It’s difficult to imagine a better scenario for Helldivers 2: blown estimates in its launch weekend, constantly filled up servers, and a multi-million-strong community of gamers that’s willing to fight for democracy and liberty without taking things too seriously.
As a result of its popularity, Helldivers 2 is suffering from success. Three weekends later, Arrowhead Game Studios has had to ask players to stop buying the game if they can’t afford to wait in line despite already increasing the server capacity to support 800,000 players concurrently. But this is a very good problem to have, especially for a studio that, as per its CEO, is composed of only a hundred or so individuals.
As Arrowhead prepares for what’s likely to be yet another massive week for Helldivers 2, it can at least rest easy knowing that Sony has every incentive to have their back for the foreseeable future.
Just as the studio’s CEO Johan Pilestedt was on his now-daily update on X, users tried to ask him just how many copies the game has sold since it came out. One, in particular, succeeded in getting a response.
When suggesting if Helldivers 2 had sold more than 3 million copies, Pilestedt responded with an emoji suggesting a higher number. Based on the estimated numbers by Gamalytic and VGInsights, the actual number of copies sold is somewhere around 4 million to 5 million.
If we assume that the 4 million users bought Helldivers 2 at its retail price of $40, we’re looking at a cool $160 million in revenue.
While we have no idea how much it cost Sony and Arrowhead to make Helldivers 2, the studio’s CEO did confirm that it took “7 years, 11 months and 26 days to create and launch.” Even if we assume that it cost Sony at least $100 million to make, which it likely didn’t since it exceeded expectations immediately at launch, we can safely say that it’s been making Sony money ever since it came out and will continue to do so for the next few months if not longer.
At this rate, it wouldn’t surprise us if, at the next earnings call, a quick summary of what SIE Chairman Hiroki Totoki has to say is that Sony needs to make more games like Helldivers 2.
Helldivers 2 currently doesn’t have a roadmap but it’s clear that an Xbox release isn’t on the table, even as gamers beg for reinforcements.
