Taking firm ownership of his company’s product, Tobias Sjögren – the CEO of Starbreeze – has taken to social media to express an apology for the awful state that Payday 3 has released in. It was just two days that the game hit the market – including launching on Game Pass – and it has promptly suffered immeasurably with connectivity and network issues, blocking some players from being able to run a single heist.
There’s one huge takeaway from this, and it’s the fact that, in July this year, Starbreeze pivoted to an always-online operating model, displeasing fans to no end. It seems that this decision has well and truly come back to bite them, as needing to always be connected is what’s preventing players from enjoying the game they’ve waited a decade for.
‘It’s Impossible to Prepare’
In his statement released on Twitter, Sjögren stressed that ‘it’s impossible to prepare for every scenario’ but Starbreeze should ‘be able to do better.’ He explained that they will work tirelessly to fix Payday 3, but with reviews crashing across the board, the damage is being done – and fast. On Steam, a swarm of negative reviews has pushed the game to a ‘Mostly Negative’ rating – and that’s with 16,212 reviews (at the time of writing).
It was over a decade ago that Payday 2 was released, and it became a cult classic title with no issues – it was still being enjoyed when Payday 3 was released, and if we use Steam as a representative example, we can see that it still is popular right now. In the last 24 hours, a peak concurrent player count of 45,374 users was recorded, versus 66,142 on Payday 3.
Is Payday 3 already irreparably damaged?
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