Before people get carried away with the weird narrative that Pilestedt was forced out in some sort of corporate coup, read the article. He stepped down by his own decision into his new role as Chief Creative Officer. He handpicked the new CEO. Also some relevant quotes from him:
“I’ve been thinking about the journey ahead for Arrowhead, the future games we’re going to be making, and running the organisation beyond the 120 or so developers we have currently,” he tells us. “I realised that running an organisation of over 100 people to however large it is going to get… it means I will [have to choose] between deepening my love for game creation, or the business track."
“Over the last year going to launch of Helldivers 2, I’ve been pulled more towards the business side of things, and not able to focus as much on the creative side. That made me realise I needed to make some decisions, both for the success of the business but also myself."
So he’s focusing on the game rather than the business aspect.
Honestly I am OK with this. He’s repeatedly demonstrated that he seems to be the only dude at AH who isn’t a hostile asshole to players and more importantly he recently admitted that balance for the game has not been good. AH has spent the last few months squeezing out a lot of the players’ goodwill from the game, but this gives me hope that maybe they can course correct from here on out.
League of Legends did this when they released new champions. New champ is overtuned for about a month, then it gets nerfed back down to baseline. Who knows how much money they got when people bought RP to get the sexy new champ and all their skins.
They HAD a cool PVE mode that they put a ton of effort in to creating. They released a bunch of fun minigames as a promotion for all their Star Guardian stuff. Then after a few weeks, it went away and never came back.