Starbreeze has shared a new letter updating the public about the state of Payday 3.
First things first, Starbreeze revealed that they have taken care of the game’s poor matchmaking that it suffered since launch. The scheduled maintenance the studio went through in the last week took care of those issues.
To wit, Starbreeze has some good news to follow. Payday 3 reached that they had 3,167,938 MAUs (monthly active users) on September 2023. They also revealed that the company’s personal account system, Starbreeze Nebula, had a total of 4,538,702 registered users.
Starbreeze CEO Tobias Sjögren shared this message with players:
“First and foremost, I would like to thank our players for the patience they have shown us. Our community is the engine that drives both our games and our company forward.
I don’t really need to repeat that this was not the start we wanted, but at the same time, our business model is a marathon and not a sprint and we will tirelessly continue to build PAYDAY 3 bigger and better to deliver the greatest possible value for our players.”
The fallout of Payday 3’s poorly executed launch seemed to be quite dire for the game and studio. Starbreeze had actually removed Denuvo from the game before it launched, after feeling the backlash from fans for announcing that they added it in at all.
But then, come launch day, the game seemed to have issue with matchmaking. This pretty much ruined the launch and discouraged players from even trying the game. Starbreeze then made an announcement that they would remove the game’s always online requirement.
If we were honest, Starbreeze faced similar issues when they launched the very first Payday. However, at the time, the fans were willing to give the studio another chance. While Payday was not perfect, gamers liked what they saw and so the company got that second chance. Payday 2 would go on to be a phenomenon that would pass through at least three console generations (PlayStation 3/Xbox 360, PlayStation 4/Xbox One, Nintendo Switch) and literal hundreds of DLC.
However, this was not that Starbreeze that fans are dealing with it now. This is the Starbreeze that went through publishing Overkill’s The Walking Dead. In other words, this is the studio that already lost a lot of goodwill with fans after botching a highly anticipated release with poor production and planning on their end.
So it’s good for Starbreeze that they did get that many signups to Starbreeze Nebula, and that many concurrent players for their game. Now Starbreeze has to prove they won’t repeat their mistakes and fix the Payday 3 experience completely.
