Case Study: Helldivers 2

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Game Summary

Helldivers 2 became a major hit, selling over 15 million copies and maintaining impressive concurrent user (CCU) numbers throughout its lifespan. It remained a highly enjoyable co-op experience despite launch-time controversies and massive scaling challenges.

Game Facts

  • Sold over 15 million copies
  • Peak CCU exceeded 700,000 by February 23, 2024
  • Surged past backend capacity expectations post-launch

Services Used

  • Incident Management
  • Operational Analytics

Incident Management

Zumidian provided 24/7 NOC (Network Operations Center) coverage, monitoring Helldivers 2’s backend systems and live services. Our team responded to incidents rapidly, minimizing downtime, validating deployments, triaging emergent issues, and maintaining server stability during high-load periods.

Operational Analytics

Zumidian designed and maintained live observability dashboards focused on:

  • API error rate tracking and log deep dives
  • Suspicious player behavior monitoring (anticheat metrics)
  • In-game economy health and anomaly detection
  • Backend service health metrics (e.g., database latency, Kubernetes cluster status)

We also assumed ownership of Arrowhead’s operational runbooks, refining them and training our team for rapid on-call responses across a variety of failure scenarios.

Facts and Figures

Metric Value
Period of time they were a customer February 2024 – Present
MTTA (Mean Time to Acknowledge) 2m 16s
Incidents Handled 1677 and counting

Value Proposition

Business Value to Customer

  • Enhanced Game Availability and Player Experience: Fast incident response kept the game live during massive player surges.
  • Brand Reputation and Player Retention: Infrastructure stability during peak times helped preserve player trust.
  • Data-Driven Decision-Making: Developers could act quickly and confidently with real-time telemetry.
  • Operational Efficiency: Reduced internal burden by offloading key ops tasks and refining workflows.

Financial Value to Customer

  • Revenue Protection: Maintained uptime during peak periods, safeguarding millions in potential revenue.
  • Cost Savings: Reduced need for in-house 24/7 ops team.
  • Increased Lifetime Value (LTV): Continued stability kept players engaged longer.
  • Risk Reduction: Mitigated downtime risks through proactive monitoring and automation.

Today, we continue to support Arrowhead’s live ops as Helldivers 2 evolves — and we’re ready for the next galaxy-wide deployment.

 

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