Dearly beloved, we are here today to mourn the death of Payday 3. Developed by Starbreeze Studios and launched in September 2023 for Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PC, Payday 3… What’s that you say? The game isn’t dead? We thought the same at first, until quickly peering at the Steam charts. From a peak concurrent player count of 77,938 on September 21st, the day of launch, to a 24-hour peak of 302, the player base for the co-op heist shooter is almost non-existent.
While you can’t see the player numbers on Xbox or PlayStation, the most played games list on the former doesn’t have Payday 3 anywhere among the top 49 titles, despite being on Game Pass. It’s stiff competition compared to the sheer number of other high-profile enjoyable games. However, a sequel to one of the most successful co-op titles of all time, with its predecessor selling over 40 million copies as of January 2023, should be somewhere.
At the very least, its predecessor shouldn’t beat its player counts. It has a 24-hour peak concurrent player count of 29,150, which is on the lower end – the past six months have seen it peak as high as 55,666 players. For a title over ten years old? Not bad. For its sequel that launched a little over six months ago? Beyond worrying.
If it wasn’t obvious enough that Payday 3 is dead in the water, Starbreeze recently removed its CEO and replaced him with board member Juergen Goeldner. The search is on for a permanent option. However, for now, the chairman said the company “has a clear strategy centered around creating attractive games on our own and licensed IPs” and that “the execution of strategy needs a different leadership.”
That’s a nice way of saying the strategy under the previous CEO isn’t working and that it’s time for a change. Whether Starbreeze can execute on the same or not and bring Payday 3 back to life, you have to ask: Where did it all go wrong? How did one of the most hyped sequels die a slow death like this?
It began, as it usually does, at launch. There was already plenty of controversy over no offline mode, effectively leaving solo players in the dust. So when servers were bungled, and matchmaking issues reigned supreme, fans had little more than, “Let’s get you back in the saddle, this is a small branch bank” to keep them company (alongside crashes). It took roughly a week or so before multiplayer was at a point that could be deemed stable.
However, once players finally spent more time with the game, the number of steps back became obvious. Let’s be fair and excuse the amount of content it shipped with, even though Payday 2 launched with 12 heists compared to Payday 3’s eight. Some of the other issues stemmed from terrible progression, with Infamy Points earned only from completing challenges and nothing else. Why play the mission as intended and go for the maximum amount of cash when you could speedrun it for fast XP and Infamy Points?
No pre-game chat or even a pre-planning map. No filtering and sorting for challenges. A lackluster selection of weapons. No Crime.net or lobby browser. Terrible UI design. The list went on and on, and the only consolidation was that it cost “only” $40.
Starbreeze quickly acknowledged that things weren’t going so well. It saw the demand for offline play but couldn’t confirm it was happening. It did promise ground-breaking features like renaming loadouts and an unready button. Yes, an unready button because readying for a match means no takebacks.
It all seemed well enough, and with 3.1 million unique players reported for September, there was clearly a player base that wanted to get in on the heisting action. All the developer had to do was ship some new content and its first patch with many quality-of-life improvements.
Unfortunately, the patch was delayed from early to mid-October. But then it was delayed again to an unknown date. By the beginning of November, it finally went live and though it offered several bug fixes, the real game-changing improvements would have to wait until later that month. Still, the prospect of two free Legacy Heists, revamped for the current game, and receiving Infamy Points for each completed heist sounded nice.
Starbreeze would later reveal that launch sales had surpassed expectations, but due to various issues, they began slowing down. Still, there was confidence that sales would increase over time.
The first content patch came and went, breathing some life into the game. It was good, make no mistake, but only a start. There were still many fundamental issues that had to be fixed. So the fact that Starbreeze followed this up with its first paid DLC, Syntax Error, rubbed some players the wrong way. Granted, that was the roadmap, and the developer was sticking to it, but considering all the issues that Payday 3 had faced, asking for more money wasn’t something that generated a ton of fanfare, that too for $18. Nearly half the game’s price for an outfit pack, weapon pack and one new heist? No thanks.
By January 2024, Starbreeze acknowledged that players weren’t happy with the state of the game. It thus announced a “strike team of veteran developers” to formulate a plan. That plan was eventually revealed as Operation Medic Bag, focusing on improving the UI, matchmaking, performance and even adding text chat. Text chat in 2024! Other free updates would add long-awaited features like renaming loadouts, that wiley unready button, voting to kick annoying players, dailies, rotating stealth modifiers and merging players into a party once a match concluded.
It even confirmed an offline mode for solo players, which rolls out in two phases, the first requiring a connection and the second occasionally requiring online access to update progress. However, the goal is a fully offline mode that won’t rely on servers.
All of this is good and necessary, but it feels too late. The first update for Operation Medic Bag arrived on February 29th and saw peak player counts on Steam double from 291 to 582. They subsequently dropped off a few days later. Consider titles like Palworld or Helldivers 2, which are still going strong despite their fair share of issues.
Payday 3 doesn’t just need to cater to its fan base for long periods and attract new players to provide any hope of a comeback. Quality of life features and improvements, alongside new content, are a start, but the sequel must offer an experience you can’t get anywhere else. It needs to be enjoyable and keep players coming back for more. Saying that is bizarre because Payday 2 is doing so without any new content or updates. Yes, it had multiple years to get things right, but once again, Starbreeze should have carried those lessons forward instead of doing…whatever it’s currently doing with Payday 3.
Perhaps it really does have a plan to cater to players and sincerely improve their game. However, with several big-name titles available and more on the way, you only get one shot to capture a player’s attention and make a positive impression. Long-term turnarounds are still possible, but with rising costs and companies less interested in shouldering the same for very little return, you have to wonder if Payday 3’s 2024 roadmap will pan out.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
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