Appears like PlayStation’s PC technique is paying off. Helldivers 2, the third-person co-op shooter that launched Thursday, has change into the corporate’s greatest Steam launch to this point.
In response to SteamDB, Helldivers 2 has reached 81,840 peak concurrent gamers on Steam simply someday after launch. (It’s since dropped to round 66,000 on the time of this writing.) That beats God of Warfare (2018)’s earlier concurrent peak of 73,529 when it hit PC again in 2022.
PlayStation has been seeking to develop its choices past simply the PlayStation 5, so it’s launched many first-party video games on Steam months or years after console launch. Simply in 2023, it put out Returnal and The Final of Us Half 1 for PC. Horizon Forbidden West and an Till Daybreak remaster are on the best way as nicely.
Nevertheless, Helldivers 2 is the primary PlayStation-published sport to hit PS5 and PC concurrently. Its day-one launch on PC might clarify the excessive participant depend. In spite of everything, God of Warfare had already been out for years on PlayStation 4 by the point it hit PC, so there’s rather a lot much less momentum. Nonetheless, Helldivers 2 is a little bit of a distinct segment title and is way smaller in scope in comparison with the AAA titles PlayStation beforehand delivered to the platform.
Simon Carless, founding father of GameDiscoverCo, which tracks and analyzes Steam utilization, stated that the sport’s success comes down rather a lot to co-op.
“I feel co-op is essential, and persons are at all times in search of AAA-looking co-op video games they’ll strive with their buddies. And the unique Helldivers being one other nice co-op sport (though extra of a twin-stick shooter!) is a superb lead-in to the sequel,” he informed Polygon.
At the moment, Helldivers 2 has a blended ranking on Steam with simply over 10,800 evaluations. Like many different multiplayer video games, it had a tough launch, with server and matchmaking points. Gamers have additionally reported issues with Nprotect Gameguard (the sport’s anti-cheat software program) that might stop the sport from launching. Developer Arrowhead Recreation Studios has been engaged on fixes, and launched a patch. I performed the sport for 3 hours final evening and didn’t encounter too many points apart from some quickplay timeouts.
