Payday 3 Sales and Engagement 'Significantly Lower' Than Dev Wants

ign.com:

Payday 3 developer Starbreeze Entertainment has admitted the heist shooter is performing "significantly lower" than it would like in both sales and player engagement.

As reported by Game Developer, Starbreeze admitted to the struggle in its latest financial earnings. "Payday 3’s sales and player activity are currently at significantly lower levels than we would like," it said. Improving Payday 3 will be its "biggest focus and absolutely priority" going forward as it attempts to "ensure that that the game lives up to expectations".

Starbreeze appeared hopeful about the future, however. "There are many examples from the game industry, where a problematic initial time on the market is turned into long-term success," it said.

"There is no simple recipe available, but a common thread from the positive examples is to take players’ criticism to heart, dare to support your game, and keeping an open and honest dialogue with your stakeholders. That is exactly what we are now doing with Payday 3."

Payday 3's launch was plagued with server issues that forced Starbreeze CEO Tobias Sjögren to apologise. "We are so sorry that the infrastructure didn't hold up as expected, and although it's impossible to prepare for every scenario — we should be able to do better," he said.

Almost a month after its launch and Starbreeze apologised again for its lack of communication, and then just a week later said sorry one more time for not delivering a promised patch and again going quiet. It said in January 2024 it was "well aware" fans weren't satisfied.

Starbreeze boasted Payday 3 had 3.1 million players as of October 2, but this number has dwindled, at least on Steam, as many more players are currently playing Payday 2 than its sequel. According to SteamDB, Payday 3 has a 24-hour peak of just 302 compared to Payday 2's 29,785, despite the latter launching over a decade ago.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.