A brand new replace from Starbreeze on the standing of the much-needed first patch for Payday 3 doesn’t provide a lot in the best way of fine information: The patch continues to be not able to go, and there is no indication as to when it will likely be. As a substitute, the studio has come to us with a quick clarification of the way it all went so disastrously flawed, and what it is doing to attempt to repair it.
There may be one shiny spot amidst all of the gloom: The primary patch has been despatched off for console certification, a course of required by Sony and Microsoft to make sure, as a lot as potential, that recreation updates aren’t going to trigger any unintended grief. Certification necessities compelled a delay within the launch of the patch in early October; on the time, Starbreeze anticipated it might be able to go dwell by mid-October, however clearly that did not work out.
Delays are by no means enjoyable, however on this case it was in all probability for the perfect. Starbreeze mentioned the state of affairs might have been even worse if it hadn’t postponed the patch.
“The rationale it has taken so lengthy to get this primary patch prepared could be very lengthy and sophisticated, however the brief model is that we found essential errors with our replace pipeline shortly after the sport launched,” Starbreeze mentioned. “There was a big danger to participant development being wiped if we didn’t handle this and guarantee a stable check surroundings.”
As for why the console certification course of is holding the patch up on PC, Starbreeze mentioned it has “made a dedication to our gamers to maintain parity between all platforms.” In different phrases, in the event that they wait, we wait.
Each recreation and state of affairs is totally different, and Payday 3 has clearly run into much more severe issues than anybody anticipated. Nonetheless, it is onerous not to attract comparisons to Lords of the Fallen: Lower than two weeks after that recreation launched with severe efficiency and stability problems with its personal, developer Hexworks has mashed out no fewer than eight updates, which has gone a good distance towards restoring the goodwill of its gamers (a few of whom are actually expressing fear that builders are crunching too onerous to keep up the tempo of patches) and religion that the sport will meet its potential. Starbreeze, in the meantime, has nothing however apologies, explanations, and pleas for persistence.
It is absolutely irritating for Starbreeze builders, however gamers are annoyed too. That is mirrored in Payday 3’s concurrent participant counts, which have tapered off precipitously since its September 21 launch. At the moment, 2,609 persons are enjoying the sport, which is not an entire collapse however removed from its peak of greater than 69,000; it is also lower than 1/10 of Payday 2’s present quantity. It isn’t an apples-to-apples comparability—Payday 2 has been round for a decade and so presumably has a a lot bigger participant base—however it’s a clear signal that persons are, understandably, not making the transfer to the brand new recreation.
Except for getting the patch fastened, Starbreeze mentioned it is also methods to alter Payday 3’s development system in response to participant suggestions, and can have extra info on that to share quickly. “As soon as we will persistently ship patches, the workforce can even ship on our plans for extra content material for the sport,” the studio mentioned. “Count on to see free content material updates for the sport earlier than the top of the 12 months, we’ll share extra info on what these will probably be after we get there.”