"We're not micromanaged by our CCO" - as Helldivers 2's last big patch earns praise, Arrowhead reiterates that it wasn't a one person job

Despite some gripes about spawn rates and some lingering bugs, Helldivers 2's community seems to be a lot happier with the game since last week's big patch dropped. A lot of the praise from players for the change in direction has been going solely to ex-Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt, but the studio wants to make it clear that the patch was a team effort.

If you're out of the loop, Pilestedt made the decision to give up his CEO duties at the studio late last month, staying on as chief creative officer - a role designed to allow him to spend more time focusing on helping to oversee development of the game, rather than business stuff. While it's worked out pretty well so far - with enough goodwill having been restored that players recently chose to obey Arrowhead's insistence that theysave some poor Super Earth kids, Pilestedt's work hasn't been the sole factor in the turnaround.

In response to some of the praise the patch has spawned, Pilestedt's issued a response via Twitter. "I've seen a lot of people give me lots of cred for this patch as if I am the sole person responsible," he wrote, "I want to make it clear that the team are the ones that made it happen. Without their effort, design sensibilities, diligence and passion none of this would have been possible."

Meanwhile, over on the game's Discord server, Arrowhead senior game designer Alexus Kravchenko, who's previously caught a lot of the flak for unpopular tweaks to weapons like the R-36 Eruptor, has also put out a message to players.

"It's been fun being villain of the month, but the witch hunt has reached a level uncomfortable even for me, so I'd like to clear up a couple things," he wrote. "No, we're not micromanaged by our CCO [Pilestedt]. C-level executives have more important things to do." Stating that he hasn't been fired and has "never been in charge of game balance decisions", Kravchenko continued: "I'm a mere game designer and it's always been a team effort. Our balance philosophy stays the same though, turns out we just needed more time to cook!"

He also added: "I'll take the L for the Eruptor situation though, I shouldn't have rushed to Discord with the first knee-jerk reaction. I feel like the new blog posts format is much better at getting our point across, so I'll refrain from public discussions to avoid saying something stupid again."

So, there you go, don't give one bloke all the credit or blame for an entire team's work, including the little hotfix Arrowhead's put out today to rectify a number of bugs and crash scenarios - with the most noteworthy one being the final tweak that should finally make the previously aim-issue afflicted spear 100% viable again.