Start SlideshowStart SlideshowImage: Nintendo / Kotaku / Jake Randall / Burndumb, Nintendo / Kotaku, Fox / Disney / Kotaku, Sandfall Interactive, Nintendo / Kotaku, Arrowhead Game Studios / Kotaku, Screenshot: Подкаст «Пóпы и культура» / YouTube / Switch 2, a2dubai / YouTube / KotakuFrom mergers to memes, the landscape of interactive entertainment is always in motion. Here’s your cheat sheet for the week’s most important stories in gaming.Previous SlideNext SlideList slidesTarget Leaves Dozens Of Switch 2 Consoles Locked In A Cage On The Store FloorNintendo’s next big console, the Switch 2, is set to arrive on store shelves in just 10 days. So it’s not surprising to see photos showing dozens of Switch 2 consoles sitting in store warehouses and back areas. However, I wasn’t expecting a bunch of Switch 2 consoles to be sitting in a metal cage in the middle of a Target already. - Zack Zwiezen Read MorePrevious SlideNext SlideList slidesSwitch 2 Leaker Explains How He Got The Console Early And Why He's Not Afraid Of NintendoImage: Nintendo / KotakuIt was the middle of the night when Fedor Volkov found himself anxiously waiting on the streets of Moscow for a ride back home. In his arms he held a Switch 2 box and nestled within was the console fans had been waiting years to get their hands on, but which still didn’t officially go on sale for more than a week. He was too nervous and excited to remember to bring something to hide it in. - Ethan Gach Read MorePrevious SlideNext SlideList slidesSomeone Take Away Randy Pitchford's PhoneImage: Fox / Disney / KotakuSometimes you just gotta walk away. And this might be one of those times. Earlier this month, Gearbox co-founder and CEO Randy Pitchford replied to someone on social media about the studio’s next game, Borderlands 4, possibly receiving an $80 price tag. He said it wasn’t his call and then infamously added, “If you’re a real fan, you’ll find a way to make it happen.” This didn’t go over well with people online. A few days later, on May 22, he said he didn’t intend to sound like an asshole. - Zack Zwiezen Read MorePrevious SlideNext SlideList slidesSwitch 2 Startup And Menu Settings Appear Online As Early Player Shows Off Console In 'Code Red' Leak For NintendoScreenshot: Подкаст «Пóпы и культура» / YouTube / Switch 2The Switch 2 is just days away from its official June 5 launch, but already footage is beginning to spread online of people going hands-on with Nintendo’s next console. One fan based in Russia recently uploaded a nearly 10-minute video that includes the Switch 2's startup sequence and a tour through its menu settings. “Respects to this man for sacrificing his life to unbox the console a week before launch,” reads the top comment on YouTube. - Ethan Gach Read MorePrevious SlideNext SlideList slidesClair Obscur: Expedition 33 Publisher Says Fans Would Never Guess The Hit RPG's Budget: 'I'm Sure Mirror's Edge And Vanquish Cost More'Image: Sandfall InteractiveClair Obscur: Expedition 33 is one of the top-rated games of the year and has sold over 3.3 million copies. And it did it all with a very small budget, according to publisher Kelpler Interactive. How small? Portfolio director Matthew Handrahan isn’t saying, but he thinks everyone’s guesses are probably wrong. - Ethan Gach Read MorePrevious SlideNext SlideList slidesOnly One First-Party Nintendo Game Won't Work On Switch 2Image: Nintendo / KotakuThe Nintendo Switch 2 will be able to play most original Switch games without any issues when it launches on June 5. According to an update from Nintendo, most big games and all first-party titles (with one tiny exception) will work on Switch 2, though you might need an update or an old Joy-Con. - Zack Zwiezen Read MorePrevious SlideNext SlideList slidesHelldivers 2 Players Are Pulling Off Incredible Feats In A Last-Ditch Effort To Save Super EarthImage: Arrowhead Game Studios / KotakuHelldivers 2's Galactic War has come to Super Earth and it’s going very, very badly. Players have lost every major city on the planet save for two, but are making a triumphant last stand against the Illuminate as fans from across the real world band together to hold the line. - Ethan Gach Read MorePrevious SlideNext SlideList slidesSomeone's Unboxing A Switch 