The Latest Breaking News from Johan Pilestedt

Talking points from the Game Developers Conference 2025 and how they could impact the future of gaming

Where will the games industry be a year from now?

GamesRadar · Mar 26, 2025

Helldivers 2 boss says "death and rebirth" is a natural part of the games industry, but it's "unnecessarily brutal" right now "because we don't diversify enough"

"A lot of publishers try to play it safe by taking safe bets, but one thing that's guaranteed is those safe bets are a death sentence for the studios that try to make it."

GamesRadar · Mar 22, 2025

Helldivers 2 players "became obsessed" with Malevolon Creek, but it was Gabe Newell who really kicked off one of Super Earth's bloodiest battles

The rally we didn't know we needed

GamesRadar · Mar 21, 2025

Helldivers 2's Johan Pilestedt says developers need to start taking more risks: 'Safe bets are a death sentence for the studios that try to make them'

Pilestedt says the game industry has a "convergence problem," and it won't find sustainable success until it breaks out of it.

PC Gamer · Mar 19, 2025

Helldivers 2 director says "balance is a myth," and devs shouldn't spend more than 5% of their time on it: "If you balance out all the chaos, you've made an uninteresting game"

Arrowhead's Johan Pilestedt says if you spend all of your time on game balance, "you're an idiot"

GamesRadar · Mar 19, 2025

Arrowhead’s CEO got a call from PlayStation when he said players could save their money and wait to buy Helldivers 2 until the servers were fixed: They ‘asked me what the f*** I’m smoking’

It’s said you should always be closing, even on Super Earth.

PC Gamer · Mar 19, 2025

The United Nations asked Helldivers 2 studio Arrowhead if it'd give a talk on psychological manipulation: ‘Could we brainwash an entire community to fight for a fascist state? … Would we be okay with that? Turns out, yeah’

Players’ eagerness in the fight for Super Earth begs the question: are we the baddies?

PC Gamer · Mar 19, 2025

Helldivers 2 boss told launch players not to buy until servers calmed down, and it "took 5 minutes until I got a call from the friendly people over at PlayStation asking what the f*** I was smoking"

"'Don't recommend that people do not buy your games' - it's incredibly conventional wisdom"

GamesRadar · Mar 19, 2025

Helldivers 2 only had 20 devs working on it when development began, but High Command is now over 6 times larger and has continued to expand since launch

The team is now home to around 130 people

GamesRadar · Mar 18, 2025

Despite shifting gear to Arrowhead's next game after a sabbatical, studio CEO clarifies that Helldivers 2 creative lead Johan Pilestedt will "absolutely still be involved"

"The vast majority of Helldivers is a team effort - it's not one Jesus figure"

GamesRadar · Jan 29, 2025