You can partly attribute the success of Helldivers 2 to the relationship developer Arrowhead Game Studios has built with fans, who have greatly appreciated creative director and former CEO Johan Pilestedt's straight-talking attitude. But when Pilestedt suggested that cash-strapped players hold off on buying the game until the servers were stable, well, that talk was a little too straight for some of the folks at publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Around the time of the Helldivers 2 launch, "the community was super excited about the gameplay that we put up, and everybody flocked in, and it became wildfire," Pilestedt said in a Game Developers Conference panel attended by GamesRadar+. "Everybody told everybody that you need to play this game, and it crushed us under success," he said, referring to the game's early server issues.
