Helldivers 2 Took Almost 8 Years To Develop, Reveals Arrowhead CEO

Helldivers 2 is making players have both a literal and metaphorical blast right now, thanks to its extremely fun gameplay, great humor, and a level design that’s just purely entertaining. But apparently, all this isn’t something that manifested overnight for developer Arrowhead. As per the studio’s CEO, Johan Pilestedt, the game took 7 years and 11 months to make from the ground up. 

Helldivers 2 finally launched, 7 years, 11 months and 26 days of my life spent on making a game that truly devolves into a farce of my favourite movies and books from my upbringing. Thank you all for being in in the joke of shouldering the cape of a totalitarian soldier,” says Johan PIlestedt in a new post on X. 

This also means that Helldivers 2’s development began shortly after the release of the first Helldivers, which is a top-down shooter that traces its launch back to 2015 for PlayStation platforms and PC. Furthermore, Johan also expands on some of his inspirations behind the concept of the latest installment in the Helldivers IP, citing Serious Sam and Aliens vs Predator. 

This game has been in the back of my head ever since I and a couple of online friends tried to do a SST mod for the original Serious Sam/mod for the original AVP to bring the experience and the farce to life.”

Suffice to say that Helldivers 2 has had a fairly successful launch so far, and rightfully so. The game has hit a peak concurrent player count of just almost 156,000 users on Steam alone, but according to the Arrowhead CEO, the cumulative CCU count has crossed 220,000 when you factor in PlayStation 5’s user base as well. This is fairly impressive, and sure-fire fuel for the devs to perfect the winning formula of Helldivers 2.

Related Content to Check Out: 

• Helldivers 2 “Blowing Through Estimates”; Already Sold About A Million Units
• Helldivers 2’s New PC Patch Promises Matchmaking Improvement
• Helldivers 2 Allegedly Only Needs 25 GB On PS5 Compared To PC’s 100 GB Requirement

Helldivers 2 came out on February 8, 2024, for the PlayStation 5 and PC. The game is set to receive more content down the road, and all of it is bound to be free, according to Johan.