In what is a serious setback for Starbreeze Studios and Overkill Software, the studio has revealed they cannot determine an ETA for Payday 3’s upcoming first patch.
As shared on Reddit by user Turbostrider27, Starbreeze’s community manager Elisabeth gave the bad news on their Discord.
Elisabeth said:
“Heisters,
We’re sorry for the lack of communication regarding the first patch. We have identified some issues that need to be fixed before we can bring it to you, but rest assured that this is the main priority for our teams.”
Starbreeze may or may choose to share more information on the issues Payday 3 is facing, but as of this moment, this is all the information they have provided.
Most fans will see this as just the latest disappointing update for the revival of the popular co-op heist game. However, it’s potentially a really bad turn for Starbreeze.
For those who don’t remember, Starbreeze entered a difficult financial period around 2018, because of the failure of their licensed shooter, Overkill’s The Walking Dead. Starbreeze had bet their farm on the popularity of this license, but failed to deliver an appropriate AAA experience for its PC launch. This, in turn, was the cause of issues with their game engine, poor management, and a forced crunch that didn’t fix the game’s problems.
A year after that PC release The Walking Dead’s owner company, Skybound, ends Starbreeze’s contract. This effectively and immediately cancels Overkill’s The Walking Dead for consoles, and much later it was also delisted on Steam.
Starbreeze were up for more difficult times in the months to come, including filing for restructuring, and the company’s CEO, Bo Andersson and CFO, Sebastian Ahlskog, facing fraud charges. However, the restructuring itself managed to keep the company alive. They even managed to stay independent by splitting up their publishing and game studio arms.
Starbreeze was hoping that Payday 3 would prove successful to get them out of their current rut. As we know, it hasn’t played out that way, as the game has faced its own share of issues and controversies.
Most recently, Starbreeze was able to cite that they had 3,167,938 MAUs (monthly active users) on September 2023. They had even fixed the game’s matchmaking systems. It is important for Starbreeze that they keep whatever momentum they have going for Payday 3, if not enhance it.
We hope Starbreeze can get this all together, but as of right now, we don’t know how they’re going to do that. Hopefully there will be better news once the first patch is ready.
