Helldivers 2 creative director takes sabbatical, promises to start Arrowhead's next game on return

Helldivers 2 creative director Johan Pilestedt is taking a sabbatical after 11 years on the series, and will start developer Arrowhead's next game on his return.

Helldivers 2 released early last year, but as Pilestedt noted in a social media post, he's been "living it since early 2016", while development of the first game began in 2013.

"11 years of working 'around the clock' on the same IP has made me set aside family, friends and my lovely wife... and myself," he wrote.

"I am going to take some time now to redeem what was lost from all of those that supported me for over a decade."

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Of course, support on Helldivers 2 will continue while he's away, considering it's proven such a success - it topped 8m sales in March and was PlayStation's biggest ever launch on Steam.

Arrowhead did recently come under fire, however, for the high cost of its Killzone 2 collaboration, which the studio then gifted to players for free.

"When I'm back - I will start working on the next Arrowhead game," Pilestedt added. That will likely be a long way off, but it's exciting to consider what could be next for the studio.

Until then, there's the newly announced Helldivers film adaptation. Pilestedt confirmed Arrowhead will be involved, but in a limited capacity as he acknowledged the development team are "not Hollywood people".

Further, Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani joked he wants as "many A-list actors as possible" to be in the film, but only if "they all get killed violently immediately".