Co-op heist shooter Payday 3’s launch has gone so badly that more people are playing its 10-year-old predecessor on Steam than its sequel. Now, developer Starbreeze has apologised for its lack of communication, and explained the holdup with Payday 3’s first patch.
“We’ve been quiet over the last few days, and for that we apologise,” began the statement published on the Payday website. “It’s not easy to communicate when we have not been able to offer any updates on the one big topic that’s on everyone’s mind right now: when are the patches coming to Payday 3? Despite our silence, we want to assure you all that the team is still working on our main priority, which is to get the patch we promised out to you, and to make sure our patching process allows us to continue publishing them at a steady cadence in the future.”
Starbreeze went on to explain that Payday 3’s first patch is currently going through a testing and certification process with PlayStation owner Sony and Xbox owner Microsoft, which is important in order to maintain parity between all platforms.
The delay, Starbreeze said, has to do with the discovery of an error that risked player progression being wiped.
“The reason it has taken so long to get this first patch ready is very long and complicated, but the short version is that we discovered critical errors with our update pipeline shortly after the game released,” Starbreeze said. “There was a significant risk to player progression being wiped if we didn’t address this and ensured a solid test environment.”
Starbreeze said it’s looking to improve Payday 3’s progression system, which players have criticised, “to balance both the challenge system as well as offering infamy points for each heist.” Expect more on this soon.
“Once we can consistently deliver patches, the team will also deliver on our plans for more content for the game,” Starbreeze added. Free content updates are expected before the end of the year.
“Again, we apologise for our silence. We see your frustration and anger, and we can assure you this is not a situation we want to be in. The team is working hard on a game that will be supported for years to come and making Payday 3 the new criminal dawn!”
Payday 3's launch was plagued with server issues that forced Starbreeze CEO Tobias Sjögren to apologise. "We are so sorry that the infrastructure didn't hold up as expected, and although it's impossible to prepare for every scenario — we should be able to do better," he said.
Over a month after Payday 3’s September 21 launch and the patch promising to address these issues is still unavailable. Starbreeze boasted Payday 3 had 3.1 million players as of October 2, but this number has dwindled, at least on Steam. According to SteamDB, Payday 3's 24-hour peak is currently 3,234 users, significantly lower than Payday 2's 36,538. The third game doesn't even crack Steam's 100 most popular games list, falling below the likes of Cookie Clicker, Bloons TD 6, and Russian Fishing 4.
Starbreeze blamed its third-party matchmaking partner for server issues at launch and said it would look into making an offline mode (as Payday 3 requires a constant online connection). "We have a lot of diligent and consistent work ahead of us to regain community trust, but we will work hard to do it," Sjögren said.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.