Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has a new CEO.
Earlier today, it was announced that Shams Jorjani – who was previously part of the team that released Arrowhead’s game, Magicka – will take a leadership role at the company, replacing founder Johan Pilestedt.
Pilestedt will remain in the leadership role following the change, and will now serve as Arrowhead’s chief creative officer and chairman.
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“We’ve both been at a stage where we’re wondering what’s next in our careers,” Jorjani told GamesIndustry.biz sister site Eurogamer today. “And we realized that we probably couldn’t get to those places if we didn’t have the other one helping us get there.”
Pilestedt added, “In terms of the overall direction of the organization, I’m still the chairman. So me and Shams will still be having strategic conversations about how we take Arrowhead into the future.”
The pair have been compared to Frodo and Sam from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, who ventured into Mordor. “The unforgettable approach of ‘take it one step at a time and then solve the problems as they come,'” Pilestedt said, adding that “Arrowhead’s strength is the camaraderie we share among the team and the desire to help each other.”
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Elsewhere in the interview, the duo also touched on possible acquisitions following the huge success of Helldivers 2. For now, the plan is for Arrowhead to remain an independent studio. “I want to see how high we can fly. And by bringing Shams on board, we have a good potential to realize the future of becoming the next From Software or Blizzard,” Pilestedt said.
Additionally, while the team is focused on Helldivers 2 for now, Arrowhead is also looking to the future and what may come.
“We feel like we have a lot more to give and so many more plays we want to make,” Pilestedt said. “The level of ambition and the appetite for the organization has increased significantly. We now have a taste for blood and want more.”
Jorjani added that Arrowhead’s goal is to “make really great co-op games” and eventually turn the company into a “flagship studio where people who want to make these kinds of games say, ‘I want to work at Arrowhead'”.
The newly appointed CEO said that this does not mean that the studio will suddenly start employing more than 500 employees. “We will see growth, but growth as a means to an end, not as an end in itself,” he said. “We have no plans to go public. None of that fraud. Measured growth that allows us to make amazing games and be a good place to work.”
“We are not in business for monetary gain. Humility and the desire to make great games is the only reason we exist,” concluded Pilestedt.
Elsewhere in Arrowhead news, the Helldivers 2 team is considering a “slightly lower” update frequency after a rough first few months.
“We want to spend more time on this and potentially between future patches,” Helldivers 2 community manager Twinbeard explained on Discord. “We feel that the cadence was probably too high for us to be able to maintain the standard of quality that we want and that you deserve.”
This follows Pilestedt’s earlier admission that Helldivers 2’s balancing sometimes “went too far”.