The boss of Helldivers 2 maker Arrowhead Studios, Johan Pilestedt, has said that developers have to "earn" the right to monetise their games.

Replying to a post on Twitter, the CEO said that he felt that players should have the option to support a title, but said that he did not want to force them to do so. Responding to a different post on the subject of business models, Pilestedt wrote that Arrowhead approached Helldivers 2 with fairness in mind.

"I'm partial but we really applied ourselves to not make it pay-to-win even though items are functionally different," he said.

"The only item that's pay-to-win is the revolver - which will win you any 'cool gun' competition. Only (minor) problem is that it's not that good."

Helldivers 2 launched on February 8th and has already become PlayStation's biggest launch on Steam. The title has hit a peak of 155,926 concurrent players on the platform.