Arrowhead Studios, the developer behind Helldivers 2, is in the middle of a big shake-up. The recent company hired a new CEO, giving the studio’s co-founder Johan Pilestedt room to focus solely on game design and supporting his ever-evolving mega-hit. New CEO and career gaming executive Shams Jorjani provided a reassuring update on what to expect in the months ahead.
In a lengthy post on the official Helldivers subreddit, Jorjani addressed the community directly with a bit of information about himself, his relationship with Arrowhead, and what change to expect under his leadership. It was a solid gesture in a community that has been lauded for its transparency, a signal that this refreshing culture will continue to thrive under new leadership.
Among his hopes is positioning Arrowhead’s lead developers to better support the talents making the game and making sure that talent is working more collaboratively than before.
“I've charged [Pilestedt] with being the Obi-Wan to many ‘Lukes’ in our studio,” he said. “If everyone can hear [Pilestedt] sage voice in the back of their heads when they're balancing weapons, designing missions or enemies the better.”
He also wants the team to maintain their partnership with their publisher PlayStation Studios, crediting them for the game’s success. His words come just a few weeks after the company nearly torpedoed the game’s reputation with PC players after proposing the need for a mandatory PlayStation Network account to continue playing the game. Arrowhead and the rest of the Helldivers 2 community were adamantly against the change as it would lock out players from more than 170 countries. Ultimately, the community’s demands were met as Sony scrapped the mandate within a few days.
Finally, Jorjani hopes that the restructuring of Arrowhead will allow the team to create things more efficiently, setting them up for future success.
“We knew it would be impossible to keep up with demand and the insatiable hunger for more fun,” he said. “Our singular focus as a studio is to set things up in a sustainable way so that in the long term we can make more and better stuff.”
“We're building a bit of scaffolding before we can make a bigger barn,” he added.
A change in leadership at a developer can be difficult, especially when going from a co-founder who knows the ins and outs of the company’s mission, to a relative outsider. But at the very least, Jorjani understands his role as an advocate for a creative team at the height of their success. He also seems to get the community that has helped propel Helldivers 2 to the top of 2024’s sales charts, and is making sure to be a front-facing figure in the same way Pilestedt was.
“As you can probably tell, I'm a straight shooter,” Jorjani said. “The only thing I ask is that we keep things civil and constructive. We shape the community we want to have and we all have a better time (and by extension a better game) if we keep things nice.”
We know that these plans will have an impact on the long-term plans for Helldivers 2. But how has the recent reorganization impacted Helldivers 2 now? Well just a day after Arrowhead’s big announcement, Pilestedt, who is now chief creative officer at Arrowhead, started an X (formerly Twitter) thread crowdsourcing new ideas for stratagems from fans.
“This is way more fun than a conference room brainstorming,” Pilestedt tweeted under the thread. “Let's see if any gets picked up.”
Pilestedt is clearly much happier talking about how to make his game better than he did sorting through angry tweets about players potentially being locked out of his game. For this alone, it seems that the future of Arrowhead and Helldivers 2 seems brighter than ever.
