![Helldivers 2 starts recruiting more devs for the war effort after its galactic success, aims to 'accelerate and beef up [its] content plans'](https://unblockedgame.me/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/pGGx5QZVgEeRgczYMgj9hX.png)
There are a lot of live service games these days, and that's not a trend we love wholeheartedly. But amid the formulaic deluge, some games get it right. Helldivers 2 is a great example of this – but in a new interview with PC Gamer, Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt seemed almost reluctant to embrace the label.
“We don’t — I mean, we consider ourselves a live service game because it’s unfair to say otherwise,” Pilestedt said. “We will continue to add more things to the game and there are monetization elements in the game.”
But this aspect of the game needs to “go hand in hand with the base game,” which, according to Pilestedt, “should provide a full experience, like several hours of really good gameplay.” Further monetization should be entirely optional and, more importantly, for a long time come into play after the end of the base game.
“If you imagine what happens to the game in the second, third and fourth years, at that point you have to change the model to where the content that we release for free, like new enemies, new missions, whatever it may be “We also give the players the opportunity to help us further expand the title,” said Pilestedt. “And that has always been our philosophy and every game we have played so far. And we expect to keep this mentality for as long as possible.”
Currently, Helldivers 2's main monetization lever is a $10 premium “War Bond,” which offers a few additional weapons, outfits, and weapon variants. Warbonds act like Battle Passes in that you unlock them page by page, but you can't pay real money to skip stages and they never expire. In a way, they are more like mini-expansions. These distinctions have made them relatively popular among fans.
Pilestedt's approach to game development and monetization is at least partially rooted in his background in the modding community for games like Quake and Half-Life. “I helped every mod team I could with art, levels, design, code, whatever it was,” he said. “I’ve dealt with all of them – at least a lot of them. And the inspiration we have for every title we make is to emulate the enthusiasm that existed back in the modding days between the mod team and the fans.”
It's an approach that works well. Despite a rocky launch with overloaded servers that led to a flood of negative user reviews on Steam, Helldivers 2 has fought its way back to a “mostly positive” rating with more than 152,000 reviews. More importantly, people are playing it in huge numbers: three weeks after release, it's still the third most played game on Steam in terms of concurrent games, with today's peak at over 372,000. Players are deeply committed to the game, especially now that the server issues have been resolved, and there is real anticipation for the future, which will include new extras for players to wreak havoc with, including – we're pretty sure – Mechs.
Pilestedt also talked about how Helldivers 2 is similar to D&D, thanks to an all-powerful warmaster named Joel, whose behind-the-scenes machinations will ensure that Super Earth's war against everything “will become more sophisticated over time.” Don’t miss this – it’s a good thing.
