As Payday 3 Seems To Be Turning Around, Lead Producer Andreas Penniger And Community Head Almir Listo Discuss Where They Went Wrong

Things are finally looking a bit up for Starbreeze Studios’ Payday 3 after what Community Lead Almir Listo described in a recent interview as “a disastrous launch”. In the same interview with PCGamesN, Listo admits that there was a chance the action game would be dead by now had they “just put [their] heads in the sand and continued on”. But that didn’t happen. Granted, player numbers aren’t particularly high, and definitely not in the same ranking as Payday 2, but Steam Charts shows a continuous increase since May, and the reviews have improved as well.

In the interview, Listo and Lead Producer Andreas Penniger discuss what Starbreeze has been doing to save the game from its potentially final fate, as well as where they went wrong in the first place. They note the difficulty of not just making games, but of following something as successful as Payday 2 and trying to learn the right lessons from that success. Penniger states that “a lot of the problems were due to the fact that [they] didn’t do their due diligence well enough” and ended up making “a product that people didn’t resonate with”. He also adds that the team made decisions “too quickly” due to being overconfident following Payday 2’s success.

One thing to note about Penniger and Listo’s outlook is that while they admit the game had serious tech issues that made it unplayable for weeks, they feel it would be bad to use those issues as an excuse, stating that the development team “clearly missed the mark from an experience point of view as well”. It’s worth acknowledging, as players might forgive technical issues (although, not the ones that just won’t let you play the game) provided the game is fun to play and offers a good experience.

The good news is that going forward, Starbreeze’s work on the game is built around trying to figure out what the game’s community wants and why Payday 2 was as successful as it was. Penniger states that Payday 3 “currently suffers from a split personality – trying to be too many things at once”. This is something they intend to fix. Listo adds that he’s hoping to improve the player experience and regain their trust, all while telling a “great story”.