At the time of writing Payday 3 is 10 days away from the one-year anniversary of its release, and to generously describe its first year, it didn’t go as developer Starbreeze planned. When it launched, in our review PSU noted the emphasis on stealth gameplay and praised it as a great change, along with it still being a solid shooter because Starbreeze is well-equipped in making good FPS games. At the same time though, we bemoaned the technical issues that plagued its launch (and beyond) and its severe lack of content. All together, we left Payday 3 hopeful for the potential it had. Potential that it seemingly never achieved. Technical issues kept being a problem, and a month after release Starbreeze issued an apology to players. Another month later, parent company Embracer Group reported it was under-performing. By February 2024 – just five months after launch – Starbreeze admitted Payday 3 was performing at “significantly lower levels” than expected. Now following that tumultuous year, game director for Payday 3 Miodrag Kovačević is “stepping away” from his role, and will continue to work on the game as a designer. In the meantime, lead producer Andreas Häll and global brand director Almir Listo will take the creative reigns of the game. “Going into year 2, Mio will be stepping away from his former role as game director and focusing his efforts as a designer elsewhere on the project,” the studio announced in a Twitter post intended to update players on game’s leadership. “In the interim while researching and planning year 2, Andreas and Almir will be the creative force behind upcoming updates we hope you keep enjoying and playing.” Interestingly the messaging here doesn’t imply that Kovačević is going to lead a different project, rather he’s been demoted from his role into a lesser one. It’s always possible that this change in leadership is what the game needs to pick things back up, but it’s difficult to say anything would change Payday 3’s fate for the better. Players who love the franchise immediately went back to playing Payday 2 once Payday 3 fumbled its launch. A quick look at how both games are doing today via SteamDB, Payday 3 had a peak of 791 players in the last 24-hours. Payday 2 had a peak of 11,868 players. The challenge for Häll and Listo isn’t just to get players off other shooters and onto Payday 3. It’s to try and give the players who would already be playing Payday a reason to not just play Payday 2 instead, a game that has years of support and content behind it. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes. Source – [Starbreeze, VGC] The post Payday 3’s Game Director Is “Stepping Away” From The Role As Starbreeze Prepares For Year 2 appeared first on PlayStation Universe.
Source: https://www.psu.com/news/payday-3-ps5-g ... or-year-2/
