Payday 3 Developer Admits Game’s Sales Are Significantly Low

Payday 3, the highly anticipated sequel to the second Payday in this live service shooter franchise, has seemingly misfired in terms of sales and overall fan interest, despite the developer saying otherwise at the time of the game’s launch. In a newly published year-end report by Starbreeze Entertainment, the dev admits that Payday 3’s sales are at “significantly” low levels. 

PAYDAY 3’s sales and player activity are currently at significantly lower
levels than we would like. Our biggest focus and absolute priority, both
during and after the quarter, are the efforts needed to ensure that the
game lives up to expectations. We are working closely with our co-publishing partner Plaion to identify the changes that we will implement, in both the short- and long-term, that add the most value to the gaming experience,” says Starbreeze. 

The writing has been on the wall for quite some time now; Payday 3 came out in September last year, and within a month of its release, the shooter managed to lose 90% of its player base on Steam. At that time, the numbers started to grow for its predecessor — Payday 2 — instead, with users showing more interest there because of its more enjoyable stature.

Anyhow, Starbreeze has been on the matter for a while now, addressing the community a couple of times and explaining how it’ll fix the game. It’s even gone on to gather a team of veteran devs to turn things around for the shooter, just so you know. In the year-end report, though, the developer has expanded on this front yet again, saying, 

The PAYDAY team will in February announce the changes and
improvements that are prioritized for implementation.” 

Payday 3 traces its release back to September 21, 2023, for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. eXputer reviewed the game and rated it 2.5/5.0, criticizing its online-only nature, lack of voice chat, frustrating AI, and lackluster quality-of-life additions to the first-person shooter.