Appears to be like like PlayStation’s PC technique is paying off. Helldivers 2, the third-person co-op shooter that launched Thursday, has turn into the corporate’s greatest Steam launch thus far.
According 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 Struggle (2018)’s earlier concurrent peak of 73,529 when it hit PC again in 2022.
PlayStation has been trying 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 way in which as properly.
Nevertheless, Helldivers 2 is the primary PlayStation-published recreation to hit PS5 and PC concurrently. Its day-one launch on PC might clarify the excessive participant rely. In spite of everything, God of Struggle had already been out for years on PlayStation 4 by the point it hit PC, so there’s loads much less momentum. Nonetheless, Helldivers 2 is a little bit of a distinct segment title and is far 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, mentioned that the sport’s success comes down loads to co-op.
“I believe co-op is essential, and individuals are all the time in search of AAA-looking co-op video games they’ll attempt with their buddies. And the unique Helldivers being one other nice co-op recreation (though extra of a twin-stick shooter!) is a superb lead-in to the sequel,” he advised Polygon.
At present, Helldivers 2 has a blended ranking on Steam with simply over 10,800 opinions. 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 would stop the sport from launching. Developer Arrowhead Sport Studios has been engaged on fixes, and released a patch. I performed the sport for 3 hours final night time and didn’t encounter too many points in addition to some quickplay timeouts.