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Payday 3 is a 2023 cooperative first-person shooter game developed by Starbreeze Studios and published by Deep Silver. The game is a sequel to Payday 2, and is the third installment in the Payday series. It was released for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on 21 September 2023. It received mixed reviews from critics and failed to meet the sales expectations of Starbreeze and Embracer Group.
| Payday 3 | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Starbreeze Studios |
| Publisher(s) | Deep Silver |
| Composer(s) | Gustavo Coutinho |
| Engine | Unreal Engine 4 |
| Platform(s) | |
| Release | 21 September 2023 |
| Genre(s) | First-person shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
Payday 3 takes place after the ending of Payday 2 where the Payday Gang went separate ways and left their criminal lives, but being double-crossed and losing all of their money causes the Payday Gang to return to the life of crime.[1] The original crew of characters originating from Payday: The Heist ("Dallas", "Chains", "Wolf", and "Hoxton") return, with 4 other characters, three returning from Payday 2 ("Joy", "Houston", "Clover"), and one new character ("Pearl"), appearing as additional characters. The game takes place mainly in New York in the 2020s,[1][2] intended to add more depth to the Payday Gang's crimes with game-changing differences like more advanced surveillance or the rise of cryptocurrency.[1][2]
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Currently, there are 15 heists in Payday 3. These heists are divided into 3 sections.
Core Heists
- No Rest For The Wicked
- Road Rage
- Dirty Ice
- Rock The Cradle
- Under The Surphaze
- Gold And Sharke
- 99 Boxes
- Touch The Sky
Side Hustles
- Turbid Station
- Cook Off
- Diamond District
The Bad Apple (DLC Heists)
- Syntax Error
- Boys In Blue
- Houston Breakout (previously known as Land of The Free)
- Fear And Greed
In the Dev Update 09 video on the PAYDAY YouTube channel, the heists First World Bank and Holdout were accidentally leaked, with Holdout having the heist image of 99 Boxes.[3] This leak also makes First World Bank the first heist to appear in every PAYDAY game.
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Developer Starbreeze Studios announced in May 2016 that Payday 3 was in development at Overkill Software, after Starbreeze acquired the rights to the intellectual property from 505 Games for around US$30 million.[4] In March 2021, Plaion committed to pay €50 million to assist in the game's development and marketing, including more than 18 months of post-launch support using the games as a service model.[5] Payday 3 was developed using Unreal Engine 4, but will be upgraded to use Unreal Engine 5 post launch.[2][6] On January 1, 2023, a teaser trailer titled A New Criminal Dawn was released, revealing its logo. Console versions are also the same version as the game on PC platforms, unlike its predecessor. Overkill states that this is due to the game being created using the Unreal Engine.[7] In June, Overkill announced that the game would release on September 18, 2023 for people who had pre-ordered the Silver and Gold editions, while the standard edition would release on September 21.[8]
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Critical response
| Aggregator | Score |
|---|---|
| Metacritic | PC: 66/100[9] PS5: 61/100[10] XBOX: 67/100[11] |
Reception
Payday 3 received "mixed or average" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator website Metacritic.[9][10][11]
Vikki Blake, writing for Eurogamer, called it "a shallow shooter that doesn't offer anywhere near enough bang for your ill-gotten buck."[13] Travis Northup, writing for IGN, wrote that "Payday 3's cooperative heists are off to a strong start, even if the vault is a bit bare at the moment."[14] Giovanni Colantonio, in a review for Digital Trends, said that "Payday 3 doesn't shake up its predecessor's formula much, but a strong batch of initial heists sets the live service shooter up for success."[12]
Launch
Upon launch, the game's servers failed due to the massive influx of players, making the game almost unplayable, since the game is online-only. The outages lasted for days.[15][16] Starbreeze announced that the game had attracted more than 1.3 million players at launch.[17]
Sales
Payday 3 became the fifth and the sixth best-selling video game in the United States and the United Kingdom respectively in September 2023.[18][19]
One month after launch, the player base on Steam plummeted, with Payday 2 having 10 times more concurrent players than Payday 3.[20]
In November 2023, Embracer Group (owner of Deep Silver) said that Payday 3 had failed to meet their sales expectations.[21]
In February 2024, Starbreeze said that the game's sales and player activity were way below expectations.[22][23] In March 2024, Starbreeze fired CEO Tobias Sjögren and replaced him with Juergen Goeldner as interim CEO.[24] On May 15 2024, Mats Juhl replaced Juergen Goeldner to become acting CEO of Starbreeze.[25] In September 2024, it was announced that game director Miodrag Kovačevićas had been removed from his role in preparation for the game's second year, with Andreas Häll Penninger (lead producer on Payday 3) and Almir Listo (Starbreeze's Global Brand Director) becoming interim game directors.[26]
On a 'Heist with Almir' stream in November 2024, Mats Juhl (Starbreeze's CFO and acting CEO) said that "so far, the game [Payday 3] hasn't made any profits".[27]
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