After Helldivers Massive Success... The CEO Just Stepped Down
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- Опубликовано: 24 май 2024
- Let's dive into why Arrowhead's CEO has stepped down, who the new guy is, and why Johan Pilestedt has found a new role.
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Sources:
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www.polygon.com/features/2289...
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I honestly think companies are at their best when they have leaders who:
A. Enjoy their job
B. Know their limits
C. Actually use the product they sell
If this is one of those cases then all the better for Arrowhead
100%
Like watching the Dead by Daylight CEO play his own poorly balanced game and the other team won almost right away and called him a nOOb lol
@@ereviscale3966 That is indeed funny.
@@ereviscale3966Still wonder why the game is so hyped. Its utterly trash IMO. Balance got thrown into the gutter at the design stage.
I'm sure we can all name a game that has D. None of the above. The sheer contempt and ignorance some CEOs have of their games is impressive sometimes.
I'm currently thinking of Chris Roberts taking in millions, delivering under the bare minimum and still not bothering to address the players on a yearly basis.
Have you forgotten about Satoru Iwata? The only CEO I've ever known to slash his salary in order to keep the talent at Nintendo during the Wii U period.
It’s required by Japanese law, in here layoffs are illegal unless you have exhausted all financial options to prevent or stop it.
I am surprised to when I moved to Japan. It turns out it was common practice.
Even firing people is close to impossible here. Hence, why some company here tend to do shady practices to make the worker quit by assigning unrealistic work schedule or giving no work at all but never firing them.
There is a saying in Japan that goes something like this. “You know you are fired when you work time is impossible or close to nothing”
God forbid he not know about something
The CEO is an employee of the shareholders who agreed to take a pay cut in order to keep his job after screwing up. It’s not like he did it out of the goodness of his heart lol
@Akimbo411 so he's indian then, cuz that's always the case.
Have you forgotten he didn’t do that out of the betterment of the studio. It was so he didn’t get removed entirely. Nothing to praise there
To make a great game you have to have fun playing games. To run a great business you have to have fun playing with spreadsheets and shmoozing. Not a lot of people have fun doing both. Kudos to Arrowhead's CEO for recognizing where he fits best.
Shame that you need someone running the business who will allow for the first part
I think this kind of business admin can only work so long as technical people still have veto power and can't be pushed out
Fair enough
Smart move, I say. Time and again, I read about small studios struggling after great success. The ramping up after a solid game can move creatives into admin roles possibly adding years to production as they figure things out.
One of the most difficult things for anyone to admit is "I can't do this job". It takes a lot of honesty and humility to step away because you think you'll keep others from doing their jobs well.
In many cases it isn't " _can't_ do this job", rather: "I don't _want_ to do this [administrative] job", or "I can't do this [administrative] job _and_ full-time retain the [prior] creative job at the same time"
We should not forget that the situation with Arrowhead is different. Usually all the bad stuff that crushed studios in the past was the studios getting aquired and some shareholder BS getting in the way.
Arrowhead however is owned privatly, and Pilestedt is actually one of the owners. Which means he is still in charge, he's just not handling the day-to-day business stuff anymore.
From studies carried out in management during the 90's - 00's, there was a general sense that the more that a 'boss' was charged to do the greater the requirement was for evidence and proof by the 'boss'. FOMO was cancelled out by the Fear of Failure. That meant the boss was often the bottleneck to employee issues and change, thus the company and all the employees in keeping up with the curve of change when a demand was in place to be 'more efficient' (one of my personal pet hates due to the self defeating stupidity involved).
Go watch Dan Pink for a friendly version of management research and motivation.
I think I can spoke for majority of programmer that
"We would do much better job if we don't have to go to those stupid 3 hours long weekly meeting"
Now just imagine the Bioware founders making that decision...
Something missed here and that I see a lot of people not realizing with their comments is that Pilestedt is still the owner (co-owner?). So while he is stepping down as CEO, that does not mean he is giving up control of the company. The CEO ultimately answers to him, and he can ultimately override or fire the CEO if need be.
I think the thing people are looking at with this is the game was made and became popular, went through a huge PR nightmare WITH him as CEO and he showed that in that situation he would side with the playerbase over the publisher (Sony).
Now, shortly after said PR nightmare, he announces he's stepping down from his role as CEO so he can focus on the creative stuff.
We've seen what is produced with him in the role of CEO, we've seen what he prioritises as CEO, we don't know what the new CEO will and given what MOST CEOs prioritise expectations are not positive or high.
