Payday 3 Sales And Player Numbers "Significantly" Lower Than Hoped For

Payday 3 developer Starbreeze said that sales and player activity for the game are at significantly lowers level than it would like. The studio is currently working with its publisher, Plaion, to implement changes.

"There are many examples from the game industry, where a problematic initial time on the market is turned into long-term success," said CEO Tobias Sjogren in Starbreeze's latest earnings report. "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."

He went on to explain that Payday remains a strong brand, as Payday 2 is actually faring slightly better financially than its sequel and has 400,000 active players. However, Starbreeze hopes to covert those still playing Payday 2 over to playing Payday 3 instead. Payday 2 is sitting at 28K concurrent players on Steam in the last 24 hours while Payday 3 is only at 302.

Starbreeze also intends to continue diversifying its offerings, such as developing games on its own IPs, on licensed IPs, and being a publisher for other studios' games. For example, its next project is a multiplayer co-op game codenamed Project Baxter, and it's based off Dungeons & Dragons. Starbreeze published Roboquest as well, which received positive reviews with a Metacritic score of 85.

In GameSpot's Payday 3 review, we said, "Payday 3's drastically improved heists allow for a level of freedom that is betrayed by challenge-based progression."