Starbreeze has revealed that PayDay 3 is currently at performing “significantly lower levels” than it had hoped for, and as such its “biggest focus and absolute priority” right now is turning things around.
The company revealed last month that it had established a “strike team of veteran developers” to help rehabilitate PayDay 3 in both the short and long term. Its end-of-year report saw Starbreeze reaffirm its commitment to turning things around, and pointed to looking at player feedback and working with Plaion, the game’s publisher, to help smooth things over.
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There are many examples from the game industry, where a problematic initial time on the market is turned into long-term success. 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.
That is exactly what we are now doing with Payday 3. Few companies are blessed with a brand as strong as Payday. At a time when our most recent game is lagging, Payday 2 has fared slightly better than expected financially and with more than 400,000 active players in single months during the quarter. It shows the strength of the brand, and our potential to convert these to Payday 3 as we deliver on our commitments.
Back in November, Embracer Group had said that PayDay 3 failed to perform in line with expectations at launch, so the above may not come as a surprise.