Payday 3 Dev Declares Matchmaking Issues Over, 3.1 Million Players Since Launch

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After a disastrous launch that saw Payday 3 unplayable for many, developer Starbreeze has declared the matchmaking issues over, opening the door to a big update for October.

Starbreeze said the scheduled maintenance carried out last week fixed the matchmaking issues that occurred during Payday 3’s first week after launch. Matchmaking is now stable, Starbreeze said, and has had “good performance”.

The developer bigged up the popularity of Payday 3 since it came out, saying over the past five days it had a peak concurrent players (CCU) of 124,254, and during September saw 3,167,938 unique players (MAU).

Starbreeze said it will now “intensify” commercial activities around Payday 3 after an initial pause. This starts early October with the game’s first update, which will focus on improving the game experience. Further updates will target quality of life improvements, bug fixes, and new functionality.

Here’s the roadmap for the rest of 2023:

Date

Content

October

200+ QoL-improvements for all platforms

Oct/Nov

QoL-improvements, new content and new functionality

November

QoL-improvements, new content and new functionality

Winter 2023

The DLC “Syntax Error” on sale (included in Silver and Gold Edition)

“First and foremost, I would like to thank our players for the patience they have shown us,” Starbreeze boss Tobias Sjögren said. “Our community is the engine that drives both our games and our company forward. I don’t really need to repeat that this was not the start we wanted, but at the same time, our business model is a marathon and not a sprint and we will tirelessly continue to build Payday 3 bigger and better to deliver the greatest possible value for our players.”

Despite these matchmaking improvements, Payday 3’s Steam page still carries a “mostly negative” user review rating, with 37% of the nearly 30,000 user reviews positive. It’s worth noting that more people are currently paying Payday 2 on Steam than are playing Payday 3.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.