Winds of Change – Consoles Edition
Hey Heisters,
I’m back for another update, but first of all I’d like to kick off by saying a big and heartfelt thank you on behalf of the crew and myself. Since we posted the first “Winds of Change” update we’ve been closely monitoring, listening to and discussing your feedback. We feel overwhelmed by your understanding, and at the same time accept and acknowledge some of the hesitation you’ve expressed. We’d like to reiterate that the changes we’ve made were not an easy decision, but we hope that we can continue delivering exciting and fun experiences for you, that feels like time well spent in PAYDAY 2.
Many of our console players have been asking for updates, we’ve asked you to have patience with us and here’s finally an update for you:
TL;DR
- Update 1.5 for XboxOne and PlayStation 4 is live NOW-ish (we’re waiting for the update to appear across both platforms) and is available as a free update
- PC and consoles will unfortunately have disparity going forward
- We would like to set the proper expectations at this time. Should we find the opportunity to revisit and solve the disparity in the future, we will do so.
Preface
I know that we have not delivered on the Consoles as we should have, or even promised at one point. Where we are right now, I know that we still can’t. I want to change that for the future, but in all honesty, we won’t be able to do that for PAYDAY 2. We are however making the changes needed, so we can do it right for the next one from the get go.
Consoles has always been something of an Achilles heel in our production pipeline and while we’ve made several efforts through the years to strengthen the team and effectivising the PC production to better align to consoles, it hasn’t been enough. As of April 2019, the PAYDAY 2: Crime Wave Edition with its DLC’s is almost caught up to PC, but not quite.
We’ve had to look at the future console updates from our situation as it looks today, with the limitations that we have, rather than looking back at what has been said and done before and make choices accordingly, even though they might not be what we wish them to. We simply have too many constraints in available manpower to be able to fix the situation in the short term. We see this as an opportunity to, at least, be as forthcoming as we can be regarding the road map ahead.
To be clear as can be, we will out of necessity, at this time, have to accept disparity between the PC and Consoles versions for PAYDAY 2 going forward.
Updates for Playstation 4 and Xbox One
We’ve previously mentioned that we would like to attempt to achieve parity for PC and Consoles, at this time however, it will not be possible. We will release Console update 1.5 – for free – which will soon be hitting a console near you and will bring the console version of the game slightly closer to the current Legacy collection on PC.
Some of the remaining heists, together with the Safe House-feature, unfortunately have too high requirements in terms of optimization to be viable to port at this time. The primary heists and features most likely to be excluded from consoles are:
- Shacklethorne Auction Heist (part of Icebreaker Campaign)
- Reservoir Dogs Heist
- Hells Island Heist (part of Breaking News Campaign)
- No Mercy Heist (part of Breaking News Campaign)
- The White House Heist (part of Breaking News Campaign)
- The Safe House feature
The above mentioned campaigns all had masks, weapons or mods attached to them, we are currently still investigating if we can release those separately. Some additional content has licensing and collaboration restrictions attached to them, which unfortunately will make them challenging to release.
For you story buffs out there, we are aware that this will make the final “The Secret”- storyline unavailable to you at this time, which is highly unfortunate. Without making any promises, we will keep this in mind for the future, should we have the opportunity to revisit this content.
New Content anno 2019 and forward
So will the Silk Road Campaign see the light of day on consoles? The most straight up response we can give is: “we’re looking into it” and can not at this time provide a solid answer nor a timeline. When we know more, we will communicate accordingly.
PAYDAY 2 for Nintendo Switch
We’re very sad to announce that PAYDAY 2 for Nintendo Switch will be very unlikely to see further updates, despite what our initial ambitions were on the contrary. As per above, we’ve been forced to make many hard decisions along the road, and this is yet another. To put the Switch version separately into context, the transfer of the game over to the Switch-platform was not made in-house and would require significant further investments to happen.
We are very aware that this was undesired news, but we’d rather be clear to set the expectations now.
Conclusion
If you’ve made it this far, you might be present to the fact that we have chosen to word several things above as “highly unlikely”, “very challenging” or similar. To reiterate: This is by design to give everyone the proper set of expectations, to be as clear as we can be in our communication going forward, without future promises or timelines. We are, however, very unwilling to close the door completely on some of these issues, and will keep our previous promises in mind as we continue working to secure our business. Should we find the opportunity to revisit these challenges, we will do so.
Thank you for your support and for sticking by us.
Mikael
CEO Starbreeze / OVERKILL
1.5 Update (Free) Patch Notes
Patch notes are available on the console pages:
