Available since last September, PAYDAY 3 clearly does not enjoy the aura of its predecessor. Already in November, Embracer admitted that Starbreeze's latest title had achieved “results below management's expectations.” Today, Starbreeze’s 2023 annual report allows us to once again discuss the PAYDAY 3 case.
PAYDAY 3 sales and player counts fall short of management's expectations
The company's CEO admitted that “sales and player activity are currently at significantly lower levels than we would like.” Of course, the studio does not intend to abandon the game, but wants to find solutions to ensure that the title lives up to expectations. So, in February, changes and improvements will be announced.
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There are many examples in the video game industry where a problematic initial period in the market turned into long-term success. There is no simple recipe, but the common thread among positive examples is to take player criticism to heart, to dare to support your game and to maintain an open and honest dialogue with stakeholders. That's exactly what we're doing today with PAYDAY 3. Few companies are lucky enough to have a brand as strong as PAYDAY. While our most recent game is lagging, PAYDAY 2 is doing a little better than expected financially and with over 400,000 active players in a single month during the quarter. This shows the strength of the brand, and our potential to convert these players to PAYDAY 3 as we deliver on our commitments.
When PAYDAY 3 launched, many players wanted to try the studio's new title. Thus, via a graph communicated by Starbreeze, we can see that the game had reached a peak of around 3.2 million active monthly users. However, by December it was back down to approximately 700,000 players. For comparison, PAYDAY 2's in December was around 400,000 players.
If we look at the number of players connected simultaneously on Steam, we can see that in recent days, PAYDAY 3 is struggling to bring together 500, while PAYDAY 2 is hovering around 40,000.
Unfortunately, PAYDAY 3 launched with numerous bugs that quickly discouraged players. The studio has worked hard to make fixes and updates and obviously continues to support it.
PAYDAY 3 is available on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 and PC. It is included in Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass. Strabreeze is also working on a brand new project in the Dungeons and Dragons universe: Project Baxter.
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