He's admitted though that his handling of the PSN linking at launch was on him an the later situation something that he knew about, so given the backlash maybe he sees it as good for him to step down after a "failure" on his part like that.
Still think most players would appreciate him still being CEO given the rare customer focus he seems to have (though the kernel level anti cheat still being in is baffling to me).
Really hope this channel does well Really great news every time
Lets hope he meant Warcraft 3, StarCraft 2 Blizzard and not Activision Blizzard
Yeah, I think he's referring to old Blizzard and what we percieved them as.
@@urazz7739 he later tweeted:
I wanna clarify my perspective on
@ArrowheadGS
goals I meant the Blizzard I knew growing up - the Blackthorne, Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo 1 and 2 days! (
Wait how could you not bring in the old goldies, diablo 2 and starcraft. I guess it shows our age haha.
He did clarify after the fact he meant early blizzard I.e. Diablo 1-2 StarCraft and Warcraft 2.
He did, he even clarified this the next day or so. "before the dark times" end quote.
Great video and information thank you
He saved his soul from corporate damnation. Smart.
He didn't even step down, he just told a ponitdexter to crunch the numbers for him while he hoped into the trenches to aid in directing the game,
@@uberbyte7467i believe it's poindexter
There is a golden ratio for growth, like with so many other things on where its at it optimal. Also growth is not infinite. But with planning, care and one can keep it at maintain able level. Also too much growth can be counter productiv.
Thanks @Bellular for the perspective you put on this story with respect to leadership roles and especially where one has to (or has chosen to) take on a more administrative role whilst remaining "hands-on" in an operational sense. That aspect of the story resonated with me -> There's only so many "hats" a person can wear at the one time and still remain reasonably effective; A person will wear some "hats" better than others; and which "hats" fit best varies from person to person.
- This decision by the Arrowhead CEO appears to be sound and I respect his decision and where he's coming from. Fingers crossed that the incoming CEO won't try driving a "profit margin before all else" mantra.
The problem will be when the guy on top sabotage the entire thing and they cant do anything about it.
Maybe for now could be safe, but then you get stories like Blizzard
As someone who has been in the process of getting a new business going for the past few months as a solo owner LLC I have to say I 100% get it. I feel like I haven't had 2 seconds to sit down or think about literally anything else. Having to wear every hat has quickly showed where my skillset ends. Even some things that I would say I'm technically good at.. I would do anything to have someone else to hand it off to. Also dealing with the government for literally anything makes me want to pull my hair out.
Let's just hope that new CEO won't get an offer from Sony that he can't refuse.
So much this. Never heard of a CEO who leaves on their own, especially when times/profits are good at the company. They're shown the door.
@@CosmicCleric Linus Tech Tips did the same.
I assume by "offer" you mean aquisition. AFAIK, Pilestedt is still the owner (co-owner? I'm not sure if the other original cofounders are still involved). That means the CEO answers to him, and ultimately can't do anything that Pilestedt doesn't want.
@@CosmicCleric This is actually really common for small businesses that grow. What's different here vs the typical big business dealings we see in the news is that this is a privately owned company and Pilestedt is the owner (co-owner?), so he still ultimately has total control.
@@ZeroB4NG fair enough, I had forgotten about linus, as I kind of stopped thinking about him after the whole BS that he was involved with last year.
But still, that is the rare minority.
4:50 Also last week the CEO of Moon Studios Thomas Mahler had a mental Breakdown on Twitter over a Tweet from Maurice Weber, a former member of the German Gaming News Magazin GameStar and now more a full time Streamer. In Maurices Tweet he made fun of cancel culture, because it's not really a thing. Thomas than replayed with a mental Brakedown in which he only talked vaguely about a lot of things, didn't get to the point and he also used Nazi proverbs and comparisons. You should really avoid Moon Studio.
I'll really need to look into that because Maurice seems to be one of the last good game journalists.
This is good for Arrowhead and the customers.
This is very similar to what Linus did at LTT. From the outside, it looks like a good move. I hope it works out.
Another possibility is that Sony is planning to acquire Arrowhead, and Pilestedt isn't in good standing with them after last month, so he's soft-replacing himself now to avoid getting hard-replaced when the acquisition happens.
So are those countries still banned
Most likely. This is Sony's decision.
Well according to DesignerDave, old Blizzard was fun to work at.
