Helldivers 2 Boss Calls for More Risk-Taking in GameDev, Warns “Safe Bets” Kill Studios

In a panel at the Game Developers Conference 2025, Johan Pilestedt, Chief Creative Officer (CCO) of Arrowhead Game Studios, explained that the widespread layoffs happening in the video game industry stem from developers and publishers wanting to play it safe.

“Every so often, we lay off thousands of people suddenly, and then nobody understands why. I think it’s just because we converge,” he said during the panel. Pilestedt believes that because developers are converging on one genre — for this panel, it was battle royales — it leaves many players unable to find the games they want to play. This statement alludes to the fact that these players have money but don’t want to spend it because they haven’t found a game that piques their interest.

This pattern, Pilestedt argues, is driven by an industry-wide tendency to play it safe. Instead of diversifying, developers and publishers repeatedly greenlight the same kinds of games — such as battle royales — because they’ve already proven successful. He warns that relying on these “safe bets” can be a death sentence for studios, as oversaturation leaves little room for innovation and ultimately leads to audience fatigue.

He used Escape from Tarkov as an example. Pilestedt explained that if he made a game similar to Escape from Tarkov but tweaked to his preference, it would lose to the original because what he made would essentially be just another Escape from Tarkov. “People would rather play Escape from Tarkov than play my Escape from Tarkov,” Pilestedt added.

This aligns with his concern over the contradiction in the industry: more people are playing games than ever, yet studios struggle to sustain their businesses. “We need to make more types of games because people are playing more than ever, and still, we are unable to sustain our business. It’s ridiculous. If everybody stopped making battle royales and made [different kinds of] games, we wouldn’t be in this position,” Pilestedt said, as quoted by PC Gamer.

He also mentioned that not a lot of people believed Helldivers would be successful, but the studio proved the doubters wrong as Helldivers 2 launched with favorable reviews and was the best selling game of February 2024 in Europe, U.K. and Canada.

Pilestedt finished his talk by saying that developers and publishers should be taking more risks and stop copying other games. “Make your games according to your studio’s foundation and style,” he concluded.