It seems like Helldivers 2 is exceeding expectations after its strong launch last week. The game has already sold around 1 million units in less than a week.
Arrowhead Game Studios CEO and creative director Johan Pilestedt shared the news on X (formerly Twitter), saying that “we are around a million right now.” He added that Helldivers 2 is “blowing through the estimates at least.”
The game is available on PlayStation 5 and PC, so this is a great start for a project aimed at long-term support.
Replying to another post on X, Pilestedt also commented on Helldivers 2’s monetization. He noted that the studio never wanted to make a pay-to-win game: “‘You have to earn the right to monetize’ — I truly believe that. If people want to support this title they have an option, but we are never forcing anyone to do so.”
“You have to earn the right to monetize” – I truly believe that. If people want to support this title they have an option, but we are never forcing anyone to do so.
— Pilestedt (@Pilestedt) February 11, 2024
Launched on February 8, Helldivers 2 quickly became Sony’s biggest PC launch ever in terms of player count. On February 11, it peaked at 155,926 concurrent players on Steam (via SteamDB), making it the third biggest release of 2024 by that metric — behind only Enshrouded (160.4k CCU) and Palworld (2.1 million CCU).
Pilestedt also noted that player interest for Helldivers 2 was so high that Arrowhead even had to increase the rate limit to let more users play the game, which quickly peaked at 360k CCU on both platforms. Given the Steam numbers mentioned above, it is fair to assume that the title attracted around 200k concurrent players on PS5.
A message to the community in regards to our latest server update. @helldivers2 @ArrowheadGS #Helldivers2. pic.twitter.com/lwriSFbBbK
— Pilestedt (@Pilestedt) February 11, 2024
Although Helldivers 2 initially had a “Mixed” rating on Steam due to crashes and matchmaking issues, the studio quickly started working on fixes to improve the user experience. At the moment of writing, the game’s score improved to “Mostly positive”, with 74% of the 27k reviews being positive.
With more fixes on the way and updates on the way, Helldivers 2 has every chance to become a huge success for both Arrowhead Game Studios and Sony. Despite not being a PlayStation first-party game, it still could also help the Japanese company in realizing its live service strategy, as it plans to release six GaaS projects by FY25 (ending March 31, 2026).