Helldivers was coming to PC: a PlayStation game's first Steam crossing

Sony Computer Entertainment and Arrowhead Game Studios announced that Helldivers — already a PlayStation favorite — would land on PC via Steam that December. The milestone was bigger than it looked: it marked the first title distributed by PlayStation Mobile Inc. on Valve’s platform, a quiet crack in the wall between Sony’s catalog and the PC.

The Steam version shipped with the game’s full expansion loadout and feature set:

• Includes the Masters Of The Galaxy, Turning Up The Heat, and Democracy Strikes Back expansions.
• Local and online cooperative multiplayer for up to 4 players on Steam.
• Full friendly fire — kill your friends “accidentally” again.
• Wide range of unlockables and devastating Stratagems to call in.
• Community-driven Galactic Campaign.
• Nonlinear mission structure.
• Procedurally generated levels: the universe is a big place.
• Over 100 hours of gameplay.

And for the record, the system requirements of the day:

Minimum: Windows Vista/7, Dual Core 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9800 / ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT (512MB), DirectX 10, 7GB free space.

Recommended: Windows Vista/7, Dual Core 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA 460 / AMD Radeon 5870 (1GB), DirectX 10, 7GB free space.

History’s footnote: that little PS-to-PC crossing turned out to be the template for everything Sony would later do on Steam — and Helldivers itself would eventually spawn Helldivers 2, one of the biggest co-op hits of the decade. The original remains the perfect place to see where it started.