2 But Claims It Needs A Day-One Patch To WorkScreenshot: a2dubai / YouTube / KotakuSwitch 2 hardware appears to be officially out in the wild, but it doesn’t sound like anyone will be able to play the console early. A day-one patch is needed for it to fully work, according to someone who uploaded a brief unboxing video of the new Nintendo console to YouTube. - Ethan Gach Read MorePrevious SlideNext SlideList slidesGameStop Doubles Down On Crypto With Massive Bitcoin Purchase As Stores CloseGameStop Doubles Down On Crypto With Massive Bitcoin Purchase As Stores Close Share SubtitlesOffEnglishThe company continues its pivot away from selling games and toward doing anything else to stay afloatPrevious SlideNext SlideList slidesPlayStation’s Days of Play Brings Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, NBA 2K25 & More To PS PlusPlayStation’s Days of Play Brings Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, NBA 2K25 & More To PS Plus Share SubtitlesOffEnglishBomb Rush Cyberfunk is hitting PS Plus alongside NBA 2K25 and a Destiny 2 takeover in June

It's over. Well, for about ten minutes. Helldivers 2's battle for Super Earth has ended, with the Helldivers emerging from the siege victorious and seeing off the Illuminate. For now. Read more

“The President of Super Earth has been killed in action by the Illuminate during the fall of Prosperity City.” That was the message that greeted Helldivers 2 players when they logged on last night in one last bid to repel their invading squid-like foes. Some truthers think the hit was inside job. When the dust settled Friday morning, the battle to save Super Earth was over and players had succeeded in winning the extraction shooter’s biggest showdown since it launched. Pus they got a new battle station to celebrate. Suggested ReadingThe Week In Games: Co-Op Bug Blasting And More New Releases Share SubtitlesOffEnglishSuggested ReadingThe Week In Games: Co-Op Bug Blasting And More New Releases Share SubtitlesOffEnglishThe Week In Games: Co-Op Bug Blasting And More New Releases“The devastation wrought upon our home is immense,” read the latest in-game dispatch from Arrowhead Game Studios. “Only two Mega Cities remain standing: Prosperity City and Equality-on-Sea. The remainder have been vacated by the enemy, having suffered catastrophic damage at their hands.” New Major Orders are still pending, but in the meantime players get to vote on where to move the new DSS battle station that aided in the fight, and that provides extra military bonuses to Helldivers fighting on whatever planet it orbits. For anyone who missed the last two weeks, a brief series of entries on the Galactic Map recaps the events from the Illuminate’s arrival and torching of Mars and other planets, all the way through players’ epic last stand to protect Equality-on-Sea (Helldivers’ version of Shanghai). A lot of creative military tactics were improvised and deployed to take down the massive invading Leviathan ships, and a wave of negative Steam reviews, purportedly from Chinese players angry, due to a potential mistranslation, about why they couldn’t seem to fully liberate Equality-on-Sea, appears to have subsided.What happens next is anyone’s guess. Arrowhead Game Studios might take some time before kicking off whatever it has planned to let players catch their breath. Maybe the development team is lining up a revenge campaign, or maybe there’s still another shoe to drop and Super Earth isn’t quite in the clear after all. A new president? In this economy? Maybe they’re just an Illuminate plant after all, ready to control Super Earth from within. The beauty of Helldivers 2's fascist space satire is that nothing is ever quite out of the question. May kicked off one of Helldivers 2's biggest balance patches and content updates in some time, including a new Warbond battle pass with additional melee weapons and the ability to level up and customize most of the shooter’s guns. I wouldn’t bet on any other big updates anytime soon. That said, Summer Game Fest is just around the corner and Arrowhead used host Geoff Keighley’s last big gaming showcase to announce the addition of the Illuminate to the fray. Who knows what’s in store for the second half of Helldivers 2's second year?.

