Bugs and all.

Despite a rocky launch yesterday, Helldivers 2 quickly became the biggest ever PC release for a Sony published title. Helldivers 2 surpassed the previous top PC release for Sony, God of War, in spite of server woes and crashing issues.

Helldivers 2, developed by Arrowhead Game Studios is a co-op action title that Sony Interactive Entertainment released on PlayStation 5 and PC on February 8, 2024. Thanks to SteamDB, we see that Helldivers 2 peaked at 81,840 players on release day. The game is sitting just shy of 80,000 concurrent players right now, which suggests that the record could be broken shortly.

The previous record holder for a Sony PC title was none other than God of War. That release saw a peak concurrent player count of 73,529 when it finally arrived on PC about two years ago.

It really isn't hard to imagine why Helldivers 2 is doing such strong numbers on PC. The game is reasonably priced at $39.99 (USD). Perhaps a stronger reason for its success on PC is the fact that Helldivers 2 on PC was released on the exact same date as the PlayStation 5 release. Sony typically waits several months or years, between when a game comes out on a PlayStation console and when it hits PC.

Sadly, this probably won't be the start of a new trend for Sony when it comes to the company's approach to PC releases. In an October 2022 interview with head of PlayStation Studios Hermen Hulst, stated that only new live-service titles will be released on PC the same day as on PlayStation consoles. He said that first-party single player titles will be exclusive for at least one year on PlayStation before coming to PC.

Arrowhead Game Studios already released one update shortly after release that tackled some of the more common crashes and some matchmaking issues. As I was typing this, it looks like a second big update (1.3GB) just dropped for the game on PC. A changelog for this latest update has not yet been provided.