Helldivers coming to Steam in December with bundled expansions

By Danny Cowan Published November 10, 2015

After premiering for PlayStation consoles earlier this year, Arrowhead’s co-op twin-stick shooter Helldivers is coming to PC platforms via Steam in December, with Sony in charge of publishing.

Created by the team behind the multiplayer wizardry sim Magicka, Helldivers is an overhead-view action game in which up to four players team up to defend Super Earth from alien invaders throughout a series of procedurally generated levels.

Like the PlayStation 4, PS3, and PS Vita versions before it, the Steam port of Helldivers supports both local and online co-op play. Boasting “more than 100 hours of gameplay,” Helldivers features a branching mission structure and shifting level layouts that give players a lot of ground to cover over the course of the game’s campaign.

The Steam version of Helldivers also includes three free expansions previously released on PlayStation platforms: Masters of the Galaxy, Turning Up The Heat and Democracy Strikes Back. All included expansions add new enemy types, weapons, and environments for players to explore.

Helldivers saw a retail release in August that bundled all available expansions and digital copies of the game for PlayStation 4, PS3, and PS Vita devices, along with a batch of exclusive weaponry and themes.

Helldivers additionally hosts several Reinforcement Packs released over the game’s lifespan, supplementing gameplay with new weapons and vehicles that can turn the tide in battle. A paid DLC pack is also in the works for the PC version of Helldivers, though its contents have not yet been revealed.

Developer Arrowhead won critical acclaim for its debut effort Magicka in 2011, and multiple expansions followed in its wake. The series shifted to a different development team for Magicka 2, which is currently featured as one of this month’s free PlayStation Plus titles.

Other Arrowhead games released in the years between Magicka and Helldivers include the 2.5D action game The Showdown Effect and Atari franchise reboot Gauntlet.

A specific release date for the PC version of Helldivers was not announced.

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A soldier in silhouette in Helldivers 2.

Helldivers 2 was a massive hit right out of the gate for developer Arrowhead Game Studios, and the game's popularity has only grown since its release in February of this year. Shedding the top-down perspective of the first Helldivers, this cooperative third-person shooter took the world by surprise by being equally hilarious, fun, and challenging. It demands everyone work together to overcome massive hordes of bugs while also dealing with the fact that one player's slipup could derail the whole mission in the most humorous fashion. It's a total riot, and it's not hard to see why.

However, players on Xbox haven't had an opportunity to join in on the fun, as the game is only available on PlayStation 5 and PC. Since so many modern games have timed exclusivity, you may be wondering if that's the case for Helldivers 2, and we've got the answer for you below.
Will Helldivers 2 ever come to Xbox?
It's very unlikely that Helldivers 2 will ever come to Xbox consoles. The primary reason for this is that Helldivers 2 is published by Sony Computer Entertainment, which is a direct competitor to Microsoft. Sony is known for being very protective of IPs and brands, meaning the company tends to keep its published games off of competing consoles.

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The PlayStation Store on the Sony InZone M9.

It's been a rough few days for Sony. After a plan to implement mandatory PlayStation Network accounts for Helldivers 2 players on PC went haywire, one would imagine that the company is having a lot of talks behind closed doors right now. If there's one thing I hope Sony takes away from everything, it's that PlayStation's online services need a 2.0 revamp.

It all kicked off when Sony announced that all Helldivers 2 players on PC would be required to have a PSN account to play and would no longer be optional. The backlash was instant, but not for unfounded reasons. Many players expressed concern about living in a country where they couldn't even create a PSN account, leading to the eventual backpedaling of the decision.