Helldivers2 is a huge success and it costs, but former Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt, who is currently transitioning to a mostly creative role, has told GamesIndustry that he has received "terrible" threats from some players, while Pilestedt is not trying to expose the studio, but he hopes to one day be "the next FromSoftware or Blizzard." I hope that there is a possibility."

Among many other things, it means adapting to the spotlight. The concerns about game balance are something the studio has recently resolved, and of course there's a lot of confusion over post-launch requirements to sign up for a psn account, and a lot of good will rests on it.

Pilestedt said that thanks to previous releases, including "The Terrible Launch of Magicka" in 2011, the studio has experience managing such crises. "Me and Shams (Jorjani, the new CEO of Arrowhead, who was an associate producer at Magicka), interact with the community, talk to them in an honest way, and take action as soon as possible to fix what's going on and the problem.But, he added, it was "a much smaller scale." This time it's a higher stakes."

A significant increase in the size of the player base has inevitably led to an increase in the difficulty of managing the crowd. "The big difference right now is the amount of threats and rude behavior that studio people are getting from really shitty individuals in the community," Pilestedt said. "It's a new thing that we have to deal with.

Jorjani believes that some of its toxicity stems from Arrowhead's approach to making games: The studio's motto, decorated with large letters on its website, literally means "A game for everyone is not a game for everyone.""I think that's one of the big reasons why Helldivers2 was so successful," says Jorjani.1 "There are a lot of things that are not popular, so it feels fresh.

"When this big hit, much bigger than everyone thought— Sony, us, everyone— what happens is that the game gets this amplification of different voices because it's outside of its niche fan group. Almost all games have a bit of toxicity in the community, but with these big numbers you get just so much."

To help reduce the influx of toxic behaviour, Jorjani said very diplomatically — Arrowhead said "we need to work with the community to be self-moderate, give people the tools to talk to each other in a positive way, and be able to continue talking openly with players." The more voices are added to the choir, the more complex it is."

I'm not sure it will be very easy: it makes me think of the situation with Destiny2 developer Bungie. Arrowhead has yet to take such a drastic step at the moment, and the growing hostility will not dampen enthusiasm for the future.

"I want to see how high we can fly," Pilestedt said. "And with Shams, we have a good chance of realizing a future that will turn into the next FromSoftware or Blizzard."We want to turn Arrowhead into a flagship studio, and those who want to make this kind of game say to themselves, "I want to work at Arrowhead,"" Jorjani said. "When we were growing up, we really wanted to work at Blizzard. I think Arrowhead has the potential to be that."

FromSoft and Blizzard are obviously very different studios, and in the case of Blizzard, at least for many employees the dream was not living in reality. But it's really more of a philosophical aspiration: Jorjani said that there are no plans to publish, and that growth "is going to be a means to the end, not the end itself." A measured growth that allows us to make great games and be a good place to work."We do not run our business for financial gain," Pilestedt said. "Humility and the desire to create a great game are the only reasons we exist."