Johan Pilestedt cautions that Helldivers 2 faced a four-year delay because Arrowhead skipped pre-production and jumped straight into development: "Always complete your groundwork before investing millions upon millions into game creation."

It’s Game Developers Conference week, and you know what that means: Developers giving humbling talks about the difficult job of making games and offering advice to avoid the pitfalls that beset even the top-selling greats. One such talk this year was Arrowhead CCO Johan Pilestedt’s panel “Helldivers 2: Capturing Lightning in a Bottle” reflecting on the co-op shooter’s wildly successful launch last year.

Helldivers 2 was a breakout hit, but as Pilestedt recalled, it was also a long and difficult production delayed by poor planning. Ironically, the original idea for the sequel was to avoid the sort of overcomplicated production cycles Arrowhead had experienced in the days before Helldivers.