“I have to clarify that I did not cook”: Former Helldivers 2 CEO now focusing on the game itself says its new and fabulous patch came from “the team,” not his personal kitchen
Helldivers 2’s creative director and former Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt has clarified that he “did not cook” on the third-person shooter’s latest enormous patch, with “the ideas and execution” all down to the rest of the team.
The long-awaited patch arrived last week, boasting over 100 changes to the game including Stratagem tweaks, alterations to the behavior of Fire Tornadoes (which will, mercifully, no longer hunt you down), visible supply lines on the Galactic War table, and more. As indicated in a recent poll on the Helldivers 2 Discord, the vast majority of players are loving it, but Pilestedt, who recently stepped down from his role as the studio’s CEO to become Arrowhead’s chief creative officer, has stated that he “merely [gave] a gentle nudge” towards the update.
“Thank you, but I have to clarify that I did not cook,” he writes on Reddit, responding to a funny post showing a “leaked video of Pilestedt working on the patch” which you can look at below. “I have merely given a gentle nudge. The ideas and execution for this is the team’s.”
Leaked video of Pilestedt working on the patch from r/Helldivers
You can understand why some fans would assume Pilestedt was more involved than he was on the update, given that his recent role change was to allow him to “focus more on games and not have to deal with HR policies,” and ultimately become “more active with the community and work closer to the team.” With that said, he’s already taken to Twitter to figure out what players love and hate the most out of the recent changes, which, hopefully, could help future patches be even better.
Speaking of which, it’s been suggested that one of the patch’s changes may have unintentionally made Helldivers 2 more difficult, which wasn’t Arrowhead’s intention. However, the studio is aware of the feedback from players, and community manager Thomas ‘Twinbeard’ Petersson stated last week that he’d “have to monitor this before being able to clarify.” No official statement on the matter has been made at the time of writing, but it seems we could potentially be seeing more tweaks made to patrol spawning sooner than expected.