‘Payday 3’ developer “looking at” an offline mode, following disastrous launch

nme.com:

Payday 3‘s launch issues have been so severe that Starbreeze is considering removing its controversial always-online requirement.Payday 3, which launched for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S on September 21, became a trending topic on social media sites like X for sporadic server connections, crashes, persistent matchmaking issues and incorrect versions of the game being playable on PS5.Given that it had been a decade since Payday 2, these problems irked players who had been awaiting the third game with a lot of anticipation.

Starbreeze’s CEO said that the team would “work tirelessly” to ensure that Payday 3 would meet their expectations once more following these unfortunate incidents.In an official statement, the developer explained that “matchmaking software encountered an unforeseen error” and that this overloaded the third-party matchmaking partner that handled the game.It reiterated that this issue did not manifest in either the technical beta or early access periods for Payday 3 and that the team is dedicated to resolving it in the immediate.“In the short-term, this means Starbreeze’ focus is to ensure the player experience.

In the long-term, this means evaluating a new partner for matchmaking services and making Payday 3 less dependent on online services,” it said.CEO Tobias Sjögren clarified the latter half of that statement in a post to X. “Team is looking at possibility to add some sort of offline mode,” he said.One of the creators of Payday, Ulf Andersson, had said that Payday 3 might be a bit too similar to its predecessor.“They’re sticking really close to the original concept,” replied Andersson in an interview with NME.