Helldivers 2 developer “experimenting” with new modes to expand the game’s scope

Helldivers 2 is in a really good place right now, soaring past 170,000 concurrent players on Steam for the first time in six months following the release of the Cyborgs update. While the battle for Cyberstan will keep us busy for now, Arrowhead is hoping to continually expand the game’s scope in the future, and game director Mikael Eriksson has teased that the studio is “experimenting” with new game modes.

In a new interview with IGN, Eriksson was asked about CCO Johan Pilestedt’s comments from December 2025 about Arrowhead having a “prototype rogue-lite mode.” Eriksson responded by calling rogue-lite a “very big umbrella,” adding that “there are at least some similarities to rogue-lite with how the meta game plays out on Cyberstan,” while acknowledging that “it’s not full rogue-lite.”

Although unable to confirm anything for the future, Eriksson revealed that Arrowhead is “experimenting with many different game modes,” with the studio striving to “basically offer all kinds of experiences that make sense [within the game’s] universe.”

As an example, Eriksson again pointed to the Cyberstan update, saying, “In this universe, Super Earth should be able to attack the enemy home planets,” adding, “You couldn’t do that when we launched the game.” He continued, “And of course that home planet should look different and play different from when we are being invaded, or if we’re playing out in an open landscape.”

Elsewhere in the interview, IGN asked Eriksson whether it is possible for Arrowhead to implement changes such as increasing squad sizes from four players to eight. Eriksson said Arrowhead is “experimenting” with ideas such as “having multiple squads working together, or bigger squads, or way more enemies, or way more friendly NPCs by your side,” but he couldn’t promise it will happen.

While not promising anything for the future, the game director said Arrowhead does have “grand plans in this sort of area” and that the studio is “of course looking into how to expand the game in ways that are not currently possible with, for example, more players and so forth.”

Helldivers 2 developer hopes to expand the game’s scope

Arrowhead personnel, such as CEO Shams Jorjani, have previously made it clear that the goal is to expand Helldivers 2 into Helldivers 3 rather than creating a sequel from scratch. Beyond “experimenting” with different game modes, as mentioned in the new IGN interview, Arrowhead has previously discussed possible sequel-defining features for the future.

According to CCO Pilestedt, these features include eight-player missions, as well as “larger open-world maps where maybe you could come across another Helldivers team to then take on bigger challenges together.” There’s also a desire within the studio for “operations that affect other teams.”

The studio has also discussed wanting to expand vehicular gameplay while bringing back more vehicles from the first game. Arrowhead also wants to increase the level cap, with leaks of 200 still yet to materialize.

Easily the biggest obstacle to expanding the scope of Helldivers 2 is the fact that it was built using the Autodesk Stingray engine, which was officially discontinued in 2018. CEO Jorjani has previously said this outdated engine has resulted in a lot of “technical debt,” and in the interview with IGN, Eriksson admitted Arrowhead is “limited by tech,” which is why the studio intends to “keep developing our tech and keep building on it.”

Fortunately, away from Helldivers 2, Arrowhead’s next game in development won’t face the same obstacles, as it is being built in Unreal Engine 5. We don’t know much about Arrowhead’s new project other than that it is being developed independently and will not be published by PlayStation. Jorjani has also said that fans “will recognize the DNA” of the game, as it’s not “too far off from Helldivers.”