Payday 3’s shaky launch has the developers “looking at the possibility of some sort of offline mode”
Starbreeze will also evaluate "a new partner for matchmaking services"
Payday 3 developer Starbreeze Studios has confirmed that it’s looking towards making the new heist shooter “less dependent on online services”, following the constant server issues and matchmaking problems encountered by players from launch.
In an update post shared by Starbreeze yesterday (Monday, September 25), the studio acknowledged that “matchmaking infrastructure has not performed as tested and expected”. It stated that an “unforeseen error” made the game unable to handle the number of players attempting to dive in at launch, and, although a new version of its matchmaking server software was later rolled out, Starbreeze’s matchmaking partner introduced another new update on Sunday (September 24) which, once again, made the infrastructure unstable.
The post continued, confirming that in the long term, the studio will be “evaluating a new partner for matchmaking services and making Payday 3 less dependent on online services”.
As PC Gamer reports, over on Twitter, Starbreeze Studios’ CEO, Tobias Sjögren, also touched on the title’s potential move away from being an always-online game, and wrote: “[It’s] been communicated by Andreas for example that [the] team is looking at [the] possibility to [sic] add some sort of offline mode.”
Recommendation; ”Game pass” is better than ”hard pass”… 😉Jokes aside, been communicated by Andreas for example that team is looking at possibility to add some sort of offline mode.September 24, 2023
In the official statement, Sjögren said: “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.”
Today (September 26), Payday 3 was temporarily taken offline in order to “improve server and matchmaking stability”. It’s set to go offline again on Friday (September 29) at 2am ET / 11pm PT / 7am BST / 5pm AEDT for approximately three hours.
As it stands, most players affected by Payday 3’s server issues probably wouldn’t consider the title to be one of the best FPS games. If you’re looking for something else to play with your friends, though, be sure to take a look at our list of the best co-op games.
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Catherine is a News Writer for TechRadar Gaming. Armed with a journalism degree from The University of Sheffield, she was sucked into the games media industry after spending far too much time on her university newspaper writing about Pokémon and cool indie games, and realising that was a very cool job, actually. She previously spent 19 months working at GAMINGbible as a full-time journalist. She loves all things Nintendo, and will never stop talking about Xenoblade Chronicles.