Payday 3’s Publishing Plans “Impeded” By COVID-19 Pandemic

The company behind the wildly successful Payday series hit some very…odd troubles over the last few years. The company has had a string of resignations and reconstructions that seemingly brought the company to the edge. But apparently, they have survived to live another day and heist at least one more job (or well, hopefully, anyway). Unfortunately, it’s not particularly good news at the moment as it seems their next big job, Payday 3, has hit some virus-related snags. 

Starbreeze released their financial results for the first quarter of 2020. On the good side, it seems the company has managed to cut their losses by a decent amount, going from $17 million in Q1 2019 to $9.9 million now. The not so great news however, is it seems plans on Payday 3 have been affected to at least some degree. CEO Mikael Nermark has that talks with potential publishers are still ongoing, but due to the various different travel restrictions surrounding COVID-19, it’s “somewhat impeded ongoing discussions.” So, it sounds like there still isn’t a solid publishing plan in place (Thanks to GamesIndustry for transcribing the report).

Just to give you an idea of how important Payday 3 will be to Starbreeze, in that same finical report it was revealed the Payday series accounted for 99% of Q1 sales and is essentially all the company has left at this point. We’ve heard brief snippets about Payday 3 here and there, though it’s still probably a good ways off. It seems that a lot is riding on the game for the company, so fingers crossed all goes according to plan.