Starbreeze gains publishing rights for Payday 3

I swear, I’m trying to find the will to play Payday 3 and finish up my review I was supposed to have done ages ago. However, I think everyone and their granny can agree that the launch of Payday 3 was a disaster, and the post-launch patches, DLCs, and everything else haven’t exactly sparked a fire under anyone to play Payday 3 over Payday 2. However, Starbreeze is trying to right the ship by buying the publishing rights from Plaion, the parent company of former publisher Deep Silver.

Covered in lawyer ick and business juices that get the most boring of men priapic, Starbreeze released a statement yesterday stating that it will buy the publishing rights through shares. Amounting to the equivalent of 33 million Swedish Krona (SEK), or roughly three and a half million dollars (at the time of writing), the studio will take full control of the title. Board member for Starbreeze, Thomas Lindgren, said the following on the announcement:

“This agreement enables Starbreeze to fully acquire the publishing rights to PAYDAY 3 from Plaion, significantly accelerate our content development roadmap, and pursue broader strategic opportunities for the PAYDAY franchise as a whole. We appreciate PLAION’s support, which underscores their confidence in Starbreeze’[s] future and strengthens our strategic alignment with major global industry players.” The trouble is, we don’t get details on why this will “significantly accelerate our content development roadmap.” We’re just told it will.

The rest of the press release is mostly lawyer-speak that bores everyone to sleep, so I’ll save you that. However, in needless bullet points, it lists the rationale for this move as: ” Starbreeze has reached a mutual agreement with PLAION regarding the publishing rights for PAYDAY 3. With the game now on the market for over 18 months, the timing is opportune for Starbreeze to assume full publishing responsibility.

This will enable Starbreeze to accelerate content development and pursue broader business opportunities for the PAYDAY franchise as a whole. While this agreement marks the conclusion of the current publishing arrangement, it also lays the groundwork for a long-term partnership between Starbreeze and PLAION on future PAYDAY franchise projects. To finance the transaction, Starbreeze will issue new shares representing 10 percent of its outstanding share capital.“

Reading between the lines and suppressing the want to stamp on a lawyer’s neck until they learn to speak like a human, it sounds like this will allow the team to develop updates and future “content” without having to get approval from a wholly separate publishing entity. This is providing that’s the idea. To turn the ship around, however, is like going down to visit the wreckage of the Titanic, you need smarter people than yourself to do it. Not that games haven’t had a massive U-turn from poor launches, but 18 months on and Payday 3 rarely surfaces above 1000 concurrent players while the 12-year-old Payday 2 is more than ten times that.

I’m honestly hopeful that Payday 3 can turn it around and be something worth playing, if not more than Payday 2, maybe alongside it. From playing for several hours in the time since launch, Payday 3‘s biggest issue is that it is Payday 2, but again and requires/required an always-online DRM connection. About the only thing to it is the story, the thing no one is playing a Payday game for. It’s about shooting cops in the head and throwing heavy bags of money into the back of a van.