As Payday 3’s matchmaking issues continue, its developer is looking into adding an offline mode.
Developer Starbreeze has seen Payday 3 suffer a disastrous launch, with severe online problems sparking a backlash from players. On Steam, the co-op heist shooter currently has a “mostly negative” user review rating. As of writing on September 26, more people are playing the decade old Payday 2 than Payday 3 on Valve’s platform.
As player complaints grew more vociferous on Sunday, Starbreeze boss Tobias Sjögren tweeted to address concern about Payday 3’s always-online requirement, saying “the team is looking at possibility to add some sort of offline mode”.
So, what went wrong? In a note to press trumpeting launch-weekend stats of 218,250 concurrent players across all platforms, and a peak of 1,347,510 unique players, Starbreeze pointed its finger squarely at its third-party matchmaking partner.
Recommendation; ”Game pass” is better than ”hard pass”… ?
— Tobias Sjögren (@tobiassjogren) September 24, 2023
Jokes aside, been communicated by Andreas for example that team is looking at possibility to add some sort of offline mode.
“Payday 3 matchmaking infrastructure has not performed as tested and expected,” Starbreeze’s statement reads. “Matchmaking software encountered an unforeseen error, which made it unable to handle the massive influx of players. The issue caused an unrecoverable situation for Starbreeze’ third-party matchmaking partner.
“A new version of the matchmaking server software was gradually deployed across all regions leading to improved performance. However, a software update made by the partner during late Sunday again introduced instability to the matchmaking infrastructure. The partner continues to work to improve and stabilize Payday 3’s online systems.
“The issue in question did not manifest during Technical Betas or Early Access due to the specificity of rapid user influx and load-balancing. Starbreeze is currently evaluating all options, both short- and long-term. 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.”
There’s a new statement from Tobias Sjögren, too: “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. We have a lot of diligent and consistent work ahead of us to regain community trust, but we will work hard to do it.”
To that end, Starbreeze brought Payday 3 offline today, September 26, to “improve server and matchmaking stability”. Payday 3 will again go dark this Friday, September 29 for another round of upgrades.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
