Helldivers 2’s Johan Pilestedt says developers need to start taking more risks: ‘Safe bets are a death sentence for the studios that try to make them’

Helldivers 2 creative director Johan Pilestedt says the game industry has a “convergence problem” because everyone is chasing the same “big next thing,” a type of risk aversion he believes has the industry “caught in a vicious circle of death and rebirth.”

Speaking at a Game Developers Conference panel attended by PC Gamer, Pilestedt pointed the finger at the rise of live service games, particularly battle royales, as symptomatic of a bigger problem for the industry: Developers all start trying to “compete for the same niche” when the next big trend kicks off, which leaves behind countless numbers of gamers who want to play other things, and are willing to spend money on them, but don’t have the opportunity.

“The games industry is caught in a vicious cycle of death and rebirth,” Pilestedt said. “Every so often we lay off thousands of people suddenly, and no one understands why, and I think it’s just because we converge.

“We will always go through that cycle of death and rebirth, but now that cycle is unnecessarily brutal because we don’t diversify enough. We need to make more types of games, because people are playing more than ever, and still, we are unable to sustain our business. It’s ridiculous. If everybody stopped making battle royales and made [different kinds of] games, we wouldn’t be in this position.”

Ironically, given how often such games fail, Pilestedt attributed the industry’s urge to chase trends to a desire for “safety,” particularly among publishers who “try to play it safe by taking safe bets.”

“One thing I can guarantee is that those safe bets are a death sentence for the studios that try to make them. We are in the business of taking risks, and if we don’t take risks we’re never going to be able to achieve success. Few people believed that Helldivers would amount to anything, and yet here we are.”

Indeed, here they are, and I think we have to acknowledge that the runaway success of Helldivers 2 affords Pilestedt a certain luxury of choice that a lot of other developers don’t have. Still, he’s not wrong in the big picture: As PC Gamer’s Morgan Park said all the way back in 2023, “live service keeps killing modestly successful multiplayer games,” some of which are quite good—but modest success just isn’t enough to survive in an all-or-nothing space, especially when they’re backed by publishers who demand immediate, significant financial returns.

Pilestedt concluded his talk by urging developers to not only take risks, but to do their own thing. “Make your games according to your studio’s foundation and style,” he said. “Don’t copy others. Think about what you want to make and take a gamble on it.”