Helldiver's 2's former CEO, now CCO, made headlines earlier this week—including ours—by following years of hard work.
As for why that's a big deal, well, Pilestedt has been particularly vocal as far as creative leads and directors go, speaking directly to the people on , , and early-day spats between and players. He's also been a bit of a scamp, leaning into the setting's appetite for propaganda by even as players get turned into democratic mincemeat by them.
"Johan is just on an extended vacation. He's never been on a proper vacation since the company was founded," Jorjani explains. "We get 6 weeks of vacation per year—most swedes take 4 weeks off in the summer. He's never done that. He's got like 65 days saved up or something. He's just beat."
In other words—he's just taking a bit of a holiday, and everybody can relax: "When he's back he'll keep being the grandfather and sounding board for Helldivers, and get going with a new project in due time."
As a matter of fact, Jorjani seems pretty insistent that—given the time, funding, and legacy—a third game might not even be necessary. When asked whether supporting Helldivers 2 would mean canning a Helldivers 3, Jorjani writes: "Compare Helldivers today to when it launched. It's so, so much more. Now imagine Helldivers in three years. Tell me how that's different from a hypothetical 'Helldivers 3'."
The man has a point, sort of—the leap from Helldivers to its sequel was mainly notable because of the perspective change, flipping from an isometric shooter to a third-person bombfest. There's really no other ways to shake things up that'd justify a sequel, in my opinion, other than some revolutionary leap in 4D technology so I can feel what it's like to get killed by my mate's laser drone in real life.