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Starbreeze admits Payday 3 is massively underperforming (www.gamedeveloper.com)

submitted 8 months ago by yamanii@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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Payday 3 launched for Windows PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S in September 2023 but has seemingly struggled to win over players. The title currently has a 'mixed' rating on Steam with over 36,000 user reviews, although the vast majority of recent reviews have been 'mostly negative.'

Maybe release a game when it's ready, so many of these online games are releasing broken and getting their roadmap pushed back because they have to fix it asap.

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[-] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 107 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Make your game require always online connectivity
Rush your development, causing network issues, bugs, missing QoL features
Push ahead with monetization schemes despite problems
Players vanish
Surprised Pikachu face

Congratulations Starbreeze, you made a game so shitty that it's not even worth pirating. They will practically have to relaunch the game to reclaim the playerbase at this point.

[-] tux@lemmy.world 38 points 8 months ago

Don't forget taking forever for an initial patch release, despite there being multiple game breaking bugs.

The state the game was at release was absolutely awful.

The only folks who kept playing that I know were folks grinding for the final levels/achievements/weapons. Which consisted of playing in unenjoyable ways like using bad load outs, doing stupid crap like tagging a billion guards, etc. Who wants to pay money for an unenjoyable grind?

They released a decent patch, some new content and DLC but everyone has already moved on. They totally screwed themselves, sucks it's an IP that I like, but more games need to fail like this so publishers stop doing the same bullshit

[-] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 21 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yeah, I've played Payday 2 but I wasn't going to pick this up for any more than $10US.

This review from a Japanese player with 426hours playtime was really telling..., to summarize:

Way too late to form a strike team, are they even working to fix it?
Years ago the CEO put comments to the media about wanting to make a game to run over the long term. If you want that then don't put out a game that flops at the start.
The developers have full on ignored player feedback, and just putting in what they feel like and maybe a handful of Payday 2 brought in as a bonus. Infrequent updates on the Steam Community, never responding to users, releasing a DLC people couldn't play and saying "have a nice weekend" on X.
A patch finally comes but it introduces new bugs, many big issues still unaddressed, game still dropping frames and unoptimized.
Are the devs shitfaced drunk while making this game? If they can get money while hardly doing work I'd want to work there.
I uninstalled the game, and even if the game were to massively improve, I wouldn't return as the studio treats players like nothing but money generators.

[-] NOSin@lemmy.world 13 points 8 months ago

Stop blaming Devs and blame corpo above them. Can't guarantee that's the case here but it's almost always their fault rather than the Devs when things go wrong on a launch like this.

[-] yamanii@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Maybe they should unionize or walkout or something, costumers can't fight their fight.

As proven with Volition, if we don't buy their game in protest they are closed down anyway instead of getting another shot at something we actually want, nothing can change from this side.

[-] NOSin@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

It's easier said than done tbh. It seems to be slowly changing lately tho, there's hope still.

[-] Sendpicsofsandwiches@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 months ago

Echoes of the anthem launch (and eventual christmas themed death)

[-] Glamborghini@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

Man, was this game a disappointment. So many privacy agreements just to install the bloody thing. The entire experience was a letdown. PD2 was so so so much fun and this game arrived just wobbly and with pre-shat pants. What a damn dud.

[-] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 months ago

50 hours of gameplay! If you include the amount of time it takes to read the Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and End User License Agreement.

[-] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 36 points 8 months ago

The live service bubble is bursting.

[-] GlitterInfection@lemmy.world 12 points 8 months ago

God I hope!

[-] Katana314@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago

If they wanted to focus on live service, I’m surprised they made a trilogy of games. In the meantime a bunch of other devs just kept adding content to the one game their players play.

Not good for Payday’s fans to compete within their trilogy for attention.

[-] Phegan@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

I hope the take away from this is that no matter if a game is live service or not it needs to run, not nickel dime players, and be good. Or it will bust.

[-] Hubi@feddit.de 27 points 8 months ago

Damn. I knew it was bad but seeing this it's more like "catastrophic":

https://steamcharts.com/cmp/218620,1272080#6m

[-] Paradoxvoid@aussie.zone 9 points 8 months ago

Holy shit, it's actually impressive to tank that hard - not cresting more than 1000 concurrent players in over a month, and hasn't been able to beat 5000 since November... I know people love throwing the 'dead game' meme around prematurely, but if this isn't dead yet, it's definitely got one foot in the grave.

[-] caut_R@lemmy.world 17 points 8 months ago

IMO Payday 3‘s biggest problem is that Payday 2 exists

[-] Badeendje@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

Yeah, and they had so much DLC that was not even always bad value for money.. but you need to have a hell of a proposition for people to leave that investment behind.

[-] Zoidsberg@lemmy.ca 16 points 8 months ago

[-] 9715698@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago

Damn it's weird seeing that meme in such high resolution.

[-] jballs@sh.itjust.works 14 points 8 months ago

I played it a lot at launch. Frankly it's just boring after a while. There's only something like 6 or 7 missions. You get no rewards for completing missions except for random achievements and cash, which is pretty useless overall.

[-] aluminium@lemmy.world 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

This game also brilliantly exposed how easily certain YouTubers get corrupted.

[-] yamanii@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

Not like this actman...

[-] beetus@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

Could you elaborate on which? I've seen a lot of sketchy reviews recently

[-] MilitantAtheist@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago

Not sure why they even released this. In the other hand, Overkill's the walking dead was really enjoyable. I wanted to play that game a lot. But it got taken down from steam in a heartbeat.