Arrowhead Game Studio, the developer behind the hit co-op multiplayer shooter Helldivers 2, will now have a new CEO.
Shams Jorjani will now take the helm as CEO at Arrowhead.
Johan Pilestedt, the previous CEO that has also incidentally served as Helldivers 2’s spokesperson on the app still known to many as Twitter, will still be around. Pilestedtnow serves as the company’s Chief Creative Officer and chairman.
Speaking to Gameindustry.biz, Pilestedt explained the move was for to enable him to focus on game creation rather than on the business side, as the Sweden-based developer grows to over 120+ developers.
That means, in Pilestedt’s own tweet of the announcement, “I will spend MORE time with the team and 100% of my focus on the games and community!”
Jorjani has a long history in the game development scene. He’s the 23rd employee at Paradox Interactive, which he has worked at in various leadership roles. He was also an associate producer on Magicka, the first game by Arrowhead released in 2011. Pilesteadt meant it when he said him and Jorjani “go way back”.
Helldivers 2 sold gangbusters. The first Helldivers was a humble top-down shooter, it’s Magicka but with guns (well, more guns) and totally-not-totalitarianism-jingoism themes. Helldivers 2 transitions into a third-person perspective and ups the scale of its horde shooter while still retain its unconventional, sometimes intentionally troll-y mechanics and design, that it has sold more than 12 million copies. It’s now the fastest-selling PlayStation game. An impressive feat for a PlayStation Studios IP created by a non-Sony-owned developer.
Helldivers 2 has faced its fair share of controversies, from the rocky launch to the recent requirement of enforcing players on PC to have a PSN account as the game gets delisted in various countries.
Helldivers 2 is out now on PS5 and PC (Steam). Check out our review here.