Payday 3 Dev CEO Apologizes For Rough Launch As Server Issues Persist

Update 9/23: The server issues appear to be getting better.

Original article (9/22) follows.

The launch of Payday 3 has not gone smoothly for Starbreeze Studios. Server issues have plagued the game as players are unable to even play the game. That’s because Payday 3 requires you to be always online. It’s no problem when the servers are working. Right now? It’s a disaster and shows the pitfalls of launching an always-online game. 

Starbreeze’s CEO jumped on X/Twitter to apologize for the server issues.

“We are so sorry that the infrastructure didn’t hold up as expected, and although it’s impossible to prepare for every scenario – we should be able to do better. We work tirelessly until we have restored all services and our players can get back to heisting again without issues!” writes CEO Tobias Sjögren.

Earlier today, the devs were confident they had fixed the issue.

But that was short-lived as hours later, the devs acknowledged all platforms could not matchmake – meaning no one could play the game. It’s been seven hours since the last update, and players still struggle to connect to the game’s servers.

Payday 3 hit a concurrent player peak of 66,056 earlier today. 35,000+ are still trying to play the game as of an hour ago. 

So, what’s going on? We don’t know the exact reason for the server issues, but the number of players trying to play is likely much higher than 35,000+. The game was released on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S yesterday (September 21). But it also launched day one on Game Pass (Xbox and PC). A higher-than-expected player count probably exacerbated these server infrastructure issues.

An offline mode would alleviate some of the server stress. 

We’ll see if the dev team can get a handle on these server issues over the weekend. I’ll update this post as we get more official updates on the matchmaking issues.