Starbreeze Studios have hinted that “everything is on the table for us right now” as they work to address ongoing and persistent server outages and matchmaking issues, stating during a live stream that they’re “evaluating every possibility” to solve the problem.
They stopped short of confirming an offline mode would be coming, but brand director Almir Listo, along with lead producer Andreas Häll Penninger, mentioned during the live stream that the team would continue to provide regular updates via streams until “we are in the clear and are seeing the game progress the way we intended,” admitting that launch has not gone well.”
“We launched Payday 3, a game we have been working on for years, for you Heisters on Thursday. The first few hours, everything seemed to go well. You were heisting, you were having fun, starting to see what features you like, what features you dislike, what you’d like to see in the future. But then the servers went down. Once we got them up, they went down again. Then we got them up, we tweeted about that, and they went down again,” said Listo.
“Obviously this has created a terrible experience for you that we would like to apologize for on the team’s behalf,” he continues. “It’s not an easy situation. So we wanted, as quickly as we could, to jump on a stream with you and let you know what our thoughts are and answer as many questions as we have time for.”
Players were quick to point out that the always-online requirement of Payday 3 is an Achilles heel, making the game essentially unplayable for the majority of people trying to access the game since its launch. Starbreeze’s statement read that the team are “currently evaluating all options, both short and long-term. In the short-term, our focus is to ensure your player experience. In the long-term, it means us evaluating a new partner for matchmaking services and making Payday 3 less dependent on online services.”
As for what “less dependent” means, Listo explained that “what it means is everything is on the table for us right now. There are questions about offline mode in chat, how we are going to move forward. We cannot give, right now, a clear yes or no answer on this topic. It’s four days since launch. We did not foresee the incredible difficulties you’ve had logging onto the game. We will address that and answer that properly as soon as we can. Not all of our answers will be a clear yes, this is happening tomorrow at 3 o’clock. We are doing our best to handle all the existing questions and reply to you all in the best way we can.”
Starbreeze CEO Tobias Sjögren has also Tweeted that the team is “looking at possibility to add some sort offline mode.” Despite these assurances, many within the community are asking why the game was so heavily reliant on online services in the first place, with the developers suggesting that being constantly connected creates a level playing field;
“When looking at what worked and didn’t for Payday 2, we wanted to find a way to avoid the negative aspects of Payday 2 – among those, rampant cheating and unreliable hosting,” he said. “In addition, we wanted to ensure we kept our commitments to the console community and maintained one Payday community across all platforms. To deliver on that, as well as cross-progression, leaderboards, and more, we needed to ensure that every player is on the same version of the game with stable hosting across all platforms. Neutral hosting outside the platforms would solve that.”
This content was originally published here.
