Infinite stratagem glitches aside, Helldivers 2 really does seem to've pulled up from some pretty dire times after a chaotic first year. Even if it hadn't, though, Arrowhead would've still very much enjoyed the uproaring success of its first months, which saw it hitting a massive all-time peak of over 450,000 players on Steam alone.
That success, per some Discord messages by Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani, has paved the way for an entirely self-funded game in the studio's future. In response to a player asking Jorjani to make sure the studio's next game is playable in all regions, he replied: "The next game is 100% funded by ourselves so we'll call 100% of those shots."
While I'm sure Jorjani wants to maintain some degree of diplomacy, here—and I think Sony's PSN decisions were absolutely baffling—he's not entirely wrong. It's easy to forget, but during the game's early days of chaotic server crashes and infernal login queues, Sony was a consistent lifeline to an otherwise overwhelmed studio.
More cynically, Helldivers 2 took eight years to make. Its development, as per the words of now-CCO Johan Pilestedt, was chaotic—would the studio have survived its growing pains without Sony's publishing aid to get it over the finishing line?
This isn't to, well, blow "smoke up their asses", as Jorjani puts it—merely to point out that game development is hard, long, unpredictable, and requires money. Sony definitely jeopardised Arrowhead's rep in the past with its boneheaded choices, but it also published the game with money a pre-Helldivers 2 Arrowhead probably didn't have to spend—if it's a break, then I reckon Jorjani's right to make it a clean one.
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