Helldivers 2 launch on par with big games like Modern Warfare II and Apex Legends | The DeanBeat

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Helldivers 2‘s initial daily active users (DAUs) on Steam have been on par with major releases including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and Apex Legends, according to a report by IDG Consulting.

Now that’s Democracy!

Christina Kei, vice president and head of syndicated research at IDG Consulting said that Helldiver 2’s numbers are pretty strong considering launch challenges.

IDG Consulting said that in spite of its well-documented server issues at launch — and the fact that it is not a free-to-play game like Apex Legends — Helldivers 2 (which sells for $40) is on par with leading free-to-play titles like Warzone 2 and Apex Legends as well as the premium title Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II.

After 30 days on the market, Helldivers 2 has millions of players on Steam and PlayStation, just shy of the Call of Duty DAUs on Steam, Xbox and PlayStation, IDG said. And Helldivers 2 is far above the first 30 days of Apex Legends and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.

The rarity of success

The success is a remarkable achievement in a lot of ways. Market researcher Newzoo reported that the PC and console market grew revenues by only 2.6% in 2023, reaching $93.5 billion in revenue. But average quarterly playtime has decreased by 26% since the first quarter of 2021, with players spending over 60% of playtime on games released six or more years ago. That means breaking into the top ranks like Palworld and Helldivers 2 have done is a rare occasion.

Call of Duty’s DAU moving average trended downward on Steam from about the end of January onward, so it cannot be said conclusively that its numbers went down because of Helldivers 2, which is only available on two platforms. However, when you consider that Call of Duty is on three platforms, the Helldivers 2 achievement seems pretty monumental. Call of Duty hasn’t had real competition like this since the launches of Apex Legends and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

While the rest of the industry was hurting from layoffs, the game from Arrowhead Game Studios in Stockholm, Sweden was a rare success — like Palworld a bit earlier — that delighted players and took off in the absence of other successful triple-A launches.

In fact, IDG Consulting said that Helldivers 2’s Metacritic score of 82 out of 100 has beaten games like Warner Bros.’ Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (60), Ubisoft’s Skull & Bones, and Payday 3 (66). Arrowhead isn’t a tiny indie studio; it built the game with more than 100 developers. They worked for eight years, using an engine that was discontinued in 2018.

Helldivers 2 stormed onto the PC on February 8 on PlayStation and the PC. I’ve played a handful of times with my buddy Mark Chandler, and it’s got a lot of interesting details working in its favor. You team up in a squad of up to four players and go hunting for giant bugs (Terminids) and robots (Automatons) across the galaxy in a war that is like a modernized version of Starship Troopers. It’s a campy title, just like the old Starship Troopers movie.

Players made a lot of noise about not being able to get into the game because the servers were overwhelmed. That made the launch difficult as the game set records for concurrency on Steam. But eventually those complaints subsided as the game devs succeeded in raising the player cap.

What’s the appeal?

You pick your weapons on your space destroyer and then drop into enemy territory. You start mowing down the bugs and fulfill missions like grabbing intel. Then you extract before the bugs swarm on you. You get a lot of laughs because the game has friendly fire, and I inadvertently dropped my first cluster bomb on some of my teammates, wiping them out alongside a bunch of bugs.

Chandler says he enjoys seeing my growth as a player, where I die in more spectacular ways. In fact, I died in one game because the extraction chopper landed on top of me while I was defending our hilltop. Then my buddies decided they couldn’t bring me back and so they left the planet without me. I consider this to be emergent comedic gameplay. It’s nice to have comrades who are patient about constantly bringing me back as a reinforcement after I die.

In any case, having laughs with a squad of teammates like this — where you’re mowing down waves of bugs together instead of getting shot down by kids with squeaky voices — could be addictive. The devs have added flying bugs, which is a new hassle that deepens the combat complexity.

I do see the path for improvement, which involves mastering tasks like calling in your strikes and bringing in your reinforcements in smart ways. So it’s certainly a game where you take the path for improvement seriously. My colleagues have been dropping better weapons, bots, and shields for me. Once I can earn those on my own, I’ll feel a lot more potent in taking on the enemies on my own.

As an aside, I was amused to finally find this email from 2015:

We thought you may be interested in reviewing Arrowhead Game Studio’s new game release, HELLDIVERS™ for PC platform on Steam.

The codes are for the Press Beta of the game, and will be valid from today.

Please note that there will not be any DLC available until the official release of HELLDIVERS™ on the 7th December.

Arrowhead Game Studios