Helldivers 2 was one of the most successful games launched in 2024, but it also experienced multiple ups and downs throughout the year following controversies such as the one related to the PlayStation account linking on PC.
Shams Jorjani, who joined Arrowhead as the new CEO a few months after the game's release, was featured in an episode of The Game Business show to discuss this remarkable experience. Among various topics, Jorjani said he was impressed with Sony allowing Arrowhead to retain creative control of Helldivers 2 despite the fact that the PlayStation company had funded the whole thing.
The other big surprising thing, and this is maybe going to paint me in bad colors, is I came into this thinking that the relationship with PlayStation would be quite different. Now, I have 12 years working at Paradox as a publisher. I assumed Sony, having paid a lot of money for this project, would exert a whole lot more control and run the show more or less, because what do these wild kids here in Sweden know? But I've been very pleasantly surprised to see how creator-friendly PlayStation has been as a studio. Truly, truly impressive. There have been fumbles, of course. Any company does, but they've been an amazing partner throughout and I think that they have a bit too much flack from the Helldivers 2 community at times. Helldivers would not exist if PlayStation was not so focused on creating cool stuff for players, and I'm not blowing smoke up their ass. They've been a genuinely good partner in this.
Helldivers 2 also nosedived all the way down to just 19% user score on Steam at one point. However, the team steadily climbed back up, and Jorjani said he was inspired by No Man's Sky's comeback.
During the Summer, when everyone was away, our user score was down to 19% and I had to get on a call with Herman Hulst (CEO of PlayStation Studios) to explain why things were in the state they were and what we were doing to recover. I had to say the awkward truth, that there was nothing we could do in the immediate short term to resolve this, but in the long term we had plans that would get us back on track. We issued a 60-day plan that put us back on the track and we did an update and an update and an update. I was very much inspired by No Man's Sky and the team over there that had a similar journey: very hyped, then bombed, and then they put their head to the grindstone and just updated the game. I want to say that since September, we've been on a very good trajectory. We've been just penduluming between it's so over and we're so back, and it's become a meme within the community. We went from 19% to 94% positive on Steam.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Jorjani attributed much of the success of Helldivers 2 to the Game Master feature that keeps the game fresh and engaging over time. Just a couple of weeks ago, the planet Moradesh was blown up partly because of the choices made by players when engaging in the galactic war. The current Premium Warbond (the game's equivalent of a Battle Pass) is the Wild West-themed Borderline Justice, featuring the R-6 Deadeye lever-action hunting rifle and the energy-based LAS-58 Talon “revolver”.
