The studio believes it can rehabilitate the struggling title but has warned there's no "simple" fix.

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.

  • RentlarEnglish
    107·
    9 months ago
    1. Make your game require always online connectivity
    2. Rush your development, causing network issues, bugs, missing QoL features
    3. Push ahead with monetization schemes despite problems
    4. Players vanish
    5. 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.worldEnglish
      391·
      9 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

      • RentlarEnglish
        221·
        9 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.worldEnglish
          141·
          9 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.worldOPEnglish
            6·
            9 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.worldEnglish
              2·
              9 months ago

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

    • Glamborghini@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      9 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.

      • RentlarEnglish
        1·
        9 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.