Time must fly when you're having fun. Or at least when you're defending Super Earth from a huge Illuminate invasio. Helldivers 2's latest major order is the "final phase" of the battle for the divers' home planet that's been raging since the Heart of Democracy update dropped on May 20. I must admit, I thought the Galactic War twist that's brought the biggest number of Helldivers back to the game of any update it's gotten so far would last a bit longer than three MOs. Then again, this is Helldivers 2 - the war ain't anywhere close to over while there are still troops on the march and enemies to surf on. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. First of all, the last major order, which expired earlier today, was a proper heartbreaker. After casually killing 2.5 billion Illuminate in the first stage of Super Earth's defense, players weren't quite able to successfully extract from missions against the Illuminate 20 million times. They got damn close, though. So, with that, while the divers have worn the Illuminate fleet's strength down to an estimated "24% of its original operating power", only four of Super Earth's seven Mega Cities are left standing. Yep, two more have joined the brilliantly-named Eagleopolis as smouldering wrecks. Cue Arrowhead's latest order, which declares the third phase of Super Earth's defense to be the final one. "High Command anticipates an all-out assault to take the final four Mega Cities," the studio wrote, "The Illuminate have spent a century preparing for this invasion; they will hold back nothing. What has come before was the preamble; this is the endgame...The Helldivers have their orders: HOLD Super Earth." To see this content please enable targeting cookies. In order to do that, players'll need to dig in on Super Earth against the squids, while also scrapping 200 million Automatons so they can bring the Democracy Space Station back online to aid that first bit. As of writing, nearly 98 million bots have already been bashed in since the order debuted this morning. Folks are seemingly going all out, no doubt buoyed by the fact today's little Helldivers 2 patch - 01.003.003 - made a very popular change to the Reinforced Epaulettes passive that comes with the armour sets from the recently deployed Masters of Ceremony Warbond. As well as making your limbs less likely to snap like twigs, you'll now be able to reload your primary weapon 30% faster and do 50% more melee damage when rocking the Parade Commander and Honorary Guard sets. Cue celebrations on Reddit. Are you planning on jumping in to help out with this final phase of Super Earth saving? Let us know below!

What just happened? Lenovo showcased two versions of its Legion Go S gaming handheld last January at CES 2025. While the Windows model launched in February, the SteamOS version has only just started shipping (with nearly identical hardware specs). Benchmarks released by popular YouTuber Dave Lee suggest that the latter is noticeably faster and more battery-efficient than the Windows version. Tests conducted by Dave2D show that Cyberpunk 2077, Doom Eternal, and The Witcher 3 benefit the most from Valve's Linux-based operating system. Frame rates also improve in Helldivers 2, although the gains are less dramatic. In Cyberpunk 2077, the Windows model could only hit 46 fps in low-medium settings, while the SteamOS version sees a noticeable jump to 59 fps. Witcher 3 also shows similar results, going from 66 fps on Windows to 76 fps on SteamOS. Doom Eternal hits 66 fps on Windows and 75 fps on SteamOS. The only exception is Spider Man 2, which actually drops a frame on SteamOS. Battery life on SteamOS is also vastly superior than on Windows despite both devices sporting the same 55Wh battery. Lee believes that it is because Linux doesn't have the same background tasks and telemetry that Windows 11 does. Another factor aiding the improved battery life and overall experience of the handheld is the well-optimized sleep and suspend functionality in SteamOS. Interestingly, the Legion Go S with SteamOS also offers better performance than the Steam Deck in most games, though it requires more wattage to achieve the higher frame rates. While the Lenovo device cranks up the power draw to 40 watts when plugged in, the Steam Deck tops out at just 15 watts. These tests support earlier claims that Windows was holding back the Legion Go S from becoming a serious Steam Deck challenger. With the SteamOS version now available, it becomes the first true competitor to Valve's popular gaming handheld. // Related Stories Price is another factor in SteamOS's favor. The Windows-powered Legion Go S costs over $700, making it significantly more expensive than the SteamOS model, which is listed at $600 at Best Buy. While we'll have to wait for full reviews, early benchmarks suggest that the SteamOS Legion Go is clearly the one to go for if you've got your heart set on a new Lenovo gaming handheld. Charts and benchmarks by Dave2D Which matters more to you in a PC gaming handheld?

