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When 2024 started, Helldivers 2 was barely a blip on most people’s game release radars. It quickly became the biggest hit of the year so far, turning into both a sales juggernaut and a cultural phenomenon. And in an era of hyper consolidation, it made Arrowhead Studios an obvious target for acquisition by the game’s publisher, Sony.

Months later, co-founder Johan Pilestedt maintains the Sweden-based team of over 100 has no plans of becoming another cog in the first-party PlayStation machine. “We pride ourselves on being an independent studio,” he told Gamesindustry.biz in a new interview today .



“We have to see what the future holds, but there’s nothing in the plans where we want to be acquired by somebody. I want to see how high we can fly.” Pilestedt also announced today that the studio has hired former Paradox Interactive executive Shams Jorjani to be its new CEO while he moves into a chief creative officer role to focus more on keeping Helldivers 2 a top-10 live service hit.

I don’t understand the closure of @TangoGameworks , I mean...

Why close instead of divest? Surely the team would easily have been able to find a new home. 🤷‍♂️ — Pilestedt (@Pilestedt) May 7, 2024 The two say Arrowhead now has ambitions of being a flagship studio that can rival the best in the world, especially when it comes to the hyper-competitive landscape of online co-op games. “When we were growing up, we really wanted to work at Blizzard, it was one of the bucket lis.

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