The highly anticipated follow-up to one of the best-known co-op shooters, PAYDAY 3 released on September 21. PAYDAY players have been waiting for a long to savor the thrill of a flawlessly planned and carried-out heist. This distinguished PAYDAY as a high-octane, co-op FPS experience above all others.
The launch of PAYDAY 3 did not go as smoothly as planned and anticipated by the fans. Players have expressed dissatisfaction about persistent server issues, and because the game requires constant online play, even those who wish to play solo are having difficulty doing so.
We are so sorry that the infrastructure didn’t hold up as expected, and although it’s impossible to prepare for every scenario – we should be able to do better. We work tirelessly until we have restored all services and our players can get back to heisting again without issues!
— Tobias Sjögren (@tobiassjogren) September 22, 2023
Tobias Sjogren, CEO of PAYDAY 3 creator Starbreeze, issued an apology for the game’s terrible state in a statement on X following the rough launch. He further admitted on X that they “should be able to do better.”
Starbreeze also recently adopted an online-only design approach for their game, and fans were unpleasantly startled. Due to the numerous angry players who have flooded PAYDAY 3’s Steam page because they are unable to play the game offline and because the servers are down, the game’s reviews are now mostly negative.
Issues in PAYDAY 3
The main dissatisfaction from the gamers came due to their facing serious issues which were mostly related to bad networking and connectivity. Apart from these issues, a great majority of gamers have been unable to play the game because of the unstable servers.
Additionally, because the game requires constant online connectivity, even solo players are having problems accessing it. As a result, on Steam, it currently has mostly negative user ratings, with 68% of the almost 25,000 user evaluations being negative.
Payday 3’s matchmaking is still broken, driving Steam reviews down to “mostly negative.” pic.twitter.com/rGvY4z86Ys
— PC Gamer (@pcgamer) September 27, 2023
According to a statement from the game’s developer, Starbreeze, PAYDAY 3’s matchmaking system encountered “an unforeseen error” and was unable to handle the high volume of players attempting to access the game.
To make matters worse, an upgrade to the matchmaking software was released over the weekend initially which appeared to solve the problem, but on Sunday, a server infrastructure update by Starbreeze’s “third-party matchmaking partner” led to additional server instability.
“We are disappointed in the issues our playerbase 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,” Starbreeze CEO Tobias Sjogren said.
The mess’s one potential benefit is that it might lead to PAYDAY 3 having a true offline mode for single-player action. PAYDAY 3’s matching services partner is now being sought by Starbreeze, who also stated that they are working to make the game “less dependent on online services.”