In an era where big-budget multiplayer titles fail spectacularly, it’s interesting to see efforts like Helldivers 2 and Palworld experience such incredible success. The former crossed 15 million players last November and sees about 2.5 million weekly. Meanwhile, Palworld crossed 32 million players as of February. Despite the differences in content models – live service vs. early access – both face pretty similar issues when it comes to adding new content. Palworld community and publisher manager John Buckley spoke to GamesRadar as part of a larger piece about what people get wrong about game development, noting, “I think people have very unrealistic expectations of timelines. “I play an unhealthy amount of games myself. I understand the need for more content quickly. But I think people really misunderstand how long it takes to make things.” Upon seeing games like Fortnite and Call of Duty receiving so much content, there’s the perception that Palworld should do the same. “So they come into something like Palworld. They play it for a week, they love it, and then, they go, you know, what’s going on with this? There are so many people saying we’ve dropped off, we’re dead, or we’ve run away with the money, we’re not working on it. We are, every minute of the day, working on this game, but it takes weeks and months to make stuff,” said Buckley, who revealed that a new island in the game takes six months to create. “And when it comes out, people are super excited, but you just get so many nasty comments before that about these things. And you try to explain it, and there’ll always be a few gamers who get it, and they really appreciate that dialogue, but quite a lot of them don’t. They just don’t get the timeline. So I think development timelines are very misunderstood, and it’s something that would be cool if more people understood, but I think it’s hard to accurately explain.” In the same piece, Arrowhead creative director Johan Pilestedt also outlined how difficult it is to add things to a game, even if they appear relatively simple. “If you think about when movies are made, you get an actor and they’re there and you tell them what to say. “But games are so meticulously crafted. You have to build the actor from the ground up for them to even be able to perform those lines. People say, can’t they add this or do that. Most of the time, all of the decisions that you make, especially the larger the game gets, have so many consequences that cascade, making something that seems easy really hard, or something that seems really hard to be super simple. “It’s unintuitive unless you’ve worked in games to see how they’re created,” said Pilestedt. Pocketpair is working on its ending scenario for Palworld that allows players to explore the World Tree, though it clarified that this is “by no means the end” of support. Helldivers 2 recently saw its Heart of Democracy update, which led to a surge in concurrent players across both platforms.

In an era where big-budget multiplayer titles fail spectacularly, it’s interesting to see efforts like Helldivers 2 and Palworld experience such incredible success. The former crossed 15 million players last November and sees about 2.5 million weekly. Meanwhile, Palworld crossed 32 million players as of February. Despite the differences in content models – live service vs. early access – both face pretty similar issues when it comes to adding new content. Palworld community and publisher manager John Buckley spoke to GamesRadar as part of a larger piece about what people get wrong about game development, noting, “I think people have very unrealistic expectations of timelines. “I play an unhealthy amount of games myself. I understand the need for more content quickly. But I think people really misunderstand how long it takes to make things.” Upon seeing games like Fortnite and Call of Duty receiving so much content, there’s the perception that Palworld should do the same. “So they come into something like Palworld. They play it for a week, they love it, and then, they go, you know, what’s going on with this? There are so many people saying we’ve dropped off, we’re dead, or we’ve run away with the money, we’re not working on it. We are, every minute of the day, working on this game, but it takes weeks and months to make stuff,” said Buckley, who revealed that a new island in the game takes six months to create. “And when it comes out, people are super excited, but you just get so many nasty comments before that about these things. And you try to explain it, and there’ll always be a few gamers who get it, and they really appreciate that dialogue, but quite a lot of them don’t. They just don’t get the timeline. So I think development timelines are very misunderstood, and it’s something that would be cool if more people understood, but I think it’s hard to accurately explain.” In the same piece, Arrowhead creative director Johan Pilestedt also outlined how difficult it is to add things to a game, even if they appear relatively simple. “If you think about when movies are made, you get an actor and they’re there and you tell them what to say. “But games are so meticulously crafted. You have to build the actor from the ground up for them to even be able to perform those lines. People say, can’t they add this or do that. Most of the time, all of the decisions that you make, especially the larger the game gets, have so many consequences that cascade, making something that seems easy really hard, or something that seems really hard to be super simple. “It’s unintuitive unless you’ve worked in games to see how they’re created,” said Pilestedt. Pocketpair is working on its ending scenario for Palworld that allows players to explore the World Tree, though it clarified that this is “by no means the end” of support. Helldivers 2 recently saw its Heart of Democracy update, which led to a surge in concurrent players across both platforms.

