Helldivers 2 developer responds to rumors about being acquired by Sony

After speculation online, the developer behind the massively popular Helldivers 2 has denied the claims that Sony has acquired the studio.

On March 5, rumors began circulating around X about Helldivers 2 studio Arrowhead, which was quietly on the verge of being acquired by Sony. It appears the rumors began spreading on Reddit and the NeoGAF forum, but now they have been put to bed by Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt, who took to his personal X account to answer the main question about the rumors - are they true or not. The Arrowhead CEO wrote that it was the rumors were the first he had heard about an acquisition by Sony, and that should be a "good indication that it's fake".

The rumors of Arrowhead being purchased were further put to bed with another response by Pilestedt, who replied to an X user claiming Arrowhead was a "Sony-owned studio". Pilestedt replied, "We are not owned. We are independently owned!" and that the only owners of the company are the four founders, Pilestedt being one of them. Notably, Pilestedt pointed out that optically, it would look very bad for Sony to acquire Arrowhead as they recently laid off 900 workers.

It was only recently that Pilestedt sat down for an interview about Helldivers 2, revealing that one lone developer is pulling all the strings behind the galactic war, and this developer is named Joel and called "Game Master". Joel has sometimes been required to wake up during the night to adjust the difficulty of a planet that was either too hard or too easy.