Payday 3 Sales Disappoint, Online Player Base Remains Sparse in 2024
Following its tumultuous launch in 2023, Payday 3 experienced a disastrous reception marked by dismal review scores, a negative Steam rating, and a mass exodus of fans returning to Payday 2. Now, several months later, with the game failing to meet sales projections, Starbreeze, the developer, has ousted its CEO in pursuit of “different leadership.” Launched in September 2023, Payday 3 encountered immediate challenges with broken servers, faulty matchmaking, and PlayStation 5 players being relegated to an outdated game build.
Even after stabilization, significant issues persisted, including the absence of a solo play option, lack of quickplay matchmaking, and no mechanism for vote-kicking players. The severity of these issues prompted developers to announce plans in February 2024 to prioritize implementing requested features, enhancing content, and rectifying progression and UI shortcomings. Concurrently, Starbreeze disclosed that Payday 3 had fallen short of sales expectations.
As evidenced by SteamDB, the game typically sees fewer than 400 players online daily, in stark contrast to Payday 2’s robust player base, boasting over 25,000 active users most days. The cumulative impact of these challenges has resulted in the removal of Starbreeze CEO Tobias Sjögren, signaling the consequences of the game’s disastrous launch.
In a March 12 post on Starbreeze’s corporate website, the company’s board of directors announced that effective immediately, Sjögren had been removed from his position as CEO and was no longer part of the company. Instead, board member and former Focus Home Interactive CEO Juergen Goeldner is now the interim CEO while Starbreeze looks for a new person to take on the role permanently. According to the note, Starbreeze’s board decided that the company needs “different leadership.”
“[Starbreeze] has a clear strategy centered around creating attractive games on our own and licensed IPs,” said Torgny Hellström, Starbreeze’s Chairman. “The board’s consolidated assessment is that the execution of strategy needs a different leadership. Juergen Goeldner has been part of the board since 2023 and, with over 40 years of industry experience, is a strong interim solution.”
Starbreeze says in its note that former CEO Sjögren will be around to help provide a “smooth transition.” Starbreeze has had an eventful past few years, including a raid by police in 2018 as part of a larger investigation into insider trading. In 2020, the former CFO of the company was convicted on insider trading charges, though he was acquitted in 2021.