How deep is Sony's commitment to live-service? | Opinion Sony's live service ambitions have steadily scaled back, but questions remain about Bungie – and how much the overall PlayStation strategy hinges on live service Image credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment Feature by Rob Fahey Contributing Editor Published on May 23, 2025 In many regards, things are going very well for Sony right now. The PlayStation 5 has sold strongly, generally slightly outpacing the performance of the PS4 at equivalent points in its lifecycle despite cost pressures that have kept its retail prices high. Its biggest direct competitor, Microsoft, started the generation with a great hardware line-up but has ultimately pivoted away from console exclusive software and become one of the biggest third-party publishers on PlayStation. Sony has an enviable line-up of studios and premium first-party game franchises, has started to find success with movie and TV adaptations of some of its game IP, and is gradually building up a solid sideline business in PC versions of its blockbuster titles – not to mention that next year GTA 6 will turn up and presumably sell absolute truckloads of PS5s in the process. It's not all quite so rosy, of course. With a view to the longer term, for example, it's not unreasonable to point out that while the console business has stubbornly defied all the predictions of collapse over the past decade or two, it has certainly found itself smacking off a glass ceiling somewhere around the installed base mark achieved by the PS2, and additional growth seems elusive despite rising costs across the board. Still, within the confines of that market reality, Sony has been performing extremely well – with the arguable exception of one specific part of the company, over which hovers a question mark so big that it casts a shadow over a lot of this success. This strategic enigma is Bungie – or to be more specific, it's the entire content strategy that was meant to be anchored around the $3.6 billion dollar acquisition of Bungie back in 2022. While this is chickenfeed compared to the money Microsoft was splashing around on gaming acquisitions during the same era, it was an enormous purchase for Sony, and it was meant to kick-start a major change in how the company would make games. Image credit: Bungie Sony got live services religion, and it got it bad; the company, or at least some influential people within the company, believed that the way to achieve the kind of break-out growth that its success in hardware and premium games was failing to deliver had to come through finding the next Fortnite. Bungie, with its experience of running the Destiny franchise and supposedly with multiple unannounced live service titles being incubated at that point, would be the lynchpin of that strategy, not only building its own live service games but also providing expertise and guidance to Sony's other studios as they worked on live service titles based on their own core IPs. In the years that have followed, that strategy has foundered somewhat – not least because rather than being the jewel in the crown of the live service effort, Sony's acquisition of Bungie appears to have resulted in constantly having to put out new fires at the company. I wonder how different Sony's strategic positioning might sound now if the release dates of Concord and Helldivers 2 had been swapped around While insight into the internal workings of the relationship is very unreliable given that most people leaking information undoubtedly have an axe to grind, one does speculate that there's a weird, destructive tug-of-war going on between Bungie's leadership and their new owners at Sony. What we can say with certainty is that revenues from Destiny 2 fluctuated wildly (as did the quality of the game and players' sentiments towards it), drawing into question just how much Sony's other studios might want to take direction on live service strategy from Bungie. Major layoffs were conducted, raising some even bigger questions about what Sony had paid all that money for, if not for acquiring a wellspring of talent and experience in the form of Bungie's now-fired employees. Despite this, however, Sony's determination that its future lies with live service releases doesn't seem to have faltered – well, at least not much. The ambitious initial plans for a dozen live service games to launch by early 2026 were scaled back to six a couple of years ago. Depending on how you're counting (bear in mind that titles like MLB The Show are considered live service, even if they may not be what jumps to mind when you think of this category), it seems pretty likely that this halved forecast will be missed by a fair bit, especially given the ignominious failure and rapid shutdown of one of the few live service games to actually launch, Concord. Image credit: PlayStation / Arrowhead Game Studios There was also a widespread suspicion that the retirement of former Sony Interactive Entertainment boss Jim Ryan a year ago might see the company quietly