Until recently, you would be forgiven for not knowing about Arrowhead Game Studios, a small Swedish video game developer. That changed forever on February 8, 2024, when Arrowhead Game Studios released Helldivers II on the PlayStation 5 and Windows PCs. The developer’s fifth title sales have exceeded all expectations, with an estimated eight million copies sold in the first six weeks since its release.
Arrowhead Game Studios‘ previous games were well-received, if not massive hits. Magicka (2011), The Showdown Effect (2013), Gauntlet (2014), and Helldivers (2015). While none of those games found themselves in the running for any end-of-year awards, they gained a cult following, particularly Helldivers in 2015. The original Helldivers was a top-down shooter that video game review sites rated highly, but the top-down view is not to everyone’s taste, so the game failed to set the industry alight.
Fast-forward to February 2024, and Arrowhead Game Studio released Helldivers II. Although the sequel to the 2015 title may only be six weeks old at the time of this writing, the companies shown in the online betting site reviews pages already have Helldivers II as one of the favourites to clinch the coveted Game of the Year award for 2024.
What is Helldivers II?
The original Helldivers was set in a dystopian universe where humans rule by a managed democracy. Super Earth, a fictional futuristic Earth, is under threat from three hostile enemy races: the Bugs, the Cyborgs, and the Illuminates. Your role as a Helldiver is to subdue the threat through managed democracy; read that as shooting and blowing them up!
Helldivers II is set 100 years after the original game in which Super Earth triumphed. Humans discovered that the Terminids (the official name of the Bugs) produced the precious resource E-710 upon their deaths. Humans established vast farms of these creatures, but the Terminids breach their containment and wreak havoc across human-colonised worlds.
At the same time, the mechanical army of the Automatons (the game’s Cyborgs) begins attempting to destroy humanity. The rulers of Super Earth deploy hundreds of Helldivers, which are Super Earth citizens drafted into the army, and drop them from orbit to reclaim the lands.
The game draws inspiration from Starship Troopers and the Terminator franchises. Indeed, the Terminids are remarkably similar to the bugs from Starship Troopers, to the point it is a miracle TriStar Pictures has not sued Arrowhead Game Studios for copyright infringement! Likewise, the Automatons bear a striking resemblance to the T-800 cyborg from the original Terminator movie.
Why Are Helldivers II Sales Skyrocketing?
Potential future lawsuits aside, Arrowhead Games Studios has done something incredible with Helldivers II: It has made cop-op shooters fun again. Switching to a third-person view instead of top-down has made the sequel more appealing, but the studio’s strategy for the game makes it stand out from the crowd.
Helldivers II is a live service game, which seems to be the industry buzzword for a game in which players are almost forced to make in-game purchases or microtransactions. However, while microtransactions exist, everything in Helldivers II is unlockable through playing the game, including the three Warbonds, the game’s “battle pass” equivalent. Sure, you can purchase “Super Credits” in the store and use them to buy a few cosmetics for your Helldiver, but Super Credits are found in the game, so players never need to spend a cent more than the price of the game to fully unlock everything Helldivers II offers.
As mentioned, Arrowhead Game Studios has made co-op gaming fun again. The Helldivers II universe is constantly online, with every player’s actions counting towards a common goal. Completing missions counts towards Super Earth’s liberation of planets, which creates a sense of community that spreads throughout the game, regardless of where you are playing from.
Although Helldivers II is a walk in the park on the lower difficulties, effective communication is required once you reach Level 5 – Hard; otherwise, you will become food for the Terminids or be wiped out by the Automatons. I have logged 60 hours since release, and I have made more than a dozen friends in that time, people who were strangers less than two months ago but now chat on social media channels during the day and enter the battlefield together by night. I struggle to remember a video game that created such a community spirit.
Open Channels of Communication
It has not all been sunshine and rainbows for Helldivers II because the game has experienced several bugs, pardon the pun. Arrowhead Game Studios built servers capable of hosting 200,000 concurrent players, but those servers were quickly overwhelmed due to the game’s surge in popularity, resulting in login issues and in-game crashes.
Similarly, there have been issues with enemy spawn rates, particularly the harder-to-defeat Heavy and Elite classes. Players have encountered problems adding friends playing on other platforms, and the recent addition of arc weapons seems to be causing games to crash.
However, these issues are, for the most part, being forgiven because Arrowhead Game Studios has opened clear channels of communication. The studio’s developers are active in the Helldivers II community, mainly on Reddit and the game’s dedicated Discord server, where they openly chat among the Helldivers II community. They openly admit bugs are present in the game and give players updates and timescales for fixes and patches; those fixes and patches are often released within days of the bugs being logged.
Compare Arrowhead Game Studios’ openness to the absolute shambles of Battlefield 2042 or the broken Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III; the difference is astounding. Arrowhead Game Studios seems to genuinely care about its community and wants to create the best possible game for them, while the other two are only concerned about how much revenue they can generate from their cash cow players.
The Future of Helldivers II is Bright
Helldivers II is less than two months old, yet it has shown more in that short timeframe than many of its rivals have during their lifetimes. No game out there can hold a candle to Helldivers II regarding community spirit and fostering a sense of belonging; eight million people cannot be wrong. Now, if you excuse me, I must go and rid a planet of some Terminids!