Helldivers 2 Developer Credits Sony for Creative Freedom and Draws Inspiration from No Man’s Sky’s Successful Comeback

Helldivers 2: A Journey Through Triumphs and Challenges Post-Release

Released in 2024, Helldivers 2 has emerged as a standout title in the gaming world. However, the game has not been without its challenges, particularly surrounding the controversy of PlayStation account linking on PC.

Shams Jorjani, who stepped into the role of CEO at Arrowhead Studios shortly after the game’s launch, recently appeared on The Game Business show. In this interview, he shared notable insights about the company’s experience thus far. Jorjani expressed his astonishment at how Sony has allowed Arrowhead to maintain its creative vision for Helldivers 2, despite being the financial backer of the project.

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.

At one point, the game faced a significant setback, plummeting to a low user score of just 19% on Steam. Yet, under Jorjani’s leadership, the Helldivers team embarked on a recovery journey, drawing inspiration from the resurgence of games like No Man’s Sky.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr22D9zoRjo

Helldivers 2 – Borderline Justice Warbond | PS5 & PC Games (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr22D9zoRjo)

In the same interview, Jorjani credited the game’s success, in part, to the innovative Game Master feature, which contributes to the game’s ongoing engagement and variety. Notably, a recent event saw the fictional planet Moradesh face destruction due to player decisions during the galactic war. Currently, the game features the Premium Warbond titled Borderline Justice, featuring items such as the R-6 Deadeye lever-action hunting rifle and the energy-based LAS-58 Talon “revolver.”

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