water down its commitment to live service. Despite this, however, Sony's messaging continues to suggest a strong focus on this sector. SIE co-CEO Hermen Hulst announced a new live-service oriented studio in the PlayStation Studios group, teamLFG, just this week. Back in 2022, the Bungie acquisition seemed to make a sort of sense. The climate around live service was extremely positive; this was long before we'd seen gigantic, costly failures like Warner's catastrophic Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, or indeed Sony's own Concord. Sony lacked expertise in this sector, and the Bungie deal could plug that gap. It was nonetheless risky – not least because it flew in the face of Sony's de facto policy of only buying out large studios with which they had built extremely close working relationships on successful titles over several years, despite that policy being central to building up PlayStation Studios in the first place. Today, the climate is very different around live service games, not least because of the aforementioned failures, but also because of what seems to be a fairly strong turn in consumer sentiment around these kinds of services. Sony, however, still has a multi-billion dollar studio that really only does live services attached to it, and one does have to wonder about the extent to which that creates path dependency. The new live service studio, teamLFG, is a good example in that it appears to be a direct spin-off from Bungie, so that acquisition is still very much driving Sony's engagement with this whole market sector. It's worth noting, though, that Sony did also have some beginner's luck in live services, with its first real dip into this water being the excellent and well-received Helldivers 2. In any high-risk gambling, beginner's luck is a curse, because you'll end up throwing far more of your money at the casino than the person who had a run of bad luck on their first visit and never caught the bug or tried to chase the winning feeling. I wonder how different Sony's strategic positioning might sound now if the release dates of Concord and Helldivers 2 had been swapped around. Even were it not for the need to do something with Bungie, and the sense that Helldivers 2 shows that this market sector can work for Sony, there's another logic that might underpin a continuing commitment to live service games – even despite what is now much more widely understood to be a near-suicidal risk profile for launching them. It's the logic of venture capital, which can often look quite crazy from the perspective of an ordinary investor with a regular risk appetite, but which is all about high risks and high rewards. Venture capitalists are generally not too interested in solid businesses with sober risk profiles and a decent profit margin. They're interested in crazy, fast-growing businesses that, while being incredibly likely to flare out and die, will return a hundred-fold, a thousand-fold, or an even higher upside ratio in the unlikely event that they do succeed. The logic of a venture portfolio is that losing a big chunk of money on each of 99 bankrupt companies you back is worthwhile if the 100th company in the pack strikes the jackpot for you and returns your investment a thousand-fold. Since games don't really do that – they're risky, but almost never have upside rewards on that scale – the venture capital model doesn't work terribly well for them, and that kind of VC activity has been very limited in this space over the years. Live service games, however, turn this on its head. It's extremely, vanishingly unlikely that your game will be the next Fortnite, but if it is, it will deliver exactly the kind of immense return that venture capital funds are interested in. This, I think, is a sort of thinking that's taken root in some quarters within Sony. Who cares if they back dozens of failures, if one of them becomes a new title whose recurring revenue is big enough on its own to be a whole new pillar of the business? We'll see in the coming years whether that's really the approach Sony intends to take – if it's happy to absorb more and more Concord-style failures (or, perhaps more likely, a bunch of commercially mediocre performers that stick around for a year or two before being shut down, which seems to be the general life cycle of live service games at the moment) in pursuit of that one, elusive, incredible hit. If so, it's a strategy which carries an especially extraordinary degree of risk for Sony, because while a venture capital fund can back dozens of losers without anyone really noticing or caring – that's just part of the business – it's definitely going to be noticed by Sony's consumers if PlayStation starts releasing dozens of dud live services games under its banner. Money is only one of the currencies that needs to be considered in this equation, and it's arguably the easiest one to gamble with. The prestige and reputation of the platform and the brand is a much more valuable currency, and one that would be a lot harder to earn back once lost.

