Following a tough first year on the market, the director of Payday 3 is “stepping away” from his role, instead focusing his efforts elsewhere on the project. The title has underperformed by a significant margin since it was released in September 2022 despite several updates. In fact, Payday 2 continues to see many more players, seeing a peak concurrent player count of 14,601 compared to Payday 3‘s 771 players in the last 24 hours.
“Going into year 2, Mio will be stepping away from his former role as Game Director and focusing his efforts as a designer elsewhere in the project,” Starbreeze said in a statement posted to X.
“In the interim, while researching and planning year 2, Andreas and Almir will be the creative force behind the upcoming updates we hope you keep enjoying and playing. Thank you for your continued support, we salute you!”
Upon release, Payday 3 failed to meet expectations, marred by major server issues. Outages lasted for days, and as the game is online-only, players were left with a bad taste in their mouths that never seemed to completely dissipate–even after the issues were fixed.
In March, the CEO of Starbreeze Studios, Tobias Sjögren, left the company following the game’s poor release. The studio appointed Juergen Goeldner as interim CEO following this shakeup. Goeldner boasts over 40 years of experience in the industry, most recently serving as CEO of Focus Entertainment and previously working in executive roles with Square Enix and Eidos.
Payday 3 was released in September 2023 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.