After 15 years of running Arrowhead Games Studio, Johan Pilestedt has confirmed he will no longer serve as its CEO. Going forward, that position will be filled by one Shams Jorjani, an industry veteran who previously worked at fellow Swedish company Paradox Interactive as its chief business development officer.
Does this mean Pilestedt is leaving Arrowhead altogether? No, as he explains in this interview with GamesIndustry.biz, he will remain as the studio’s chief creative officer and chairman. The change in leadership is so Pilestedt can dedicate himself to game creation once again; something he hasn’t been able to do as much as CEO.
“I realised that running an organisation of over 100 people to however large it is going to get… it means I will [have to choose] between deepening my love for game creation, or the business track,” says Pilestedt.
“Over the last year going to launch of Helldivers 2, I’ve been pulled more towards the business side of things, and not able to focus as much on the creative side. That made me realise I needed to make some decisions, both for the success of the business but also myself.”
Helldivers 2 was a pivotal release for Arrowhead, what with it being its first game since the original Helldivers launched in 2015. Not only was this a sequel fans had waited years for, but it was also set up as one of the PlayStation 5’s few major exclusives for 2024. And with it becoming more popular than anybody expected (even becoming the fastest-selling PlayStation game of all time), Arrowhead needs strong leadership in order to keep its playerbase appeased and potentially grow the studio. As such, Pilestedt believes him stepping back from the CEO position is ultimately for the best, not just for himself but for Arrowhead: “Having a reluctant CEO is not something that will turn out that well, I think.”
With Pilestedt getting to be more hands-on with Helldivers 2, the aforementioned Shams Jorjani will handle, in his own words, “a lot of the, frankly, boring business administration stuff that is a necessary part of running a company, which is hard to do when you’re also juggling the chairman’s hat and the creative director’s hat and also being the one who is in the trenches doing a lot of the designing that Johan has been doing over the years.” Aside from his time at Paradox, Jorjani has served as the chairman of Hooded Horse, the indie game publisher which released another surprise success of 2024, Manor Lords, just last month.
Time will tell if this winds up being the right move for the company, but I can understand why Pilestedt would want to leave business side of things to someone else. No matter the field, creatives want to, well, create things, and you don’t really get to do that if you’re too busy running a company to make sure it stays afloat.