Email us at PSPodcast@sony.com! Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or download here Hey, everybody! Sid, Brett, and I are back this week to discuss the latest news and what games currently have us locked in. This episode also includes interviews with Arrowhead Game Studios Production Director Alex Bolle and Design Director Niklas Malmborg. Stuff We Talked About Next week’s release highlights: To a T | PS5 F1 25 | PS5, PS4 Disney Illusion Island Starring Mickey & Friends | PS5, PS4 Elden Ring Nightreign | PS5, PS4 Hypercharge: Unboxed | PS5, PS4 Helldivers 2 —  Super Earth is under attack and learn how you can defend it Mukti — Gameplay reveal of the upcoming narrative title from Sony India Hero project  Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 — See the new maps and modes coming to season 4 May 29 Zenless Zone Zero — Season 2 launches June 6 with new features and anniversary rewards The Cast View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Sid Shuman – Senior Director of Content Communications, SIE View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Brett Elston – Manager, Content Communications, SIE View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image O’Dell Harmon Jr. – Content Communications Specialist, SIE Thanks to Dormilón for our rad theme song and show music. [Editor’s note: PSN game release dates are subject to change without notice. Game details are gathered from press releases from their individual publishers and/or ESRB rating descriptions.]

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here Helldivers 2 is one of the most exciting multiplayer games around, largely due to Arrowhead’s fantastic post-launch updates. While the game’s first few updates had some major issues, the developer has released some truly fantastic patches, including the on-going Illuminate Invasion of Super Earth. In a recent interview with PCGamer, Arrowhead CCO Johan Pilestedt explained that gamers don’t understand just how difficult it actually is to add in some of these major features. Speaking in the interview, Pilestedt explained that the troubles of game development means that adding in simple features can take way longer than many gamers expect. On the other side, sometimes even major features can take less time than many would assume—it’s all down to the perils of development. “The one thing people misconstrue the most is—if you think about when movies are made, you get an actor and they’re there, and you tell them what to say,” the Arrowhead CCO explained. “But games are so meticulously crafted. You have to build the actor from the ground up.” Pilestedt explained that they often see players online asking why the studio doesn’t just add features to the game, but those commenters don’t understand just how difficult that job is as they don’t know how the game actually works. “[Players always ask] can’t they add this or do that’,” the developer explained. “Most of the time, the decisions you make (especially the larger the game gets) have so many consequences that cascade. [It makes] something that seems easy really hard, or something that seems really hard super simple. It’s unintuitive unless you’ve worked in games to see how they’re created.” Over the past few years, we’ve seen this type of comment on countless articles, social media posts and more. Oftentimes, when an update doesn’t do exactly what a player wants, they’ll call developers “lazy” or insult them. However, adding anything to a game is typically harder than the majority of players believe it is. Pilestedt’s comments probably won’t stop players from complaining or commenting every update, but Arrowhead’s major additions to Helldivers 2 are incredibly impressive. From the arrival of the Illuminate to the introduction of Mega City maps, the studio has already overhauled the game in ways many thought impossible. As the game evolves, the Helldivers 2 developers are planning to make the game feel like a full-fledged sequel. It’s an exciting time to be a fan—let’s just hope we don’t lose Super Earth! Subscribe to our newsletters! By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime. Share