Helldivers 2 director calls out "really s****y" players who issued a "horrifying" number of threats to staff

A screenshot from the Helldivers 2 opening, showing the Super Earth Spokesperson shouting.
(Image credit: Arrowhead Game Studios)

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Helldivers 2 has been one of the standout hits of the year, convincing over 12 million people to roleplay as soldiers in a fictional war that poses the 'Are we the baddies?' question at multiple turns. The lofty player count makes a few bad eggs a given, though frustrations over weapon balance and battle passes have✅ only made things worse. Or, as creative director Johan Pilestedt puts it, some "really shitt♓y" players have issued a "horrifying" number of threats to staff. 

Reflecting on the game's success with , Pilestedt says the Helldivers 2 whirlwind has been "extremely enjoyable and a little bit daunting." Look past the Star Troopers-inspired war parody, and what you've got is a ꩵplayer-affected, evolving narrative that takes notes from Dragons & Demons – think Dungeons & Dragons, but Swedish. 

The re🥀sult is something that's landed better than anything developer Arrowhead Game Studios has done before, and that's meant coming to grips with handling a larger community – especially the bad side of it.

"The big difference now, which is horrifying, is the amount of threats and rude behavior that people in the studio are getting f𒉰rom some really shitty indi♍viduals within the community," Pilestedt says. "That's something new we have to deal with."

Helldivers 2

(Image credit: Arrowhead Game Studios)

For Pilestedt, "If you don't have those lows, you can't get those highs." Digging into the matter further, incoming CEO Shams Jorjani admits the studio's approach to game design likely contributes to the fr♋iction – a philosophy that's not afraid to prioritize niche games for a smaller group of people ov✃er something with broader appeal. Naturally, then, you run into challenges when something like Helldivers 2 launches to broad appeal through word of mouth.

"Arrowhead’s philosophy has always🍌 been 'a game for everyone is a game for no one'," Jorjani says. "That is the company slogan. It’s how our games are designed. You can feel it in every feature. I think it’s one of the big reasons that Helldivers 2 has been so successful. It feels fresh because it does a lot ♕of unpopular stuff.

"When you hit this big, much bigger than anyone thought – Sony, us, everyone – what happens is the game finds an audience outside of that niche fan group. So you get t⛎his amplification of different voices. Almost all games have a bit of toxicity in the community, but with these big numbers you just get so many, so we need to work with the community to get them to self-moderate, give people the tools to speak with each other in a positive fashion, so we can keep talking to the players openly. The more voices being added to the choir does add comꦰplexity."

Helldivers 2

(Image credit: Arrowhead Game Studios)

The other half of dealing with bad actors among your group of fascist soldiers comes down to simple experience, something Arrowhead is racking up. As Jorjani puts it, just look at Valve.

"Valve is supposedly launching a new PVP game, and I am sure they’ve put in hundreds, if not thousands of hours into how t🍒o handle toxic players, because they have that experience from DOTA and Counter-Strike," he says. "It’s ingrained into their product development and they can just lift those systems. All of that investment and process we’re learning painfully now will carry through to the next thing, whatever that may be."

The pause for Helldivers 2 reflection comes alongside the news that 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Pilestedt is stepping 🌸back from his CEO duties into that of CCO so that he may focus on the creative side of things rather than the business admin. Pilestedt also agrees 🌊guns are too weak, armor is too boring, and plane🃏ts are too repetitive, and – in unison with Jorjani – the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:pursuit of endless growth isn't the way forward.

Helldivers 2 is slowing down the release of new patches "to maintain the quality standard we want and you deserve."

Iain Harris
News Editor, Games

I joined GamesRadar+ in May 2022 following stints at PCGamesN and PocketGamer.Biz, with some freelance for Kotaku UK, RockPaperShotgun, and VG24/7 thrown in for good measꦅure. When I'm not running the news team on the games side, you'll find me putting News Editor duties to one side to play the hottest JRPG of 20 years ago or pillaging the depths of Final Fantasy 14 for a swanky ne♛w cloak – the more colourful, the better.