In the gaming space, some franchises do whatever it takes to get the next title out as soon as possible. For them, they don’t want to “rest on what they have. ” They want to make the “next big thing.” But for Starbreeze and Overkill, they took a much different approach with their beloved heist franchise. With the second game, they let it have a decade in the spotlight thanks to DLC and gamers wanting to play it repeatedly. Fast forward to 2023, Payday 3 held a hands-on event that many got to play, and Starbreeze was more than willing to shed some light on key things.
For example, you might have seen that the game is only $40. That’s much lower than “standard AAA titles” in the gaming space today. For the team, this was a reference to what came before while also being fair to gamers:
“The Payday franchise has always been priced fairly ever since Payday: The Heist, which was $20, Payday 2 was $30, and now up to $40 for Payday 3,” said Overkill Software’s Almir Listo to ComicBook.com. “Reason being we want as many of our community members as possible to get into the actions. We do have a series of different editions available, but the $40 price range, if you look at the game itself we tried to optimize in the best we can to make sure as many machines as possible can run it. When it comes to people’s wallets, we don’t want to rob them. We want to give them an experience they can keep and continue playing.”
Almir did admit that if there were more heists in the “launch version” of the game, the price likely would’ve gone up. But that’s the fun of the title. There’s always more to come via DLC.
That brings us to crossovers. The teams behind the franchise have had some big names show up in the titles to help flesh out the world even more and increase the gameplay possibilities.
In a chat with The Gamer, two of the team noted the potential for crossovers with characters like John McLane or doing a whole DLC section with Batman as he stops heists in Gotham City. Or, they could bring back John Wick, as they brought him into the universe days before his first movie was released, and have more fun with the “Baba Yaga.”
The point here is that the potential is limitless. It’s all about whether they’ll get approval.