Helldivers 2 is made on Autodesk Stingray, an engine that was discontinued six years ago
In January 2018, Autodesk stopped supporting the Autodesk Stingray engine, formerly known as Bitsquid. However, the tool lives on. Developer Andy Touch noticed that it was used by the authors of the popular shooter Helldivers 2.
Helldivers 2
Arrowhead Studio has been working with Autodesk Stingray for many years. Using this engine, she created the first part of Helldivers, and before it the games The Showdown Effect and Gauntlet. Therefore, the decision to make Helldivers 2 on a familiar engine could be natural for the studio.
It is possible that the development of Helldivers 2 began before Autodesk abandoned the engine. As a result, it was easier for the studio to modify Autodesk Stingray to suit its needs than to switch to a new technology.
Whether the problems of Helldivers 2 are related to the use of an outdated engine is difficult to say for sure. The game is currently suffering from high server load, unstable connections, matchmaking failures and other problems. Recently, the CEO of Arrowhead studio, Johan Pilestedt, even advised gamers not to rush into buying.
"If you don't have the money, buy the game later. We made a very interesting game, but it's worth waiting until the servers start to cope with the number of people who want to play. As CEO, of course, I want to make the game as profitable as possible, but if you spend the last money and get stuck in queues on the server, it will be very sad," Pilestedt wrote in X. He did this in response to a tweet from a user who complained that he did not have enough money to buy Helldivers 2.
Helldivers 2 updates the record for peak online on Steam daily. She set the last record on the morning of February 21st. According to SteamDB, 457,649 people were in the game at the same time.
Many games were created on the Autodesk Stingray engine at one time. For example, it was used in the development of Escape Dead Island, Hamilton's Great Adventure, Warhammer: End Times — Vermintide and Warhammer: Vermintide 2.
