2023 is “the year of Payday 3”, to hear developer Starbreeze put it. It’s been almost a full, quite spooky decade since Payday 2 was released on Steam. Cooperative FPS gaming has continued to gain momentum lately, with several major updates released in recent years, and now the team is looking to capitalize on that slow but steady growth with the release of Payday 3 this year. .
“This is absolutely one of the games I’ve been in that has the biggest audience. There’s a lot of people going to see this now. These words, from Starbreeze CEO Tobias Sjögren in an interview with GamesIndustry .biz, come from the company’s tally that around 40 million gamers have played Payday’s games.
Starbreeze’s 2022 financial report notes that it now sees an 80% increase in revenue from game sales, which generally indicates that the game exceeded $50 million in revenue, although Sjögren declines to confirm this fact. However, he notes that “our top concurrent users and monthly active users over time, our total downloads, and subscription growth on the Payday 2 Steam community page show that the game is still very, very well developed.” And he has a fantastic following.
Along with the impending release of Payday 3, Starbreeze has also followed in the footsteps of games like The Witcher 3, The Last of Us, and Halo to create a TV show based on the series. By teaming up with the Stockholm-based production company, the show will draw inspiration from Heat as well as some of the big names who have previously collaborated on Payday 2: John Wick, Scarface, Point Break and Reservoir Dogs.
Sjögren says he sees this as an opportunity to develop some of the character identities of some of Payday’s most iconic faces. “The masks marked a large part of their personalities. There’s a story about why they have this particular mask.”
There’s also more to come from Starbreeze, with Payday 3, Sjögren says, “We have two more games in development. Our goal is to launch one in 2025 and the other in 2027.” Interestingly, while he doesn’t reveal exactly what they might entail, he does note that “they will be a combination of licensed intellectual property and our own intellectual property”.
For now though, it looks like Payday 3 will follow the “games as a service” model in which its predecessor was so successful. Sjögren explains that the team plans to “continue to deliver what we are good at”. in terms of games as a service: multiplayer and cooperative titles, with a strong link to this community. He even goes so far as to say, “Everything we do in the future will be in this area so that we can talk about our strengths and the audience we’ve built.”
While we wait for more Payday 3 news, check out the best PC co-op games to wreak havoc with your friends, as well as some of the best crime games to satisfy those who like to be on the bad side. virtual law.