A few years ago, it would have been pretty easy to imagine Helldivers 2 releasing as a free-to-play game. It is a live service game after all, most of those are free-to-play because studios want to reduce the barrier to entry. Instead, it launched as a paid-for, $40 game, a far cry from free, but not the $80-$100 releases we’re seeing more and more of. And it’s because Arrowhead made the decision to do so that Arc Raiders developer Embark did the exact same thing for their own shooter.
