Helldivers 2 defies studio expectations after selling 1 million copies

Arrowhead Games' manic sci-fi shooter Helldivers 2 has sold around 1 million copies in four days. The title launched for PlayStation 5 and Windows PC on February 8 and is currently smashing internal estimates.

In a post on X, Arrowhead CEO and Helldivers 2 creative director Johan Pilestedt explained the game was sitting at around 1 million copies sold as of February 11. Notably, he added that it's "blowing through" Arrowhead's sales expectations.

Helldivers 2 became one of the top-selling titles on Steam over the weekend (according to SteamDB estimates) and peaked at precisely 155,926 concurrent players on PC alone. The Sony-published title is also available on PlayStation 5, but it's unclear how those 1 million sales are split between the two platforms.

That rapid-fire success caused a few headaches for Arrowhead, with the studio admitting its servers struggled to cope with an influx of players. The company had to deploy a number of rapid-fixes over the weekend to address reward drop, player login, and server issues.

Arrowhead claimed Helldivers 2 reached 360,000 concurrent players across PC and console at one point over the weekend, requiring the studio to spring into action to prevent its entire system from failing.

Pilestedt apologized to players for the inconvenience but said it's impossible to predict what might happen when an online title is flooded with so many players.