Helldivers 2 boss says “death and rebirth” is a natural part of the games industry, but it’s “unnecessarily brutal” right now “because we don’t diversify enough”

Helldivers 2 didn’t exactly come out of nowhere if you played the brilliant original back in 2015, but just how successful the game would become was probably a massive shock to everyone. But the thing about Helldivers 2 was it wasn’t a game that fit into the massive trends of current gaming. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League arrived a week prior to it and followed an almost Destiny-style, and that game royally shit the bed, and I don’t need to tell you how many battle royale games have arrived and gone in the wake of Fortnite (RIP Rumbleverse, you deserved better). If anything, Helldivers 2 was a throwback to the early days of online co-op games you would find on the Xbox 360.

Speaking at a 2025 Game Developers Conference (GDC) panel attended by GamesRadar+, Helldivers 2 director Johan Pilestedt talked about chasing popular trends and why he thinks it’s partly to blame for the massive amount of layoffs currently affecting the industry right now. He said, “The games industry is caught in a vicious cycle of death and rebirth. Every so often we lay off thousands of people suddenly, and then nobody understands why. And I think it’s just because we converge. We will always go through the cycles of death and rebirth, but now that cycle is unnecessarily brutal, because we don’t diversify enough.”