In a recent interview, the CEO of the developer behind Helldivers 2 sat down to talk about the last year of success, growth, and the struggles that the game went through to hit lofty peaks. Arrowhead had a tumultuous year in 2024, and from a stint of review bombing to being nominated for prestigious awards, it was nothing short of an intense twelve months.
It was revealed by Shams Jorjani, the CEO of Arrowhead, that an influx of ‘unintended’ players from so many different communities left the team scratching their heads over how to respond.
‘Different Voices Screaming’
During a chat with The Game Business’ Christropher Dring, Shams Jorjani walked through the last year at Arrowhead. He stepped in to secure the CEO role less than a year ago, picking up the position when things were looking awry for Helldivers 2.
He explained that it was thanks to a constant stream of meaningful updates that the paltry user score of 19% was able to flip entirely to 94% in a matter of weeks. Eventually, Helldivers 2 became one of the most popular and awarded games of 2024.
One interesting tidbit came when Jorjani was talking about the audience that gravitated towards Helldivers 2 and how diverse it was. I can’t say for sure where he got his numbers from, but he explained:
We did not make Helldivers for six million Call of Duty players. We absolutely didn’t. But six million Call of Duty players bought our game. And they are interested in different things compared to, say, the audience that comes from Escape From Tarkov or Arma, which were some of our more influential games.
The summer of pain, or whatever we want to call it, was painful in part because it was hard for us to reconcile how to stay true to the studio fundamentals, while dealing with the business realities of having so many different voices screaming at us.
Helldivers 2 turned out to be a strong success for Arrowhead, even if it took one heck of a journey to get there. In January, it was confirmed that the concept for the next game for the studio was being fleshed out, but nobody knows what that’ll look like.
Did you play Helldivers 2? Let me know in the comments, or hit up the Insider Gaming forum.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that Atomfall is Rebellion’s most successful game ever
Helldivers 2 started out fun, but when you constantly nerf fun it is upsetting and frustrating.
Especially when you’ve spent your money on a game that you started off really enjoying.
Helldivers 2 should be a case study on how to piss off your playerbase.
This isn’t relevant anymore though, the devs have stopped this months ago. Stop holding grudges.
You pulled so many cod players because the game was not like Cod. They may screen all they want but they stayed with helldivers because it was not cod. Remember that
Don’t listen to Zach it’s clearly a skill issue.
Hey guys, I know the game went through a lot of growing pains. Specifically for me it was being able as a stram player to find my friends crossplatform. I had a lot of shut downs and ended up calling the dev team a bunch of chucklef$%ks and told them to get their shit together in my error reports. I can say Ive been super happy here with the game lately. So great job chucklef@$ks thats coming from a long term player of cod who played that game on my military deployments. Right now there is no other game Id rather distract myself from all the crazy shit in the world. Cant wait for my next batch of Liberty and to defend Superearth feom the alien scum. You listened you improved thank you for making not just a great game but a great community that doesnt promote team killing or treating the low end players like crap. In a less words thank you. And sorry for calling ya a bunch of chucklef$%k. I only meant from a hardass marines way of saying I love your game.
Hey guys, I know the game went through a lot of growing pains. Specifically for me it was being able as a stream player to find my friends crossplatform. I had a lot of shut downs and ended up calling the dev team a bunch of chucklef$%ks and told them to get their shit together in my error reports. I can say Ive been super happy here with the game lately. So great job chucklef@$ks thats coming from a long term player of cod who played that game on my military deployments. Right now there is no other game Id rather distract myself from all the crazy shit in the world. Cant wait for my next batch of Liberty and to defend Superearth feom the alien scum. You listened you improved thank you for making not just a great game but a great community that doesnt promote team killing or treating the low end players like crap. In less words thank you. And sorry for calling ya a bunch of chucklef$%k. I only meant that from tye perspective ofa hardass marines perception of trying to express I love your game.