They were a family that loved making games, they just didn’t really have a working culture
So when WoW started production they underestimated how much people they actually needed and how popular they actually had become so major up scaling without a working culture that was going to haunt them.
Dave himself said. The Blizzard I worked for is not the Blizzard of today.
He left Blizzard during the production of WoW vanilla because of conflicts with Kaplan
i mean good for him to still be a creative executive, but the money side usually trumps over creativity, so thats what im fearing
I have zero entrepreneurial instincts, so it’s always cool to hear your perspective on these situations.
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“We wanna be like Fromsoft”
YES YES YES YES YES
“-and Blizzard!”
NO NO NO NO NO.
I think he means old Blizzard and what they were perceived as.
blizzard before activision, was an amazing company, they had awesome games and cared for what their audience had to say.
@@garryarganis5801 he later tweeted:
I wanna clarify my perspective on
@ArrowheadGS
goals I meant the Blizzard I knew growing up - the Blackthorne, Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo 1 and 2 days! (
He's talking old Blizz! Why everyone cared about them in the first place.
@@BellularNewssadly, old blizzard also had the misogynistic frat boy culture that Metzrn and the like at best ignored. Granted that was their only issue well hidden as it was until now. Otherwise they were as shining a beacon of quality and gamer culture as we all remember. Which was part of the problem.
That Moon studio's article came out only after one of the devs from there dared to disagree with 'The Cult' so they did what they always do.. Create stories to get people canceled.
7:20 - pretty much exactly what I'm thinking. CEO made a hugely successful game, didn't monetize it enough, "gave away too much value", so is bringing in a business head who'll wring players for ALL the dollars. They can prove me wrong, I suppose, but both eyes wide open for this company's games moving forward.
Side Q: what was the background music for this vid? It sounds familiar.
Gotta admit, my initial gut reaction was that this is coning from Sony as some sort of revenge for him not taking nore of their side at the beginning of the month.
His own tweets have all but dispelled that, and I'm now looking forward to see what they're doing next.
When are they gonna fix the PSN for other countries?
Linus did this, he didn't wanna deal with the management side of his business, so he stepped down from the CEO spot
Iirc This is what Bethesda did. Todd got his friend to handle the business side with Zenimax, while he handed the creative side. They haven't had a good game since Skyrim first launched, and everything Beth has done has been worse and worse.
I wouldn't call them worse but rather stagnant. While the market moved on either giving us great optics to sweeten the loads of bugs or giving us great stable but rather mediocre looking games Bethesda managed to keep both. Ugly games with loads of bugs.
I think that's an example of a case where a company needed NEW creative vision, not for the person who was still stuck in a previous decade's ideas of game design to consolidate their grip over the creative side.
I think from this point Helldivers will shift it's direction and probably for the worst. I've seen these scenes before when Creators leaving their beloved project cuz somebody already taken their place. Not just in games but also in shows and movie adaptations like The Witcher.
Giving up control is often the hardest decision to make.
The thing im worried about is that its buisness speak for ",we arnt making money from helldivers so someone who is more proffit savvy needs the big boy chair"
Helldivers is great but.. i havent spent a penny in the store since i got it.
Now for me, the consumer, this is great and a breath of fresh air.
But the company i cant imagine is making much revenue past sales due to this.
I feel in the not too distsnt future we are gonna have a rug pull, if only cause the current rug aint sustainable.
HD2 is good because the gameplay is enjoyable, the world is ridiculous in a fun way and we just don't have great PVE options. Most of that design vision came from him, and putting him back in a position to guide the vision and handing off all the business work to someone else is a great forward thinking move. I'm hopeful that he'll really be able to give guidance on the balancing, content, and overall approach to user-interactions in a meaningful way. Plus even in a different role he's still in charge and they're not beholden to shareholders. This gets him closer to where he does his best work and where his best work is sorely needed.
"when you say 'managed democracy' everybody is in on the joke" heck even my dad is in on the joke when i showed him the video.
Plot twist, Johan is actually Joel.
Basically like what ltt did. Linus acknowledge he is not a business guy, he's a creative. As a result he understood he didn't need to sell his business but instead hire a business person.
Hopefully he'll help HD2 course correct, the recent state of the game has been quite poor
PSN account requirement coming back to your local Helldivers 2 game.
He did a Linus, and who can blame him.
He is a true leader. He understands his strengths, and respects his weaknesses. My upmost respect goes towards Johan.
This happens as he's in conflict with Playstation of the Profile Requirements on Steam? I dunno. I don't think this is necessarily good news. Did they fix the PSN requirement thingy on Steam? Or are all those countries still blocked from purchasing the game?
