Finally, Starbreeze eyes up its Payday
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To say that Swedish games firm Starbreeze has had an interesting few years would be an understatement.
After the success of games such as Payday 2 and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, the company spread out in every direction. Starbreeze had big dreams of being a publisher and a virtual reality firm, as well as expanding its development output. It appeared to be a long time coming, but following the release of the long-in-the-works Overkill's The Walking Dead, the company was brought to the brink of collapse.
The Starbreeze of today is a very different beast from that of the past. Where the previous iteration of the company spread itself thin across too many projects, the present-day version of the Swedish games firm only really has one thing to focus on: Payday.
2023 is the year that the third numbered entry in the series is set to finally arrive. There's a lot riding on this, but for CEO Tobias Sjögren, this is just like any launch.
"It's like it is with every game release more or less," he says. "There's a lot of joy to be able to show the work that so many people have spent so much time on, mixed with the feeling of being nervous about it, of course. I feel something like nervous happiness. It's a weird feeling but I've handled it a number of times in my career on it. It's always fun. You should be nervous before you get on stage or something like that. Game releases are no different."
One might assume that tensions would be running higher given that Payday 3 is Starbreeze's first big launch in years. The last time the company released a new game was the aforementioned The Walking Dead project, which debuted way back in 2018.
But some
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