Recap of Tuesday’s IR Stream with Almir and Mats

Hello Heisters!

What a week. Tuesday, we held a stream with Almir and our CEO Mats who discussed the statement from the investor report that started us on this journey “continuing to deliver amounts of value to our players with a significantly lower level of investment” – following that, the Payday community was understandably upset.

Since that doesn’t sound great, Mats joined Almir in this Tuesday’s stream to answer a few questions. They weren’t able to answer everything, but here are the highlights as well as the notes we had from our meeting ahead of the stream.

Investment

• We’re still investing in the game, just not at the elevated level we did during this year under Operation Medic Bag that included features such as solo-mode, a new progression system and server browser.
• If any of next year’s content does really well, we may be able to increase our investment into PAYDAY 3. The same happened with PAYDAY 2, where the team grew and shrunk depending on what we were doing.
• We’ve seen people say that “money earned by PAYDAY 3 goes to Project Baxter” which isn’t the case. The money from PAYDAY 3 goes to PAYDAY 3.
• More focus on paid content, we’re working on the next heist after the already announced legacy heist releasing soon, but gameplay “systems” like Armor 2.0 and the skill system revamp for instance, will be free.
• We do have a profit share deal with 505 Games/Digital Bros., and the wording from our official statements is (excuse the heavy corporate lingo here):
  “In connection with reversion of publishing rights to PAYDAY 2, Starbreeze and 505 Games (a subsidiary of Digital Bros) agreed that 505 Games will have a right to an initial share of future revenues attributable to PAYDAY 3. This could mean that 505 Games receives up to USD 40 million in the form of 33 percent of Starbreeze’ net from future sales of PAYDAY 3, after Starbreeze first has fully recouped its development and marketing costs.”
  As of our last financial report, there has been no share with 505 Games.
• We’re one of the oldest independent game studios in Sweden and have been listed on the stock market since 2000. There are currently no plans to go private.
• PAYDAY is still the core of Starbreeze. There are no plans to sell the IP.

Identity

• We want to keep making improvements to the core game while discovering what makes it unique.
• PAYDAY 3 started out not really knowing what to be – the changes over 2024 were all moving towards PAYDAY 2 – but what should PAYDAY 3 really be?
• We have to find the fun. If the game is fun, more people will want to play – and in the end buy additional content.

Team

• Smaller teams don’t suffer the same challenges with communication and are more able to adjust quickly.
• A smaller team led by Almir & Andreas will let us focus on what the game is and should be.
• No matter the size of the team, we’ll do our level best to deliver the best PAYDAY 3 we can.
• We’ve reluctantly needed to let go of a number of employees recently, we try to move people between projects whenever possible.

Game Updates

• Updates are still going to happen, but to spare the team from extra pressure, we want to avoid promising dates ahead of time unless we are confident in hitting them.
• We are not looking at creating a season pass right now. But it’s not ruled out for all time if that ends up being what’s best for the game, and requested by the players.
• We are working on systemic upgrades such as Armor 2.0 and an updated skill system. We’ll go into detail when they’re closer to being ready for launch.
• Upgrading Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5 isn’t ruled out, but isn’t a priority either.
• We’re planning to run free weekends and such events in the future. Stay tuned for updates on this!

Unanswered Questions from Chat

• When can we expect the full offline/solo-mode?
  • We currently have no update to share regarding offline mode or the next iteration to solo mode.
• How do you plan on fixing the dwindling player counts?
  • Ensuring the community that is here is happy, by making qualitative content that you want to play and to resolve the identity crisis of the game. If we build it, hopefully they will come.
• How is PAYDAY 3 going to be sustainable with a lowered investment when looking at the issues we’ve seen now?
  • The updates unfortunately have carried bugs with them, some more severe than others, but resolving this is necessarily not a question of team size or investment, more so a question of process and focus within the development team. We will do our best to improve and “lead by proof”, because ultimately the players will let us know whether or not we are successful in keeping the game fun, fresh and interesting.
• Are the types of fundamental changes the game needs possible with the new staffing?
  • Yes, we believe so. If there is a feature we want to do but we can’t, we will see if we can move things around to make sure it happens.
• What’s going to be the pricing of the upcoming DLCs?
  • Ever since Syntax Error we have carefully listened to the community feedback and adjusted not only Syntax, but every piece of content since. With new content released, we will do our best to find price points that resonate with the community while ensuring we recoup our investment so we can make more.
• How many DLCs can we expect next year?
  • You can expect continued DLC and content updates, exactly how many has not been communicated yet.
• Since hosted servers are expensive, any plans on finishing the peer-to-peer you were discussing?
  • We are investigating the possibility of this and will let the community know when we have a substantial update to share.
• Why did you release VoIP in the state you did?
  • It’s unfortunate the VoIP did not meet the satisfaction of our community, and for that we apologize. There was some internal confusion regarding what the VoIP feature needed to include at launch, and unfortunately that confusion led to some features lacking.
• When are we getting Big Oil for PAYDAY 3?
  • Never. (Almir’s note)
• Renown rework?
  • Renown is something we want to address, but this currently isn’t a priority.
• Will modifiers still become selectable or rotate daily?
  • This is still something we want to do, but it’s not currently being worked on.
• Are we getting hardcore challenges? When are we getting the mask mania masks?
  • We apologize for having you wait to get the Mask mania masks. We are currently seeing what the best way to get them to you will be.
• What are you doing to help against the lack of replayability?
  • The lack of replayability is an important topic we are discussing on how to address as part of the continued development of the game. No news to share right now but this is an important part of the game we need to fix.
• Any chance you go back to increase randomization on older heists?
  • Revisiting existing content to see how we can improve it and add replayability is on our radar, but nothing we have communicated or are ready to share an update around as of now.
• Will there ever be overhauls of the existing heists?
  • Revisiting existing content to see how we can improve it and add replayability is on our radar, but nothing we have communicated or are ready to share an update around as of now.
• Why should I as a customer spend money on Baxter when this is how you handled PAYDAY 3, your supposed “top priority?”
  • We do our best to learn with every game project we create, and while launch for PAYDAY 3 was terrible, the team has since worked hard to regain the trust of the community this past year.
• How do you plan to regain the lost players that gave up on PAYDAY 3?
  • By leading with proof, the lost players want to see actions, not words.
• How do you plan on having three live-service games ongoing at once?
  • PAYDAY 3 has had a particularly difficult first year because of the technical issues at launch and Operation Medic Bag that followed. Whether we have one live service game or several we need for them to work as intended in order for players to be able to have a good time.
• Any more collaborations planned?
  • Yes.
• What were the quality concerns that delayed the upcoming character pack?
  • By answering this we would automatically give away who the character is, but rest assured our goal is to make you happy heisters and that you can enjoy the character pack without any hiccups.

That’s it! We hope we got through most of the questions both recapped and plucked from stream chats.