The success story behind Helldivers II arises from the revival of an old game engine that ceased development since 2018. The development team at Arrowhead Game Studios had to put in significant effort to tweak and refine it for functionality.
This particular engine, known as Bitsquid, hails from Sweden and was widely utilized by several Swedish game companies (including Arrowhead) before being acquired by Autodesk in 2014 and rebranded as Autodesk Stingray. It was designed to complement 3D graphic tools within the Autodesk family such as 3ds Max and Maya.
However, Autodesk discontinued the development of Stingray in 2018, eventually transforming it into a 3ds Max plugin before discontinuation in 2022.
Arrowhead’s decision to utilize the Stingray engine for Helldivers can be traced back to the first installment released in 2015, which originally employed this engine during its early stages of development. Even as the game moved into its sequel (prior to Autodesk halting development), the team opted for the familiar Stingray engine.
Johan Pilestedt, CEO of Arrowhead, explained that their engineers had to put in extra effort to make the engine work since it was no longer being actively developed. This resulted in the engine’s capabilities being somewhat inferior to more popular game engines in the market.
Another prominent game utilizing this engine is Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, released in 2022 by Fatshark Studios, which shares origins with Bitsquid.
TLDR: The success of Helldivers II stems from the resurrection of the Bitsquid engine by Arrowhead Game Studios, despite facing challenges due to the discontinued development and subsequent transformation of the engine by Autodesk.
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