Helldivers 2, the newest game from Arrowhead Game Studios, was released on February 8 for the PlayStation 5 and PC. It was first announced at Sony’s State of Play in May 2023, and after an initial release date of late 2023 was pushed back, came out around a week back to much fanfare.
As the successor to the first installment — Helldivers — that came out nine years ago, fans were pretty excited to see what was in store for them. This multiplayer co-op shooter has not disappointed, with the wave of momentum around its hype taking it into the top ten of the most-watched games on Twitch in the first week after getting launch.
Helldivers 2 is a third-person squad-based game set in Super Earth, as players 'join forces with up to three friends and wreak havoc on an alien scourge threatening the safety of their home planet.' They will step into the boots of the Helldivers, an elite class of soldiers whose mission is to spread peace, liberty, and managed democracy using the biggest, baddest, and most explosive tools in the galaxy.
Such an action-filled setting has seemingly appealed well to the masses, with the game hitting all the right notes so far and faring highly across the three crucial viewership metrics on Twitch. In fact, it reached a peak of over 250K concurrent players on Steam earlier on Friday, although that record was broken on Sunday when this figure reached a pretty amazing 409K concurrent players, going past a game as legendary as Grand Theft Auto V in the process.
Moreover, despite costing around $30, it has become the highest-selling game on Steam. That it is ahead of prominent free-to-play titles like Counter-Strike 2, Apex Legends, and PUBG shows how much it has pervaded the global gaming scene.
Helldivers 2 has achieved all this despite quite a few problems upon release, which were fixed by the developer via a new patch that introduced various improvements and prepared it for future upgrades. It even has new in-game events to keep users motivated and retain the feeling of freshness, helping it maintain its player base while also attracting newer gamers.
Twitch chat analysis for Helldivers 2
Over the week leading up to its release, the game saw a handful of mentions here and there across Twitch chats as viewers and creators were gearing up to see what was in store. However, come February 8, the number of mentions shot up by 463.1%, as the number of channels where it was mentioned rose by more than 150%.
The day with the highest number of mentions for Helldivers 2 was February 13, when it was typed into the streaming services' chat 12.3K times. This was also the day with the most messages sent with this game's mentions, as players were eagerly waiting for the latest patch to be added, which would eventually solve a lot of the issues plaguing the game upon launch.
A few more numbers
The title enjoyed its best day on February 8, when it hit 1.3M Hours Watched and 153.3K Peak Viewers. One fact that shows how it has continued growing is that its peak channels figure has continued to see improvements over its first week, reaching its highest mark on Day 7 with 2.4K concurrently active accounts streaming it.
English was the most popular language in which Helldivers 2 was live broadcast during its first seven days. That is pretty obvious from the list of most watched influencers who played it during this phase, with Russian and French completing the podium.
Sticking with streamers, the most watched content creator to play this game during Week 1 was CohhCarnage with 317.2K HW. The American is renowned for his habit of playing a multitude of games, with his most popular titles this year being new releases like Palworld and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.
The likes of LIRIK and Shroud were also pretty busy trying it out, but none of them could end as its most popular name. That honor fell to Japanese sensation fps_shaka, primarily known for his GTA V RP videos, as he hit 31.3K PV.
It has been an interesting time for new releases this year, with most doing well enough to attract a sizeable viewer base over the first few days or weeks of their release. The same is true for Helldivers 2, although it remains to be seen if it can maintain the kind of pace Palworld has or if it falls away in the coming days.
If some interesting trends pop up related to this PlayStation-developed video game, Streams Charts will update its readers about the same. Those interested in any kind of in-depth analysis of new launches and more prominent games check out our PRO subscription.
