Helldivers 2 incredible success caused some issues and forced the devs to work hard one fixes. However, the CEO of developer Arrowhead Game Studios says he doesn't want to over-hire – and for a good reason.
Helldivers 2 had an incredibly successful launch on PS5 and PC. In fact, the game is so popular that the servers couldn't keep up with the crazy amount of players trying to spread democracy and save Super Earth. Many players were greeted with the message that servers are at capacity, were disconnected during missions or not able to use the matchmaking.
Since Helldivers 2 is meant to be played in coop, matchmaking and working servers are a necessity for players to enjoy the game. Thankfully, Arrowhead Game Studios, the developers behind Helldivers 2, are doing a great job at fixing the issues one patch at a time. Recently, they managed to quintuple the server capacity (so five times as many players can be online at the same time 😉). And they managed to do that with a team of only four backend engineers...
Since the game is so successful, you would think that Arrowhead would just hire a ton of new devs to deal with the current issues, but Johan Pilestedt, CEO of Arrowhead, has other plans.
Don't Over-Hire, Use Short-Term Solutions
Even though, Helldivers 2 is published by Sony, Arrowhead Game Studios is a rather small developer. Thus, they were pretty surprised by the huge player count shortly after release. Helldivers 2 reached a peak of 457,649 concurrent players on Steam alone, which makes it one of the most played games on the platform. Obviously, a game like that needs enough devs to deal with bugs and fixes, while at the same time making sure the development of future content doesn't get neglected.
However, Arrowhead CEO Pilestedt recently said on X that he doesn't want to over-hire:
The act of over-hiring to then do layoffs is a horrible practice and a bad experience for employees. Use short term solutions for short term problems, such as outsourcing, contractors or limited time agreements. (Who could've thought?)
— Pilestedt (@Pilestedt) February 20, 2024
According to him, he wants to prevent a scenario in which the studio hires a lot of devs to deal with current issues, that will soon become obsolete and have to be let go again. Instead, he relies on "short-term solutions for short-term problems". He mentions outsourcing, contractors or limited-time contracts to solve these issues. This ensures that Arrowhead has enough man power to tackle all bugs and problems, while at the same time making sure noone has to be fired afterwards.
Keeping in mind, how many layoffs we've been seeing in the gaming and tech industry recently, this approach is definitely commendable. But to be honest, Pilestedt is doing an awesome job at communicating everything the studio does and would probably win the title of "Best Gaming CEO" if you asked the Community.
Also, he has some great thoughts on Microtransactions...