Payday 3 launched last year to dismal reviews, due to bugs and features from Payday 2 that were absent in the sequel. One such piece of missing functionality was the ability to play alone or offline, but an update coming today makes some progress towards fixing that with the addition of "Solo Mode".
]]>Six month's after Payday 3's disastrous launch, Starbreeze have parted ways with their CEO, Tobias Sjögren. In an update to investors, Starbreeze's board said that the company now requires "different leadership", and they've appointed former CEO of Focus Home Interactive Juergen Goeldner as interim CEO.
]]>Payday 3 received its first new features this past week as part of Operation Medic Bag, Starbreeze's efforts to turnaround the fortunes of their bleeding-out bank robbery 'em up. The patch contains 300 fixes alongside support for various Nvidia graphics technology, UI improvements, and more.
]]>Payday 3 developer Starbreeze say their co-op heist 'em up is underperforming both in terms of sales and player numbers. They also say they're committed to turning around that performance, with updates to come in 2024 which will revamp progression, the UI, add a solo mode and an offline mode, and more.
]]>Four months after the troubled launch of Payday 3, developers Starbreeze have announced they've formed a "strike team of veteran developers" with the goal of bringing it "up to where it will meet your expectations". The cooperative heist FPS got off to a right bumpy start when the ever-unpopular decision to only be playable if you're online collided with server issues that saw Starbreeze take the game down for a while. Since then, it has failed to rise above 'Mixed' review rating on Steam, not helped by Starbreeze releasing a £15 DLC pack when many players were unhappy with the game they'd just bought for £35.
]]>Payday devs Starbreeze are working on a co-op multiplayer game based on storied tabletop RPG Dungeons & Dragons. It’ll be out in 2026, and Starbreeze are being upfront with the fact it’ll be a games-as-a-service-type game.
]]>Payday 3's launch was rough, with long queues awaiting would-be heisters in the always-online game, and issues with progression and absent systems awaiting those who could login. Starbreeze Studios have now begun the process of making good on promised fixes to those criticisms, with patch 1.0.1 live now. It mostly includes "minor fixes", but lots of them.
]]>The Electronic Wireless Show podcast returns to one of our recent previous messes to discuss Payday 3. More specifically, we look at the post-launch changes the devs are making in an effort to improve matchmaking and wait times. Specifically, we use this to think about games that have changed their reputations after a rocky start, what with Cyberpunk 2077's recent 2.0 update. What are the circumstances that allow games to do that? Why are they such outliers? How do we think about reviews in the context of something like No Man's Sky?
We've also been playing some big recent games, so tune in for discussions of Assassin's Creed Mirage, a call for pirate games, and a hilarious misunderstanding about Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor.
]]>If Starbreeze themselves were actually a Payday 3 heisting team I suspect they'd be on the verge of putting money back into the vault at this stage - retracing their steps with bulging duffel bags, while apologising to security guards not so much for the whole bank robbery thing as for smashing so many utilities on their way out. Shortly after announcing plans to make the four-player PvE shooter less online-dependent, the developers have revealed that they're also reworking Payday 3's much-reviled progression system.
]]>Payday 3 makers Starbreeze have promised that the matchmaking woes of its launch are at an end following multiple rounds of maintenance to the co-op shooter’s servers.
]]>This week we at the Electronic Wireless Show podcast look at two contrasting tales of games being always online: Payday 3's overloaded launch servers, and Sea Of Thieves' triumphant reveal of season 10 additions. Is always online good? Is it bad? Or, much like the radiator in your living room, is it basically invisible as long as nothing breaks? Plus we dive into the games we've been playing recently (Nate is still plugging away at Baldur's Gate 3), recommend a bunch of unrelated short videos, and answer a question that has plagued humanity for years: would you punch a gorilla for a cheeseburger?
]]>You may have read that always-online crime caper Payday 3 has had a disastrous launch, with players forced into long queues for the privilege of playing by themselves. The chaos continues this week, as developer Starbreeze have now elected to take the game wholly offline for several hours at a time across Tuesday 26th and Friday 28th September, while exploring ways to minimise the game's reliance on internet access.
]]>Payday 3 launched earlier this week. As reported back in July, it requires players to connect to a server even if they're playing solo or with a few friends in a private match.
You can already guess the third sentence: the servers have been a disaster at launch, with players forced to queue for long periods just to play alone, if they can manage to play at all. It currently sits "Mostly Negative" reviews on Steam - that's 31% positive after almost 19,000 reviews.
]]>It's been a clear decade since the last entry in this co-op crimeathon FPS series, so I was interested to play Payday 3. Payday is exactly the sort of online multiplayer I can get behind: PvE with clear but theoretically malleable goals (theft!). But although compared to Crime Boss: Rockay City it's a crushing 60st monster truck tyre, Payday 3 isn't really reinventing the Payday 2 wheel. In some respects you might think it's rolling backwards, and while dedicated Payday 2 players may well switch over to the current gen iteration, you get the sense they'll be complaining about things the whole time.
]]>A lot of stuff happened over the past couple of weeks, so in this week's Electronic Wireless Show podcast we briefly round up some of the Unity nonsense, and some of the more interesting and/or funny bits of the Microsoft leak that happened at the start of the week. But what we really want to talk about is intellectual property rights! Bill Willingham, the man who came up with Fables (the IP that brought you The Wolf Among Us) declared via. blog post that he's making Fables a public domain property. What does that mean? Can we all just make Fables video games now? And what can we do with Sherlock holmes?
