Payday 3 Hit 218,250 Peak Concurrent Players in Launch Weekend

Starbreeze Studios’ Payday 3 was released on September 21st for Standard Edition owners after a short early access period and faced several issues. Matchmaking errors meant the game was unavailable for most players, and it doesn’t help that even solo play isn’t possible without being connected online.

In a recent press release, Starbreeze CEO Tobias Sjögren said, “We are disappointed in the issues our player base has faced during our launch weekend, but we are confident in our core product and the quality of Payday 3 – and all available metrics point to it. We have a lot of diligent and consistent work ahead of us to regain community trust, but we will work hard to do it.”

The co-op heist shooter performed pretty well, all things considered, hitting 218,250 peak concurrent players across all platforms. The daily active user total peaked at 1,347,510 unique players, while Starbreeze Nebula has 3,794,172 registered users.

Regarding the matchmaking issues, Starbreeze revealed that the infrastructure “has not performed as tested and expected. Matchmaking software encountered an unforeseen error, which made it unable to handle the massive influx of players. The issue caused an unrecoverable situation for Starbreeze’s third-party matchmaking partner.

“A new version of the matchmaking server software was gradually deployed across all regions, leading to improved performance. However, a software update by the partner late Sunday again introduced instability to the matchmaking infrastructure. The partner continues to work to improve and stabilize Payday 3’s online systems.”

The “specificity” of load-balancing and a rapid influx of players meant that the issue didn’t occur during early access or the technical betas. For now, Starbreeze is “evaluating all options.” While ensuring player experience is the short-term goal, it could seek a new partner for matchmaking services in the long term and make the game less dependent on online services.

Whether that means an offline mode is in the works remains to be seen, so stay tuned for more details. Payday 3 is available for Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PC, and also playable via Game Pass.