In summer 2024, Helldivers 2 was in a severe crisis, and according to the studio head, 6 million “Call of Duty” players were involved.
Who is the head? Shams Jorjani has been the CEO of Arrowhead Games, the development studio behind Helldivers 2, since May 2024. Jorjani thus succeeded the current creative director of the co-op shooter, Johan Pilestedt, as studio head.
Before that, Jorjani was employed at the Swedish developer Paradox Interactive and was involved as “Corporate Development Officer” in Crusader Kings 3 and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt.
CoD players presented Helldivers 2 with unexpected challenges
What is the CEO talking about? In an interview with TheGameBusiness, Jorjani spoke about the severe crisis of Helldivers 2 in summer 2024, when the game received a lot of criticism from its own community. Players criticized the game’s balancing policies at that time.
What did the CEO identify as the problem with Helldivers 2? Jorjani explains in the interview that the studio struggled to maintain its integrity after the unexpected success and to stay true to the studio’s motto – “A game for everyone is a game for no one.”
Helldivers 2 was originally not made for 6 million “Call of Duty” players, but 6 million “Call of Duty” players bought the co-op shooter, says Jorjani. And these “Call of Duty” players have different interests compared to players of Escape from Tarkov or Arma, to whom Helldivers 2 was originally targeted.
The game was a much bigger success and reached different players than expected, and the studio struggled to stay true to the studio identity while also dealing with the various voices in the community – especially since the development team had not changed.
The ‘Summer of Pain’, or whatever we want to call it, was painful in part because it was difficult for us to reconcile how to stay true to the studio’s foundations while also handling the business realities when so many different voices were coming at us.
Shams Jorjani via thegamebusiness
Jorjani compares the success of the game to sporting success in football, saying they were in the third league and now suddenly they are playing in the Champions League. The big “defeat” was that the core fantasy of the game had died in balancing: “Killing monsters with overpowering weapons.”
What was the crisis in summer 2024? Shortly after the release of Helldivers 2, a small part of the community called for nerfs to the best weapons and equipment in the game – such as the railgun, the Breaker shotgun, or the shield generator backpack. These nerfs followed in March 2024.
A large part of the community criticized the nerfs significantly. Many felt that Arrowhead should rather improve the weak weapons than weaken the strong ones. Some players were really angry.
However, Arrowhead remained committed to this course for some time and steadily introduced further nerfs, including for relatively new weapons that came into the game with a war bond. The community was bubbling, and more and more players turned away from the shooter. In summer 2024, the mood was at a low.
In August, the developers then stated that they would save the game in the following 60 days with various updates. This was followed by a series of buffs that significantly strengthened many weapons again. The final update of Helldivers 2’s rescue plan was released in October 2024: Helldivers 2 aimed to fix the game in 60 days, and now the final update is here.
