more content is on the way for Helldivers 2. Pilestedt has confirmed that future additions won’t cost players even a single penny.
Helldivers 2 launched on February 8th, 2024, for PlayStation 5 and PC. The game has already achieved a significant measure of success, having sold almost a million copies. In comparison to Palworld, however, the gap is still quite large; that does not detract from Arrowhead’s achievement with its latest project.
