Developers receive a lot of diverse feedback, and it's impossible to please all players.
Recently, the head of Arrowhead Game Studios, Shams Jorjani, addressed a question in the Discord community. A user raised the topic of the influence of streamers and bloggers on the developers' decisions regarding the game.
Shams explained how the Helldivers 2 authors approach their work. To find a balance between the "vocal minority" and the needs of many players, the studio explores various metrics, as many simply play Helldivers 2 silently:
«This is a challenge for all games. [Streamers] represent a minority playstyle, but set standards for many because they have a platform to broadcast and many viewers. We balance the situation internally by analyzing a large amount of data, metrics, and qualitative data, such as the aforementioned streamers.
The vast majority of players silently play the game — they don't write here or on the Reddit forum. When we do something well, we see it in the statistics, and when we don't, we see it too.
Sometimes this coincides with what streamers or people on social media say, but often it doesn't.
Therefore, we use different tools to calibrate our course. This doesn't mean we always get everything right (we constantly make mistakes), but I think we continue to learn and improve (as evidenced by recent recognition, player numbers, and sales).»
