Payday 3’s Dev Team Downsizes, No Layoffs in Sight Yet

Typically, when a game experiences a rough launch or a development team decides to downsize, it isn’t good news. While Starbreeze has downsized the Payday 3 team, it doesn’t seem that there are planned layoffs, which, in the current climate of the game industry, is great news. When it comes to games that were highly anticipated and then flopping, Payday 3 is pretty high on the list. Even Starbreeze is aware of the fact that the game launched unsuccessfully. As a result, they’ve now downsized the team, as reported in Starbreeze’s interim report.

In the report, CEO Mats Juhl states “in the coming months, investment will be lower as we round off ‘Operation Medic Bag’ for Payday and therefore enter Year 2 with a smaller team focused on continuously updating the game with new content.” The report did not specify how downsizing the team will affect Payday exactly and whether it will affect the frequency of updates in Payday 3. This means that the updates will be smaller or less frequent. Despite the fact that the team has downsized and that Payday 3 didn’t perform quite to their expectations, the report says that Starbreeze “remains financially strong,” which is a good sign for a company in today’s climate.

In the report, there was no mention of any layoffs, which is a pretty good sign. Hopefully this means that the staff have been relocated elsewhere within the company, or that they have already landed on their feet. While Payday 3 wasn’t quite so successful, Juhl does mention that the recent DLCs that have been released for Payday 3 were well received, providing a glimmer of hope for Starbreeze. Although Payday 3’s sales weren’t up to scratch, the company’s overall revenue has been cushioned nicely by the “relatively stable sales of Payday 2,” a game that players found themselves returning to instead of playing Payday 3.

While the report predominantly focuses on the financial updates of the company, and how their current games are performing, there is also mention of Project Baxter, a dungeons & Dragons project that “continues at full speed,” with the report going on to state that there are internal playtests taking place, with a lot of “active discussions” happening with a lot of industry-leading companies.

While Starbreeze is known for making the iconic Payday franchise,  they have also made games such as Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. They’ve also started to dip their toes into publishing, with Dead by Daylight being one of the most well-known titles that they’ve published.