Plus: James broke the Lenovo Legion Go, I've been playing lots of games that aren't Starfield, and James recommends more music!
]]>Hop onto Game Pass today and you'll find the launch day arrival of Lies Of P, which Ed describes as "an instant must-play for Soulslikers" in his review.
I'm a Soulsavoider, so I'm more interested in the other games coming to Microsoft's Full Convergence stepping stone in the next couple of weeks, including Cocoon and The Lamplighters League.
]]>When anti-piracy software Denuvo is removed from a game days before its release date, it's usually because pirates cracked an early access version. Not so with Payday 3. It's due to release on September 21st, but its developers have decided to handle things themselves.
"Denuvo is no longer in Paday 3," they announced yesterday, ahead of its release on September 21st.
]]>Co-op heist 'em up Payday 3 is due for release later this month, but if you can't wait there's a second beta test underway now. It runs through the weekend until September 11th and is designed to stress test the servers ahead of launch.
]]>Having spent around 45 minutes in a three-player Payday 3 sesh at this year's Gamescom, I can confirm it's very… Payday. You slap on some masks, choose your loadout, then get to robbing banks or stealing things from crates. Often, it ends in absolute chaos as you mow through waves of coppers and rush to a getaway van. The number three might not signal a sweeping change to the formula, then, but that's arguably a good thing. It's a better-looking version of its predecessors that doesn't lose sight of the co-op silliness.
]]>Across years of updates and new missions, Payday 2 ultimately escalated to such a ridiculous degree that the gang broke into the White House to stole pre-signed Presidential pardons for themselves. It was good ridiculousness. Now Payday 3 is on its way, and the cooperative heisting looks far more down-to-Earth in a new trailer fresh out of Gamescom.
]]>Thieving co-op revival Payday 3 is due for release in September, but it'll enter closed beta next week. From August 2nd until August 7th, players accepted into the beta will be able to play a single heist so that developers Starbreeze can test their servers and the game's stability.
]]>Payday 3 has been back in the spotlight ahead of its September launch, making an appearance in the (Xbox green) limelight at last month’s Xbox Games Showcase - and then in the crosshairs of fans annoyed that you’ll always need to be online to play. There was actually another reveal for the game in recent days, too - but it snuck out so quietly that nobody realised it was there at first.
]]>Payday 3 looked pretty similar to its predecessors when shown during last month's Xbox Games Showcase. Almir Listo, global brand director at developers Starbreeze, confirmed one way the heist 'em up sequel would differ during a recent livestream: it's 'always online' and so will require an internet connection even when you're playing solo.
]]>At tonight's Xbox showcase, there was a first proper look at upcoming heist 'em up sequel Payday 3. To skip to the end: it looks a lot like past Paydays, inasmuch as it's a co-op first-person shooter that's less about clever breaking and entering and more about mowing down waves of cops.
The trailer also came with a release date: September 21st.
]]>Happy New Year, folks! Crikey, there are a lot of games coming out this year, aren't there? When I first asked the team to put together their most anticipated games for 2023, I was thinking we'd have a reasonably sensible number of things we were all looking forward to, you know, somewhere in the region of the 43 games we highlighted at the start of 2022. Very quickly, though, it became apparent that, actually, there are simply loads of games the RPS Treehouse is personally excited about this year, and cor, it would be rude not to include every last one of them. I'll be upfront: there are a fair number of TBA games on here that probably aren't going to come out in 2023, but as ever, we remain hopeful and optimistic all the same. So let's dive in.
]]>Payday series developers Starbreeze have not had a breezy few years. In 2019, they faced the serious threat of shutting down due to their financial situtation. Things eventually started looking up after their restructuring process and they reiterated plans for Payday 3 following the completion a publishing agreement.
They've now indeed signed on with co-publishers Koch Media. They've also doubled down on those plans to launch their next grand co-op heist 'em up in 2023. That's not as far away as it was the first time they said it, but it sure still isn't soon.
]]>Update: GamesIndustry.biz report that Ahlskog was acquited on appeal in June 2021.
Former Starbreeze Studios chief financial officer Sebastian Ahlskog was convicted of insider trading this Tuesday. This follows from the Swedish Economic Crime Authority raiding the company's headquarters and at least one private home in December 2018, under suspicion of using insider information to profit from Starbreeze's financial troubles.
]]>After a difficult financial year which saw them face a very real threat of shutting down, Starbreeze have survived a reconstruction process (roughly the Swedish equivalent of administration) and agreed a plan to pay off their debts. They're still not in great shape, what with those debts and all, but the court have approved their proposal to complete the reconstruction process so there is hope. For now, they're focusing on what they say is their "core business": the cooperative heisting Payday games, including the upcoming Payday 3.
]]>It's been a hard time for Starbreeze, with the gang behind Payday 2 and Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons facing a very real possibility they wouldn't survive another year. As they continue to try to recover from serious financial problems, they now foresee a bright and lucrative future led by one game: Payday 3. We should expect the latest in the really-quite-good cooperative heist FPS in 2022 or 2023, they've said in a new financial filing. Which seemed forever away until I realised it's almost 2020? As in, 2020 starts within three months? And then it's basically 2525? And we'll be living on the Moon? Time, eh.
]]>Last year, Overkill Games upset a pretty vocal corner of their Payday 2 [official site] community by introducing microtransactions to the co-op heist 'em up - something they'd previously promised to avoid. In an announcement made yesterday, Starbreeze - Overkill's parent company - revealed they've now acquired full rights to the Payday franchise and as such will scrap paid-for in-game items via the next update. Oh, and Payday 3's been confirmed.
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