Helldivers 2 studio Arrowhead is still struggling to catch up to the intense pressure that comes with releasing such a wildly, unexpectedly successful game - and now they're also dealing with internal delays caused by the recent PSN-linking kerfuffle.
Over on the official Helldivers Discord channel, community manager Twinbeard explained from their perpsective why there's sometimes the perception that Arrowhead is slow to react to and implement changes based on community feedback. In Twinbeard's opinion, the issue comes down to the size of the studio still not being in proportion to the success of the game.
"I think the biggest issue so far has been that we were overwhelmed already by launch," Twinbeard said. "It takes time - a lot of time - to bounce back and get ahead with such massive pressure, and what can easily can be perceived as us being slow or not listening is more (IMHO anyway) the fact that we're still not up to speed.
- After an eventful year, Helldivers 2 devs hope "it will be less of a bumpy road when it comes to release accuracy" - but Arrowhead is still "prepared to take risks"
- After a year of PSN controversy, balance woes, and a 63-day recovery effort, Helldivers 2 devs say "we've been on a rollercoaster, but we're also in an extremely privileged position to be on this rollercoaster"
"Also, the game is still only three months old, but due to is being such a massive success, there's a ton of sentiment, opinions, suggestions and great feedback, some of which we lack the time and resources to always handle satisfactory. We're hiring and learning, though! ❤️"
Compounding the issue, of course, is the fact that Arrowhead is now only just recovering from an absolute nightmare of a PR crisis after Sony made the decision to mandate PSN linking for Helldivers 2 PC players. That mandate has since been reversed, but not before the game's Steam rating took a serious beating.
"Also, when sth like the PSN-gate (TM) happens, a lot of things come to a halt," Twinbeard said. "Many of us at AH more or less 'lost' a week due to this, and only now are slowly getting back to what we were doing before all of this (and that's even with it not being entirely resolved as well)."
Twinbeard added that, as Arrowhead grows it plans "to do a lot of other things" including "vlogs, streams, interviews, community events, competitions etc. Hopefully we'll manage to both get there AND communicate changes and feedback for/to the game."
From the beginning, Arrowhead has been candid about the fact that Helldivers 2's explosive success has been a lot to keep up with. Back at launch, the big issue was simply maintaining server stability, but now that that's mostly been resolved, it seems the focus has turned to making sure community feedback is being properly considered and acknowledged. At least on that front, I'd say the community scored a massive win by getting a company as big as Sony to completely reverse course on a fairly significant policy change.
