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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

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

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

From analysis to the latest developments in health,
read the most diverse news in one place.

Biggest announcements from the Game Developers Conference 2025

From Helldivers devs potentially speaking at the UN to Netflix's first MMO to a new, industry-encompassing union

GamesRadar

Helldivers 2 CCO Johan Pilestedt says the industry's got it backwards by putting features over fundamentals: 'We talk way too little about the core philosophy'

Visualise, then execute.

PC Gamer

Helldivers 2 boss outlines the single design trick that eventually led to his breakout success: "This works, I think we're gonna be rich someday"

"This 'it could happen' approach to design is super powerful"

GamesRadar

Johan Pilestedt warns that Helldivers 2 took 4 more years than planned because Arrowhead skipped pre-production and dove right in: 'Always do your homework before you start spending millions and millions and millions of dollars in making a game'

Sound advice, but easier said than done.

PC Gamer

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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GamesRadar

Arrowhead CEO assures Helldivers 2 fans the online shooter will stay live "as long as people play" it: "If we can keep it going for 10 years we will"

Helldivers 2 isn't going offline anytime soon

GamesRadar

Helldivers 2 creative director announces a sabbatical after 11 years of grind, immediately starts a game jam that "wasn't that great" in the end

"Sometimes, you've just got to reconnect with yourself and your bros"

PC Gamer

Johan Pilestedt is taking a sabbatical from Helldivers 2 after working 'around the clock' for 11 years, will move on to 'the next Arrowhead game' when he returns

"I am going to take some time now to redeem what was lost from all of those that supported me for over a decade."

PC Gamer

Arrowhead boss wants to get as many A-listers as possible for the Helldivers 2 film, 'as long as they all get killed violently'

It's not the worst idea I've ever heard.

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Total Film

Helldivers 2 creative director says the studio "shouldn't" have final say on the movie as "we are not Hollywood people," but it still sounds like it'll be involved in some capacity

"We don't know what it takes to make a movie"

GamesRadar

Helldivers 2 director says the reason saluting the flag makes it go faster is that all the devs did it anyway, "so one of the coders added it as an Easter egg"

I always believed it was real because I'm a true patriot

PC Gamer

Helldivers 2 director decides to kick off 2025 by wading into a conversation about DEI: 'Make good games, don't make a contemporary political statement'

Johan Pilestedt tried to clarify his statement by saying he was only talking about things "outside the theme of the game," which doesn't really clarify much at all.

GamesRadar

Perhaps forgetting his game is a loaded parody of fascism, Helldivers 2 director says, "Make good games, don't make a contemporary political statement"

Helldivers 2 is notably filled with political statements

GamesRadar

Less than a year after launching 2024's best live service, Helldivers 2 creative director has already started working on "the next Arrowhead game"

Johan Pilestedt wants to know what your "expectations and desires" are

PC Gamer

Defending a kinda wimpy Killzone crossover gun, Helldivers 2's Johan Pilestedt says the game's past balance woes were due to weapons being 'seen as game objects' and that 'balance doesn't matter'

Que sera, sera, whatever guns are, will be.

GamesRadar

Helldivers 2's Killzone-inspired sniper "could maybe use some tweaking," creative director admits, but "weapons are what weapons are" and "balance doesn't matter"

"It kills things, not useless"

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