Most modern indie video game developers use Unreal Engine or Unity to develop video games. Major studios often use their in-house game engine, but Arrowhead Game Studios had no such option while developing Helldivers 2. The studio was established in 2008 and used the Microsoft XNA to develop its first video game, Magicka. However, the studio then moved to Bitsquid, a game engine that was used by various indie Swedish studios in the early 2010s.
Since then, Arrowhead Game Studios has developed all its video games on Bitsquid, which was renamed to Autodesk Stingray in 2014 after Autodesk’s acquisition. Helldivers 2 was also built using this game engine, but what’s special is the fact that this game engine was discontinued in 2018. In fact, even 2022’s Warhammer 40,000: Darktide was built using this engine.
Helldivers 2‘s development was almost shut down
Just like the first Helldivers game, Arrowhead Game Studios decided to build Helldivers 2 on Autodesk Stingray. However, during the development, the game engine got discontinued, leaving the developers with no support. In a past post on X, Johan Pilestedt, the Chief Creative Officer of Arrowhead, revealed that the developers worked hard despite the game engine’s shutdown.
This is true. Our crazy engineers had to do everything, with no support to build the game to parity with other engines.
And yes. The project started before it was discontinued.
https://t.co/mz61TnYNGN— Pilestedt (@Pilestedt) February 21, 2024
The game was released in February 2024, six years after official support ended. It is remarkable that the studio was able to create a game like this out of a game engine that has been officially declared dead by its developers. The game gained so much popularity initially that the developers had to ask players to stop playing the game because of server issues, but that completely backfired.
Fatshark is another Swedish video game developer that is keeping Autodesk Stingray alive even today. The studio has developed games like Warhammer 40,000: Darktide and Warhammer: Vermintide 2 on this discontinued game engine.
Helldivers 2‘s future is looking bright
The use of the Autodesk Stingray game engine is one of the main reasons why the game looks and feels so different from its competitors. It’s hard to believe that the game lost 90% of its player base on Steam at one point, all thanks to Sony’s PSN account linking policy. Thankfully, Arrowhead was able to recover from that disaster and changed its strategy to save the game.
Thanks to constant updates, the game is once again one of the most popular co-op video games in the world. The studio has a lot of content lined up for 2025, so don’t be shocked if Helldivers 2 wins the Best Multiplayer Game award once again.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
