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Prior to February 2024, it would be understandable if the name Arrowhead Game Studios didn’t mean anything to you. Despite seeing success with titles such as Magicka and the first Helldivers game, which reportedly sold four million copies, it wasn’t until the release of Helldivers 2 that Arrowhead Game Studios became a household name.
In the first 12 weeks of release, Helldivers 2 has sold over 12 million copies. This made it PlayStation’s biggest game launch ever, beating titles such as Spider-Man and God of War Ragnarok, which held the title prior to Helldivers 2 being released.
It was announced earlier this week that the Arrowhead Game Studios CEO and founder Johan Pilestedt would be stepping down from his role and being replaced by Shams Jorjani. But, that doesn’t mean Pilestedt is going anywhere as he is now the Chief Creative Officer so he can focus all of his efforts on the development of Helldivers 2 rather than deal with the business side of the studio. By making this change to the structure, Pilestedt hopes to be able to rebuild the popularity of Helldivers 2 by focusing on weapon balancing, and bringing new content to the game, which will eventually see the addition of The Illuminate.
In an interview with Gamebiz, Johan Pilestedt reflected on the success of Helldivers 2, as well as spoke on where he wants to take Arrowhead Game Studios in the future and how he wants the studio to be viewed.
“We have to see what the future holds, but there’s nothing in the plans where we want to be acquired by somebody. I want to see how high we can fly. And bringing Shams on board, we have a good potential to realise that future of turning into the next From Software or Blizzard.”
While speaking on the future of Arrowhead Game Studios, Pilestedt said that he hopes it will become a studio that upcoming developers strive to work for saying “The goal of the studio is to make really great co-op games. We really want to turn Arrowhead into a flagship studio, where people who want to make these kind-of games say to themselves: ‘I want to work at Arrowhead’. When we were growing up, we really wanted to work at Blizzard, it was one of the bucket list places to work at. I think Arrowhead has the potential to be that.”
With Helldivers 2 being one of the biggest games in the world right now, Arrowhead Game Studios is on its way to becoming a flagship studio in the industry and the future looks incredibly bright for the company.
