“Helldivers 2 Director Explains That Magicka’s Initial Issues Were Due to Bugs, Not Review Bombing”

Long before it became known for Helldivers 2, Arrowhead Game Studios made waves with a charming wizard action game called Magicka, which turned out to be one of the standout surprises of the 2010s. While players enjoyed the whimsical chaos of Magicka, it was a nightmare for computers, often crashing and performing poorly even on top-tier hardware. Recently, Johan Pilestedt, the creative lead for Helldivers 2 and a long-time Arrowhead member, acknowledged the game’s rocky reputation and linked it to some of the studio’s more recent challenges.

In a Reddit discussion about the future direction of Helldivers 2, Pilestedt noted that Magicka didn’t face review bombing at launch because “review bombing as a concept wasn’t a thing.” This is a valid point, as the trend of punishing developers with low user scores for issues unrelated to gameplay has become much more prevalent in the last decade.

Instead, Magicka received “so-so reviews” due to its “buggy and unoptimized” state, according to Pilestedt. Notably, the game was released without the development team’s consent. “The publisher hit the release button while we were still fixing bugs, which forced us to push out daily patches until it was decent,” he explained.

There was some confusion stemming from Pilestedt’s earlier mention of a review bombing related to Magicka, but he clarified that it was tied to the backlash over Helldivers 2—specifically the PlayStation account linking debacle—affecting perceptions of Arrowhead’s other titles. This kind of collateral damage has become increasingly common; for example, players of Genshin Impact have been known to review bomb unrelated games and apps in response to disappointing updates.

“I thought the review bombing of Helldivers 1 was unjustified, and I tweeted about it being similar to the review bombing of Magicka, which some interpreted as a directive,” he said.

Unfortunately, the current Steam reviews for Magicka sit at a mere 58% positive, and for good reason. The game struggles to function properly most of the time, and it seems unlikely to receive the fixes it needs. Thankfully, modders have stepped in to help.

Last year, Arrowhead had to confront the reality of how buggy and poorly optimized Helldivers 2 had become, leading to a dedicated repair plan and a delay in new content to allow for improvements. Personally, I haven’t encountered major issues, and compared to Magicka, it runs like a dream.

In August, Pilestedt playfully suggested the possibility of a Magicka sequel. I would love to see an expanded version of that spell-crafting action game that actually works.

Just in time, Helldivers 2 introduced a “slim version” that reduces file sizes by an impressive 85% on PC: “It’s a low-risk way to save around 131GB of space on your drive.”