Helldivers 2 Is PlayStation’s Biggest PC Launch Yet Based On Concurrent Players

Helldivers 2 is the latest Sony-published game to release on PC, and it’s doing big numbers, becoming the most popular PlayStation title on Steam by peak concurrent player count.

The Starship Troopers-inspired co-op shooter is currently riding high at a concurrent player peak of 81,840, putting it ahead of the 73,529 peak concurrent players of Sony’s PC release of God of War (2018) back in January 2022, according to SteamDB. Helldivers 2’s peak concurrent players are also higher than that of Insomniac’s Spider-Man, which peaked at 66,436 players shortly after its PC launch in August 2022.

Helldivers 2 has been the best-selling game on Steam by revenue since it launched, and it is as of writing the 16th most-played-game on Steam by concurrent player count, where it is currently ahead of games like Warframe and indie-sensation Lethal Company. Unlike other PlayStation ports for PC, Helldivers 2 launched on both PS5 and Steam at the same time. Helldivers 2 is also multiplayer focused, whereas other PlayStation games ported to PC like Days Gone, God of War, Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, Spider-Man, and Horizon Zero Dawn have all been single-player games.

The success of Helldivers 2 has been a double-edged sword for developer Arrowhead Game Studios, who in a post on the official Helldivers 2 Discord stated the team was in “crisis mode” looking to address various technical issues like crashes and broken matchmaking. The game has received multiple updates since launch to address those issues, which appears to have pushed the average user review score for Helldivers 2 from “Mixed” shortly after launch to “Mostly Positive” as of writing.

Helldivers 2 supports cross-play between players on PS5 and PC, and Arrowhead has promised free content updates for the shooter that will introduce new threats and challenges for players to overcome.