Starbreeze, the developer behind the cooperative heist shooter Payday 3, acknowledged that the game’s performance is below expectations. Their official end-of-year report details “significantly lower levels” of sales and player activity compared to their goals.
While Payday 3 launched for PC and consoles in September 2023, it has received mixed reviews on Steam, with recent negative feedback. According to the report, Starbreeze has formed a “strike team” of veteran developers tasked with tackling the game’s shortcomings and implementing short- and long-term improvements. Specific details regarding the planned changes will be announced soon. The whole idea is to incorporate player feedback and work closely with co-publishing partner Plaion to address player concerns. However, we’ve not seen Payday 3 really do anything big or good, so I doubt it will start selling well out of nowhere.
What’s worse is that they highlighted the continued success of Payday 2. It’s true that Payday 2 boasts over 400,000 active players in some months; it only shows how poorly Payday 3 is being received. If anything, this should be considered a bad thing. This is because they have competition coming with the Den of Wolves game.
Den of Wolves is being made by former developers from the original Payday. They promise to add in everything players have wanted and take risks. Those developers say Payday 3 is bad because the studio doesn’t want to take risks. A huge exodus may happen from Payday 2 to Den of Wolves because it might provide what Payday 3 doesn’t.
While the future of Payday 3 remains to be seen, things are looking down for the developer. Maybe they can turn things around, but they’re on a ticking clock.
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