Imagine Chris Roberts would do this.
Ehh, frankly I bet more than he was leaned upon by Sony to step down. He cost them who knows how much money by not just talking down their pay-pigs to accept a Sony account and shut up.
i hate seeing a studio fall victim to their own success but its happened a number of times.
here is hoping things shape up soon!
yup. Not in the SW dev field but I had a big failure in the past exactly because everything bottlenecked at me and I could not find someone skilled in time. I needed someone with commercial / marketing focus but I was too late to realize that.
oh, the inexperience and arrogance of youth.
So CEO to CCO then?
What the hell are these comments? Are people just guessing the story based on title alone?
Are they AI bots trained off random "angry gamer" comment sections?
Yeah I'm really confused, like I'm overtly positive about why? I don't know, perhaps they just don't know the full story at the time of leaving the comment
@@BellularNews Mainly it's a concern that Majority of the CEO's in the games industry have a lack of ethics or regard for employees, the EA's, Ubisoft and Activision CEO's dredge the title through the mud in this industry and for good reason. Hopefully this is one of the exceptions like Satoru Iwata.
Its because the man passionate about games is no longing steering the ship, which is scary for fans of their products. This feels like how a studio like Arrowhead gets turned into another Arcane Austin. Forced into projects they dont want to, only to be shuttered.@BellularNews
And no amount of positive spin from the former ceo will make us optimistic with the landslide of examples of this going bad.
@@LukieSeven how about this for positive Spin: Pilestedt is now CCO but also Chairman.
Chairman is higher than CEO in the foodchain and the CEO has to get final permission for any "significant" decisions from him while he is free to handle the tedious day to day so our boy can concentrate on gamedev stuff. (we all agree the game needs a serious balance review)
Arrowhead is also independently owned, not owned by Sony.
Pilestedt is still in charge at the end of the day. ...he got a glorified Secretary.
...how did i do?
Oh no... They want to be like Blizzard..
Suffering from Success
So he wants to do great games and will hire a new CEO to do the business things, interesting. New Unity lying ahead?
The new CEO of Arrowhead is a Shams! I love Arrowhead, have ever since Magicka, and trust this decision. They're on my good list next to Larian.
i woudnt suprise if this have to do with the PSN fckup with Sony.
People dont get that it was most likely his choice to step down as he loves his game
Sony Strong Arm??? He did pretty much go against their wishes most people especially if their staying aren't going to tell you the truth.
Why would you pick an ex-Paradox parasite to be your CEO? It is a true paradox of logic. Another studio dies…
Because they're someone who was there when Paradox was good, and jumped ship before Paradox turned bad and ended up at the company that is now widely considered to be the spiritual successor to the old school Paradox that we all loved.
RIP Total Biscuit
Would be nice if they just remove the country bans. Not gonna hold me breath tho.
He's the one who made the deal with Sony and he's the 9ne who knows EXACTLY how that will ruin the company
All i can think of is ,,Growth followed by implosion ..like i am scared that Larian studios will do too , Now that they start up a new branch , But hey lets hope for the best
Doesn’t matter Arrowhead WILL go down the same path as every other company has it’s inevitable doesn’t matter what lies and bile they spew at the moment,
Same goes for Fromsoft and Larian studios
Remember CDPR? Universally beloved by the gaming community and look how that turned out, DO NOT TRUST COMPANIES regardless of if they are indie or Publicly owned, companies are companies and they exist purely to exploit others for money treat them as such.
for the algorithm
I have to wonder about just like really stupid balancing decisions that the company has consistently since launch, and they just frequently seem to hate the idea that people have fun playing their game. And that pathetic live stream where they try to play their own game. Is this guy the only one of their company with experience with playing games and he has the step down and take and hands on approach with actual game development because there’s no one else there who can do it?
if hes stepping down as CEO cant new CEO just fire all the staff and just ruin the company? seems risky
He was just figure head anyway, arrow head , has no real control over what happens to HD , enjoy it now while you can
As long as he makes CLEAR to the hired CEO greedy and disgusting practices won't be allowed... because dolars are quick to change morality.
