Our Sales Skyrocketed When I Told Helldivers 2 Players “To not buy the game” Until We Fix 1 Issue

Helldivers 2 is currently one of the most popular games in the world, however, the journey was not easy for Arrowhead Game Studios. The independent Swedish video game developer has been around for quite some time now, but it was 2015’s Helldivers that solidified their place in the industry.

In terms of gameplay, Helldivers 2 was very different from the first game as Arrowhead moved to a third-person view. When the game was initially released in February 2024, it became a worldwide sensation, to the point where the studio couldn’t handle the high active player count. Johan Pilestedt, the CCO of Arrowhead, once explained that they had to encourage players to stop playing the game because the studio needed time to resolve server issues. But that move completely backfired as the game gained even more players.

In May 2022, Johan Pilestedt, the Chief Creative Officer of Arrowhead Game Studios, appeared for an interview with GamesIndustryBiz to talk about the unexpected success of Helldivers 2. During the conversation, Pilestedt revealed that the studio wanted players to stop playing the game because the servers couldn’t handle it,

I told people to not buy the game until we can manage the servers… but that actually increased the amount of users, unfortunately.

The idea clearly backfired as Helldivers 2 witnessed a significant boost in its active player count. As per SteamDB, the game had 450,000 active players at one point, something that Arrowhead didn’t expect at all.

Within three months of its release, Helldivers 2 sold over 12 million copies. Unfortunately, the player base slowly started shrinking as players were not happy with the unnecessary nerfs that ruined the gaming experience.

Players were already not happy with Arrowhead due to a lack of new content and nerfs, but it still didn’t damage the game’s reputation as much as the PSN account linking policy did. Sony, being the game’s publisher, tried to force PC players to create a PSN account in order to continue playing the game. This move completely ruined the game’s image as Helldivers 2‘s Steam page was flooded with negative reviews.

Arrowhead hoped that it would be able to revive the game’s hype with the first major update, Escalation of Freedom, but it was not well-received by the fans. The studio was convinced that its strategy was not working and decided to prioritize players’ feedback.

Many players returned to the game after Arrowhead buffed various fan-favorite weapons and Stratagems. The announcement of the Omens of Tyranny update successfully revived the game’s hype as it peaked at over 150,000 concurrent users on Steam at one point.