Helldivers 2 has sold approximately 3 million copies while physical sales grow – WGB

Helldivers 2 continues to go from strength to strength as it hit a new concurrent player peak of 458,709 a few days ago on Steam and the server cap has been raised yet again from 700,000 to 800,000.

But we haven’t heard much about sales. The last time we got any indication was when Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt said that it had shifted over a million copies and vastly exceeded both their and Sony’s expectations.

According to Johan Pilestedt though, it looks last those numbers have risen dramatically. While he hasn’t shared specific numbers, perhaps leaving that to Sony, he did reply to an X user who guessed that it had to be nearing 3 million copies sold. Pilestedt simply replied with a finger pointing upwards emoji and a pair of wide eyes.

Of course, that’s a little unclear: the finger could have been pointing to the comment, thus suggesting 3 million is about right, or it could be indicating that the sales are even higher than that. My assumption however, is that he was pointing at the original comment and we can safely assume the figure to be in the ballpark.

☝️👀

— Pilestedt (@Pilestedt) February 25, 2024

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

The good news just keeps on rolling in, too. Speaking about this weeks UK physical sales chart, Christopher Ding of gameindustry.biz said, “Helldivers 2 is now up to No.4 with sales up 20% in its third week. That’s 2 consecutive weeks of rises (which is very rare).”

Typically a games sales will drop week on week as the initial rush is where most copies are sold. To see a game trend upwards is very impressive.

In the same Tweet, Ding pointed out that Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones, also marketed as a live-service title, has dropped to 16th on the chart. Insider Gaming recently posted a story claiming that Skull and Bones has less than a million players. That’s not actually too bad, until you take into account the huge development time and cost.

Helldivers 2’s success is in stark contrast to another 4-player co-op game with a live-service plan which is not doing so well. Warner Bros. has admitted that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has not met their expectations. Meanwhile, it’s Steam player count has dropped to less than a thousand people a day, hardly a good sign for its planned year of content.

For more on Helldivers 2 you can check out my review or my break down of its monetization methods.