Helldivers 2 overtakes God of War to become PlayStation's biggest PC launch

Helldivers 2 finally arrived this week after what felt like an eternity. The game launched yesterday across PC and PS5, and the launch has been pretty successful so far. In fact, it’s the biggest launch ever for a PlayStation-published game on PC.

Sony Interactive Entertainment, of course, created the mouthy label PlayStation PC to solidify its plans to more consistently bring more and more of its once PlayStation-exclusive titles to PC. These efforts started with Horizon Zero Dawn, and have continued since.

In all that time, however, the largest Sony launch on PC has been God of War. The 2018 reboot quickly became at hit on Steam, garnering 73,529 concurrent players at its peak when it came out. Well, that figure is no longer the top, thanks to Helldivers 2.

Helldivers 2 is not a first-party Sony title, of course. The game is developed by Arrowhead Game Studios, but Sony is its publisher on both PC and PS5. The third-person co-op shooter quickly shot up Steam’s most played games, where it attracted 81,840 concurrent players at its peak.

That figure actually continued to grow well after yesterday morning’s launch, so there’s a chance it could shoot up further when the weekend arrives. And sure, it’s wise not to expect Palworld numbers or anything, but this remains a solid launch.

One has to wonder, however, whether it’s doing as well (or better) on PS5, but unless Sony comes out and makes any sort of sales or player number announcements, we’re not likely to learn any concrete details.

The only blemish on what is an otherwise success is Helldivers 2’s Steam review rating. The game is currently sitting at a Mixed overall rating, based on nearly 10,000 reviews at the time of writing. Most of the troubles appear to be technical, with crashes, the occasional server issue, and general game stability. Hopefully, those will be resolved soon.