Helldiver CEO is forced to step down by SONY.
for me that sounds like planting the seed for corporate corruption, unfortunately. removing someone at the top who wants the game to thrive and replacing them with someone who wants the company to thrive. the road to hell is paved with good intentions blah blah blah. i've gotten too cynical about this industry.
let's hope for the best
Wait shouldn't this be horrible news? I cant count how many times I've seen a CEO leave a company they helped build, only for the next guy in charge to fuck everything up, or sell the company off to a shitty buyer
i.e. 343 with Halo, or like Blizzard with Activision.
Aspiring to be the next Blizzard is not the win this guy thinks it is.
I won’t take this as a “win” like he is painting it.
Arrowhead is a one trick pony.
They got one GIGANTIC success.
If the creative guy is the CEO there might be better chances to have a second success instead of his low level logic.
Guess arrowhead’s next game is Helldivers 3 now.
Speaking of co-op, maybe on leaving instead of finding a replacement CEO, he should convert the company into a co-op where the employees own and run the company.
I think he was either being forced out by Sony or he left cause he knows Sony is going to scam players again.
Me, not impressed tbh. Pretty sure Sony was heavily involved in his "choice" to step down.
Success at launch but now they and Sony ruined their own game , you're lucky if you can even see 50,000 people online in the weekend.
And week days 30,000 at best on the PS5
I really don't trust him now. The game went downhill way too fast. The game launched super fun. I bought the game based off my friends' enjoyment without looking into it. That was the biggest mistake I made and now I'm paying for it.
One good thing this situation brings to the table is to not buy the Space Marines game. It's just going to stab players in the back as well, like every other gaming company in history. I just don't care about games anymore.
Dev: Hey gamer, I did a lot of grinding to make this game for you.
Gamer: But the game is full of grinding, I don't want to buy it.
Bossman: Both of you, grind, now! Everybody grind. If I see one more person Not On The Grind so help me...
Blame Sony for the PC version of Helldivers II.
Yea sad Sony force him to stepped down. He'll be miss..😢
Wow sony made helldivers ceo create the account linking fiasco? I didn't know that.
How could Sony force him to step down from his own company?
He chose to step down so he could work more closely on the game
lol seems Sony passed him the pink slip
My brother in Christ he's still the majority owner of Arrowhead the company. Sony can't pass him a pink slip because they only own the IP, not the development studio.
Nah it was his choice
Also there is allready term for infinite growth its cancer.
Sounds like Sony forced him to step down after the negative marketing Sony incurred due to their delaying of the requirement Sony put on them to require a sign in to the PSN. Youre once again spinning this for the pro-corporate side, though. You love corporations, it seems
soon company of hell divers shutdown oh its sony should be fine
Him choosing game dev over the business side is the right decision. He was downright bad at the business side. He caused the psn linking drama by choosing to turn it off and leave it off for months. Did he do it on purpose to gain millions of extra sales from countries he knew couldnt link? Who knows. Its better if he doesnt have the ability to make those bad decisions in the future. The game dev side is already plagued with poor balancing decisions as it is. No need to add massive internet drama on top of that.
So... Would you have preferred they left it on and you DC'd the moment you entered the game?
Sony dropped the ball with the PSN infrastructure, not the other way around. Would you blame a site for being down when the DNS provider is getting ddosed? Arrowhead isn't responsible for how sony manages (or fails to manage) traffic.
I think this will help the "balancing" thing. He seems more gamers than douche to me, & all in all, helldivers 2 is a great game, but the recent changes came from people with very limited gaming experience
This whole debacle had me not buying Helldivers 2. I was very interested in the game, but I do not trust Sony one bit in handling it.
honestly. i think this is more playstation demanding he step down or they destroy the studio and this guy i wouldn't be surprised has some connections to sony .
Dude, this is days old… you really can’t take this long to deliver news and expect it to be relevant. What are you and your team doing?
First?
Yes
Wait, next blizzard? LMAO
And Sony had nothing to with this at all, right..right?
Sony wasn't involved
They can't do shit, even if they wanted, basically He didn't even step down, he just told a ponitdexter to crunch the numbers for him while he hoped into the trenches to aid in directing the game,
Uh no he stepped down after helldiver's 2 had a massive fail
Helldivers won't be the same after this, bad move on sony
It was his choice, he wants to work on the game more
@@MrHello6999 they close those studios because they are lame ass studios you guys said Xbox are not making good games so they are doing something about it cleaning up the trash devs
yall need to watch the fucking video before you post your sony rage
why do people make accounts/bots for stuff like this?
like whats the point, who is gaining anything of value out of this?
The fact that he left should tell the future of the game, can't wait for gay month get your trans capes rdy up LMAO 🤣😂