Helldivers 2 sells 12 million to become PlayStation’s new fastest-selling game

Helldivers 2 header artwork

The sensational success of Helldivers 2 has led to 12 million copies sold in 12 weeks, making it the new fastest-selling game launched by PlayStation, and surpassing God of War Ragnarok’s 11 million sales over the same period.

Obviously this is far from an apples to apples comparison. For one thing, Sony will skew and twist the statistics in any way possible so that pretty much every first party game is the biggest and best ever. Then there’s just the fact that Ragnarok was available across PS4 and PS5, while Helldivers 2 spread across PC and PS5, so you might argue that either one or the other has the advantage in market size, but price point is another big factor. Ragnarok launched as a full priced £70 game, while Helldivers 2 is just £35, making it far easier to justify picking up. The profitability from both games (and their development costs) is also going to be totally different.

Still, this is a remarkable achievement when looking at what Helldivers 2 is compared to Sony’s big budget pantheon of games.

“It’s crazy to think that there are more Helldivers than there are Swedes ????” quipped Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt.

Helldivers 2 launched across PlayStation 5 and PC on 8th February, with the multiplatform launch certainly going a long way to boosting the game’s sales over the last few months. It was also a major contribution to the sales and profits in Sony’s fourth quarter, ending 31st March 2024.

It’s also very likely that this tied in with other parts of the report. Game sales on non-PlayStation platforms (so Sony’s PC games business) more than doubled year-on-year to Â¥54.4 million, and PlayStation Network monthly active users jumped 10 million year-on-year to 118 million (though 4 milion down from the previous holiday quarter). This predates the recent kerfuffle over Helldivers 2’s PSN requirement, and it’s likely that there was an uptick in PSN sign-ups on PC around the game’s launch.

Source: Sony, Twitter

Written by
I'm probably wearing toe shoes, and there's nothing you can do to stop me!