Helldivers 2 is mid-way through its second weekend since launching on February 8 and it’s showing absolutely zero signs of slowing down. After beating God of War‘s player count on Steam in its first weekend, it’s giving Arrowhead Game Studios a reason to celebrate all the sleepless nights: it’s now the third-most played game on Steam, beaten only by long-time platform stalwarts Dota 2 and Counter-Strike 2.
The satirical third-person co-op shooter is giving plenty of other games on Steam a good run for their money, including last month’s hit Xbox exclusive, Palworld. As of the time of writing, it has reached a peak concurrent player count of 333,827, making it the 28th-most-played game on Steam ever.
With Helldivers 2 encouraging players to enlist and fight the good fight, it could continue taking to the skies. But, it faces steep co-op shooter competition: the juggernaut, PUBG, still holds the top spot on Steam with a peak concurrent score of 3,257,248 players. Palworld is still second at 2,101,867 players. Nevertheless, beating Starfield‘s numbers despite coming in with relatively little fanfare suggests that it isn’t about to slow down.
Helldivers 2 owes its success to a simple fact: it’s a good and fun game that you can enjoy with your friends. Does it have microtransactions? Definitely. However, it’s not pay-to-win.
As the first of Sony’s big live-service ventures, other games following suit can learn a thing or two from Helldivers 2‘s emphasis on earning the right to have microtransactions – a mantra that Arrowhead appears to live by.
Helldivers 2‘s success hasn’t been without hiccups. Just like landing from orbit is expected to come with turbulence, Arrowhead finds itself dealing with issues and literal bugs. Thankfully, the team is now expanding to try and get ahead of the curve. It’s also been targeted by Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, as an example of why exclusives are bad for video games. Surprisingly enough, Helldivers 2 is one of the few games where PlayStation players want to see an Xbox port. Unfortunately, it isn’t expected to come to Xbox anytime soon but a PC Game Pass release might not be out of the question, thanks to Death Stranding.
