Payday 3’s upcoming launch is set to be Starbreeze’s biggest, CEO says

pcgamesn.com:

2023 is “the year of Payday 3,” to hear developer Starbreeze tell it. It’s been almost a full decade now, rather terrifyingly, since Payday 2 released on Steam. The co-op FPS game has continued to pick up momentum in recent times, with multiple large updates released in the past few years, and now the team is looking to cash in on that slow but steady growth with the release of Payday 3 this year.

“This is absolutely one of the games that I’ve been part of that has the biggest audience. There are a lot of people that are going to see this now.” Those words, from Starbreeze CEO Tobias Sjögren in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, come from the company’s count that an estimated 40 million players have now played the Payday games.

Starbreeze’s 2022 financial report remarks that it is now getting an increased 80% revenue share from game sales – usually an indication that the game has passed over $50 million in revenue, although Sjögren declines to confirm this fact. He does, however, note that “Our top concurrent users and monthly active users over time, our total downloads, and the growth of the sign-ups for the Payday 2 Steam community page all show that the game is still developing very, very strongly and has a fantastic following.”

Alongside the impending launch of Payday 3, Starbreeze has also followed in the footsteps of games like The Witcher 3, The Last of Us, and Halo to create a TV show based on the series. Partnering with production company Stockholm, the show will be inspired by the likes of Heat alongside some of the big names that have already collaborated with Payday 2 – John Wick, Scarface, Point Break, and Reservoir Dogs.

Sjögren says he sees this as an opportunity to flesh out some of the character