Wildlight's free-to-play shooter Highguard was not the success that the studio wanted to see, and now senior level designer Alex Graner has said he thinks the gameplay being so intense didn't help.

He said on the Quad Damage podcast that Highguard releasing as a 3v3-only game required "such a high intensity of communication" with teammates. "It doesn't leave much room for casualness. I think that was the biggest thing that turned a lot of players off Highguard," he said, as reported by Kotaku.

"3v3 duos is always the sweatiest version of anything like battle royale, objective modes, wingman, you know it, you name it," Graner added.

The Second Galactic War rages on in Helldivers 2, with more than 8.6 billion Helldivers giving their lives last year. Of that number, 177 million were from friendly fire.

That's just one of the staggering statistics revealed by developer Arrowhead Studios in a new infographic charting enemy casualties, friendly-fire incidents, most popular stratagems, and more data from the game's second year.

While billions of Helldivers died defending democracy, it was much worse for Super Earth's foes. According to Arrowhead, Helldivers 2 players killed nearly 280 billion enemies across the game's three factions. The bug-like Terminids made up the majority of those, with 121 billion of the bugs slain over the course of the last year. In return, the Terminids claimed 2.8 billion Helldivers.