„Summer of pain” and „6 million” Call of Duty players. Arrowhead CEO recalls worst period of Helldivers 2
Shams Jorjani recalls the worst period of his time as Arrowhead studio head and explains how the sudden success of Helldivers 2 contributed to the co-op hit's later problems.
The CEO of Arrowhead Game Studios mentioned the most challenging period in the history of Helldivers 2, including a phone call from the head of PlayStation Studios regarding sudden criticism of the game.
After more than a year, the second installment of the Helldivers series is still doing great, remaining among the bestsellers and the most popular games on Steam (although no longer in the top ten of both rankings). The last few months have been particularly successful due to small but important gameplay variations, not to mention the addition of a new faction.
The worst time for Helldivers 2
There were some problems in the first year of HD 2. The first major game update wasn't a disaster, but it clearly strained players' trust in the developers after they effectively updates restored faith in Arrowhead studio, although even now there are still some cracks.
Furthermore, shortly before, the game's history saw its worst event: an attempt to enforce the creation of a PlayStation Network in the Steam version of the game. A service that is available in significantly fewer countries than Valve's platform. Effect: only 19% positive reviews on Steam and a big decrease in the number of players.
Shams Jorjani, the current CEO of Arrowhead Game Studios, found himself in an unpleasant situation. As he mentioned in a conversation with Christopher Dring (via The Game Business), "Games with 19% positive reviews usually don't break even," and the developer couldn't do anything about it. At that time, Johan Pilestedt (the "messiah" of HD 2) was on a kind of forced, 3-month leave.
When I was asked to step in [as CEO], they gave me the keys to the car… and told me: ‘we're going off on vacation, because we haven't been taking much over the last few summers. And I was like: 'we're running a live service game, people can't be off for the next three months!' But that's what happens in Sweden. We take our summer vacations very seriously.
Summer of pain
In such a situation (in a period that the new head clearly defined as the "summer of pain"), Hermen Hulst, responsible for the studios working for the PlayStation brand, called Jorjani. Hulst wasn't thrilled with the sudden fall of Helldivers 2 from the pedestal, and the conversation with him was the worst moment in the AGS CEO's "time."
Maybe the lowest point during my tenure so far. I had to explain to the CEO why things were in the state they were, and what we were going to do to recover. And I had to say the awkward truth that there is nothing we can do in the short term. But in the long term, we have plans that will get us back on track.
In the long run - more precisely: about 60 days - Helldivers 2 regained the trust of the players. However, the bad taste remained, especially since the PSN issue was only partially resolved.
From the third league to the Champions League
Jorjani also underlined what the devs had mentioned before: the key to success was creating a game that wouldn't be "for everyone, which means for no one," but at the same time, it should be capable of attracting even mainstream players, such as fans of Call of Duty.
We did not make Helldivers for six million Call of Duty players. We absolutely didn't do this. But six million Call of Duty players bought our game. And they are interested in different things compared to, say, the audience that comes from Escape From Tarkov or Arma.
Of course, it's simple to make these assumptions when you're a small studio anticipating perhaps tens of thousands of players on the servers. The sudden success of Helldivers 2 made the "third-league" developer suddenly be rated as if they had started playing in the Champions League.
This forced huge changes in the Arrowhead studio, which was completely unprepared to match such standards. This was the cause of one of the main problems: in the face of success and the need to satisfy millions of players, the developers of Helldivers 2 balanced the game like a typical service game for Call of Duty fans, forgetting that the main premise was "killing monsters with big guns."
Right now, Arrowhead still occasionally fails to meet fans' expectations (though not as much as in the beginning), but Jorjani once again emphasized that the studio will not significantly expand in the near future. After talking with other developers, the Swedes are aware that even an entire legion of devs wouldn't be enough. Not to mention that this kind of "sudden, uncontrolled growth" was supposed to be one of the reasons for the last crisis and mass layoffs.
I want us to be a role model for how to do sustainable growth, because the industry today is not in a good place. A lot of companies are shedding a lot of jobs. And it's not the people at the top that are losing their jobs, it's people who have moved half across the world to take jobs. And that’s because of bad growth decisions made by business leaders who have taken stupid risks.
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