The launch of Payday 3 in 2023 was a catastrophe, resulting in poor evaluation scores, a adverse Steam ranking, and followers abandoning the brand new recreation to play Payday 2 as an alternative. Now, just a few months later, and after Payday 3 failed to fulfill gross sales expectations, the CEO of developer Starbreeze has been eliminated as the corporate appears for “totally different management.”
Launched in September 2023, Payday 3 suffered from damaged servers and dangerous matchmaking on day one. PS5 gamers additionally acquired caught enjoying an older construct of the sport, too. As soon as issues stabilized, there have been nonetheless points. The sport was lacking a solo possibility for lone wolves, a approach to leap into matches through quickplay, and even a approach to vote to kick gamers. The problems have been so dangerous that the builders introduced plans in February 2024 to deal with including in all of the options and content material gamers demanded and fixing the sport’s development and UI, too. In the meantime, that very same month, Starbreeze introduced that the sport failed to fulfill gross sales expectations. In response to SteamDB, Payday 3 has fewer than 400 gamers on-line most days. Payday 2 most days has over 25,000 lively customers. All and all, fairly dangerous! And now, seemingly because of this poor launch, Starbreeze CEO Tobias Sjögren has been eliminated.
In a March 12 put up on Starbreeze’s company web site, the corporate’s board of administrators introduced that, efficient instantly, Sjögren had been faraway from his place as CEO and was now not a part of the corporate. As a substitute, board member and former Focus Residence Interactive CEO Juergen Goeldner is now the interim CEO whereas Starbreeze appears for a brand new particular person to tackle the function completely. In response to the be aware, Starbreeze’s board determined that the corporate wants “totally different management.”
“[Starbreeze] has a transparent technique centered round creating engaging video games on our personal and licensed IPs,” mentioned Torgny Hellström, Starbreeze’s Chairman. “The board’s consolidated evaluation is that the execution of technique wants a distinct management. Juergen Goeldner has been a part of the board since 2023 and, with over 40 years of trade expertise, is a robust interim answer.”
Starbreeze says in its be aware that former CEO Sjögren might be round to assist present a “clean transition.” Starbreeze has had an eventful previous few years, together with a raid by police in 2018 as half of a bigger investigation into insider buying and selling. In 2020, the previous CFO of the corporate was convicted on insider buying and selling fees, although he was acquitted in 2021.
