"I Have Been Living It Since Early 2016": Helldivers 2 Director Taking Time Off Before Their Next Game

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Following a series of successful and well-received updates for , the game's Creative Director and CCO of developer Arrowhead Game Studios, Johan Piletstedt, has announced that he'll be taking a break. Launched in February 2024, quickly became a breakout success for Arrowhead, dwarfing the player count of the original and becoming one of the few truly successful live-service games to be released in recent years. Despite suffering from some major setbacks, has continued to see success in 2025 and still has some big updates ahead of it.

As announced by Johan Pilestedt on X, he will be taking "", noting that the eleven years of work that he's put into the games have affected his personal life. As Arrowhead continues to work on without him, Pilestedt promises that the studio "" — and, interestingly, hints at what might be next for the studio after the end of his break,teasing "".

Notably, while Pilestedt's statement says that he's taking a break, it does seem like, where is concerned,he'll have minimal involvement in the game's development going forward. Instead, as his statement indicates, he'll be taking the lead on an entirely new title and leaving the development of to others at Arrowhead. Hopefully, after working on the series since 2013, an extended break and beginning work on an entirely new project will provide a nice change of pace.

After a wildly successful launch and a series of less successful updates, is Helldivers 2 still worth playing, a year after its initial release?

While Pilestedt served as the CEO of Arrowhead when launched, he took a step back from the role three months later in May, announcing on X that he would be passing it to current CEO Shams Jorjani and stepping into the position of Chief Creative Officer, making him more directly involved in 's ongoing development. Some of the updates that followed, most notably the "" update in August, received backlash from the community, mostly for nerfing certain weapons, but the game has since changed