CEO Fired, Budget Cut, Now Players Are Concerned.

Financial reality forces Starbreeze to thread the needle. They think they can pull it off, but some players are spooked.

00:00 Money!
00:23 The Brutal Launch
01:03 The Quote That Has People Worried
01:35 The Context You Need
03:08 Actual CEO Concequences
05:41 Starbreeze’s Financial Report
07:47 Starbreeze Respond To Players
09:41 The DLC Optics Problem
12:10 The Team’s Gambit.
13:33 The ESA Are Fighting Games

[gamepapa]

It always baffles me how I can find information on the exact budget to make movies but only got cryptic whispers when it comes to asking about video game budgets.

[merriospas]

They thought 3 was going to sail smoothly, yet they forgot to install sails in the fucking boat.

[Thescott]

"Always online single player."

No matter what else they're going through, no matter what else people are mad about; I'm not buying it until _that's_ fixed.

[Kamamura]

A game called "Payday" running out of money... I feel there is a joke floating around somewhere.

[TheFirstDoofus]

All of this. Literally ALL OF THIS could have been avoided if they added an offline mode from the get go for us lonely folks. And made the servers stable.

[SimuLord]

Payday 3 provided a valuable public service. They demonstrated in no uncertain terms which YouTubers could be turned into paid shills and easily bought off, and allowed a lot of unsubscribes that raised the overall quality of gaming news we all get now.

[Blythe]

Just the mentioning of investors makes me groan at this point. Game studios being on the stock market has been one of the worst things to happen to the games industry. Yes lets let people buy and influence a studio that have no idea how to actually make games and might only be in it for the short term profit

[gamerscomplete]

this is another ark situation where the players just keep playing the previous version even though the developer abandoned it because the prior version was better than the new release. Its like no one in charge at these places has ever played a game before

[neo_child]

10:15 Argument is that being able to "choose" the DLC you want is not consumer friendly. They intentionally overprice certain DLCs to prop the main bundle up.
If not overprice, they just make it extremely expensive if you were to pick and choose. They did it with Payday 2, and they're doing it again with Payday 3.
Just getting a color palette or outfit (yes they sell the outfits as dlc) costs a quarter of the bundle but if you purchase the bundle itself with the heist, weapons and cosmetics, its gonna "save you money".

While happy to hear that the money is going back into Payday 3, longtime Payday players are just tired of these endless DLC being drip fed to the players. They have milked the Payday community for long enough and people are so burnt out that some would recommend to others to not buy the game at all, and way for a couple years til they sell a heavily discounted "GOTY" version because its so DLC heavy that you'll burn a hole in your wallet to get the content they put out.

[DarthRambo]

Payday 3, Destiny 2, Overwatch 2, all these games just needed a graphics haul a relaunch, similar to CSGO instead of a separate game . They try to canibalaise their own small fan base

[FireTalon]

When has Starbreeze ever been prepared for their financial circumstances?

[TheAnonLee]

Not touching it until they add an offline mode. If they ever do that it.

[EastyyBlogspot]

I would love to see a full breakdown of a game like payday 3, of the budget...how many people working on the project and a deep dive of the development such as management decisions and if a lot of work was wasted or if getting decisions made took ages.... i just have a feeling with many games time is wasted due to management not having a clear concise vision

[IRMentat]

while the steam DLC UI is not-good it's also the devs/publishers faults for not CLEARLY LABELLING what's a subordinate/component dlc, what's the "all in one package" and what's the standalone items
a simple naming convention of
Season 1: complete
season 1: just the maps
season 1: just the skins
would fix 99% of that optics issue but obfuscation is the bread and butter of people trying to macro-transaction the prospective playerbase early and often.

[SnoOwTrX_]

9:42 On Payday 2, I spent THOUSANDS of hours, I bought all the DLC's (even bought some for my friends). I grinded that game until I couldn't anymore, and all that while still thinking "It's all worth it, because Payday 3 will be awesome".
I Pre-ordered PD3, and when I got access to the beta I saw it was garbage, but I hoped that it was just a test build and the full released would be fine, because 2023 is the year of payday 3, there's no way they fuck this up, right?
Needless to say, Starbreeze ain't getting a singe f*cking cent from me anymore, the hope, the trust, the time and the money I didn't had, invested on a franchise I was passionate about, all thrown to the trash. I hope Almir get's his toast stolen on xmas again.

[MrBlueWaooWaoo]

Genuinely think the game not having an offline mode was and always will be THE biggest detriment to it. People plainly don't wanna buy into something they COULD have access to when they want it, how they want it- but aren't being allowed to because of blatant greed.

[AlwayzFresh]

I refuse to touch that game out of principle. If they make it free I will consider it but will never give Starbreeze a penny.

[Barkspawned]

Years before they even started offering season passes or bundles, Payday 2's full DLC price was already in the hundreds. And a lot of new mechanics for the game were completely isolated in those DLC packs for years too. Throwing weapons, LMGs, grenade launchers, were all DLC exclusive for years until they threw a few out for free. Acting like Steam is misrepresenting Overkill's intentions for not rounding down the "Add all DLC to cart" cost makes you sound ignorant of who you're talking about, at best.

[TheOneHistoryGuy]

In the midst of all of the troubles that Starbreeze is facing right now with PayDay 3, seeing the CEO face consequences for the mis-management of the game's launch and having the Twitter account and the FAQ basically say, 'Yeah, we know we screwed up and yeah, we really need the money to keep making games' is like a breath of fresh air.

Whatever happens next, I wish the best for all the developers at Starbreeze because chances are they're even more disappointed, angry frustrated, sad, and spooked than we are as players.

[KiraSlith]

The ultimate problem is that they didn't learn anything from Payday 2 and their WW2 spin-off crashing and burning at launch. You can't launch a full-price game this barebones, you just can't. PD2 struggling up fron the bins with it's utter lack of content was a fairytale outcome courtesy the gaming news media (notably IGN, Gamespot, and G4) all gaslighting people into buying a game with less content than many flash games of the era.