Helldivers 2 CEO describes the 'War Room' atmosphere on launch day, as a server-breaking tidal wave of unexpected divers came flooding in: 'We saw the graph, just—players rising and rising'

Helldivers 2's meteoric rise to fame has been a double-edged sword for Arrowhead Games. As around of consensus from other veteran devs noted earlier in the month, studios can only prepare for server load with what might as well amount to soothsaying—and if said predictions are off, chaos ensues. Speaking to PC Gamer, Arrowhead Games' CEO Johan Pilestedt described the atmosphere in the studio's HQ as it became rapidly clear what a monumental task his team had on their hands.

«I don't know if it's because we're Swedish or anything,» Pilestedt jokes. «We have a tendency to have a lot of self-doubt in what we're actually doing. I mean we knew we had a game that was special … there's several people [at the studio] who have, y'know, over 2,000-3,000 hours in the game.»

But a dev team's fondness for their product rarely predicts success—fate, discoverability, and market conditions can be cruel even to the best of games. «As launch came around the corner, people of course got a little more anxious, like 'what's gonna happen?', 'pre-orders look really strong'.» 

Arrowhead didn't see the wind change direction for the better (and more chaotic) until the game was almost out: "[We thought]: If this matches Magicka, it means that the day one sales would be 10 times higher week one, and three times higher month one. We started doing the math." 

Two days. That's the amount of warning Arrowhead Games received that something big could be coming. 

«The realisation comes pretty sudden, on like, the sixth of February (two days before the game launches): If these numbers hold up, do our severs hold up? Nope. Not at all,» Pilestedt says through laughter. «Like, 'what are we gonna do?'» Still, «the team really got cracking immediately … I was like: phew, let's ensure we can be in a reasonable ballpark here, because this is way more than we ever anticipated.» 

Despite the work the studio put into bracing for impact, the full scope of the player-count lovebomb didn't become clear until the