Payday 3 Suffers A Staggering 90% Steam Player Count Drop In Less Than A Month

Payday 3 has lost 90% of its players on Steam since its launch less than a month ago. The game opened up to an incredible peak of concurrent players in just a few hours on Steam on its launch day, now dwindling to only a tenth of that figure. Conversely, the game’s forerunner, Payday 2 has seen a notable surge in its player count consistently surpassing the latest installment on Steam.

The co-op heist shooter saw its all-time high Steam player count on its release day, September 21, 2023. 77,938 players logged in to try their hands on the long-awaited FPS game. To anyone’s surprise, the game could amass a peak of a mere 8,117 players in the last 24 hours, which is around 90% beneath the launch day count from less than a month ago.

On the SteamDB chart, Payday 3 can be seen averaging a player count of less than 10 thousand concurrent players over the last week and beyond. On the 13th of October, the number reached a maximum of 7,745 players increasing to a peak of 8,444 players on the 14th, then lessening again in the last 24 hours. 

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On the contrary, Payday 2 has consistently been beating its successor in popularity. The game marked a peak player count of 55,666 in the last 24 hours almost 10 years after its release. At the time of writing, Payday 2 stands at an incredible 31st position on SteamDB’s most-played chart beating its sequel, Payday 2 by a full 136 places which stands at number 167.

Payday 3 has been a long-awaited title that arrived six years after its initial reveal. To much disappointment. the game opened up to a multitude of server issues mostly due to its online-only feature making the game almost unplayable. The FPS was further plagued by mostly negative ratings on Steam. However, devs Starbreeze has acknowledged the criticism and dropped a schedule explaining how they will fix the game.

Payday 3 is the third installment in the cooperative first-person shooter game. The game came out on September 21 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.