How Arrowhead Revitalized Helldivers 2’s Success

Arrowhead’s CEO, Shams Jorjani, recently shed light on the lessons the company learned about catering to new fans in the wake of Helldivers 2’s remarkable success.

During an insightful interview with The Games Business, Jorjani shared that the studio’s core belief was creating games for everyone might actually mean pleasing no one. Helldivers 2 was initially crafted with a niche audience in mind. Yet, following its spectacular launch, which drew in millions of players, Arrowhead had to rethink its development approach.

Jorjani emphasized that the game wasn’t designed with mass appeal in mind. “Our intention was never to make Helldivers for a broad audience,” he said. But targeting a specific gamer group with a unique and uncompromising experience can sometimes attract even those outside its initial scope. “We’ve witnessed this trend both in video games and elsewhere. Remember when From Software introduced their notoriously challenging titles amid trends of more supportive, hand-holding games? It ended up giving birth to an entirely new genre.”

“We didn’t create Helldivers for six million Call of Duty fans,” Jorjani continued. “That wasn’t our goal. Yet, surprisingly, six million Call of Duty enthusiasts gravitated toward our game. Their interests differ greatly from players coming from games like Escape From Tarkov or Arma, which heavily influenced some aspects of our design.”

Reflecting on this unexpected growth, Jorjani candidly described what he called the “summer of pain.” The challenge was figuring out how to stay true to Arrowhead’s original vision while also balancing the diverse feedback from their rapidly expanding community.