Helldivers 2 has likely sold over 8m, it’s claimed, ‘well ahead of expectations’

Sony’s breakout hit, Helldivers 2, has likely sold more than 8 million copies since its release last month, a market analyst has said.

That’s according to TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz, who wrote in a note this week (via Bloomberg) that this figure is likely growing every week. “We believe the game has performed well ahead of expectations,” he said.

Sony has not released official sales figures for the co-op shooter, but Helldivers 2 has regularly exceeded 430,000 concurrent players on Steam, per SteamDB.

In the UK, we know Helldivers was the best-selling game in February, thanks to GSD data published on GamesIndustry.biz. Bucking the trend, the Sony-published shooter saw its sales grow each week after its release on February 8.

The PS5 version of Helldivers 2 accounted for 57% of its sales in the UK last month, with the remainder coming on PC.

The game’s breakout success has led to speculation that its developer, Stockholm-based Arrowhead Game Studio, could be acquired by PlayStation – something the studio itself has denied.

Having resolved the server issues that players had been facing since the game’s release last month, CEO Johan Pilestedt recently said the studio can now switch its attention to improving the title and working on new content.

“Now we have time to focus on improvements to the title and resume our original plan,” he said. “Many exciting things upcoming.”