Arrowhead Game Studios’ Helldivers 2 has been a colossal success, but it may be even bigger than many would’ve assumed. According to new data from games analytics firm Alinea Analytics, the brilliant co-op PvE shooter has sold over 20 million copies since launch.
Alinea’s head of market analysis Rhys Elliot, who previously revealed accurate sales numbers of Arc Raiders before Embark, revealed that Arrowhead’s paid co-op game has managed to shift a colossal number of copies.
Elliot revealed that Helldivers 2 has managed to take in “over $700 million in gross revenue via copies sold alone”, and that’s when accounting for regional pricing across worldwide markets. Of course, this doesn’t include additional sales of microtransaction Super Credits to buy Warbonds and Super Store items in-game. While it’s very possible to earn and farm Super Credits in-game, many players do buy them when new Warbonds are released.
Elliot revealed that the launch of the Helldivers 2 Xbox port was able to push the game’s sales past the 20 million mark. While the smallest market by far for the game, the Xbox version has sold around 1.6 million units.
The vast majority of players for Arrowhead’s shooter are on PC with 13.1 million players joining the fight for galactic democracy via Steam. While the game has seen numerous PC issues, such as a massive file size that was recently fixed, it is the main population center for the game’s player base. For comparison, PlayStation 5 accounts for 5.6 million players.
As for the worldwide audience, the United States is the biggest market for the game, making up 40% of players. However, China is a surprising second place with 10% of players in the region. Additionally, the game’s audience is still engaged with Helldivers 2 as Alinea reports “3.6M MAUs [Monthly Active Users] last month across Steam, PS5, and Xbox”. Additionally, “over 250K gamers have played Helldivers 2 for over 500 hours”, an incredible feat for any game.
With these numbers, Helldivers 2 isn’t just PlayStation’s best-performing multiplayer game, but also its best-selling game on Steam. While Marathon may end up being a contender later this year, Arrowhead’s co-op behemoth is still one of the biggest wins of the games industry this generation.
Since its launch, Helldivers 2 has been a major inspiration for developers. In fact, the aforementioned Arc Raiders was originally a free-to-play game, but Embark Studios was inspired by Helldivers 2 and chose to make the game a premium title that respects players’ time.
