You think you hate community managers but the truth of the matter is you don’t have them enough.
Modern gaming is heavily influenced by DEI initiatives, driven by major asset management companies like BlackRock, Blackstone, and the Vanguard Group. These companies pressure their investments to follow ESG policies, leading to a focus on activism, gender ideology, and other divisive issues rather than creating games that players genuinely enjoy.
Given this environment, you might assume that community managers, key players in engaging with the gaming community are often unqualified. This assumption isn’t far off, considering instances like a former Bungie community manager being exposed for their anti-White rhetoric and the controversy surrounding Helldivers 2 where its community manager lied through its fat ugly teeth that the game was “WOKE” prior to Sony pissing off the entire PC community.
Currently, the community manager for Payday 3 is now resorting to begging players to return to the unfinished and regressive game.
When Payday 3 was announced, I had many concerns, especially given Starbreeze’s history over the past decade. Despite the immense profits generated from the success of Payday 2, Starbreeze squandered a significant amount of money on the publishing rights for RAID: World War 2, a game that felt like a World War 2 rendition of Payday 2. The game launched to little fanfare, marred by bugs and negative reviews, and peaked at only 1,500 players on PC.
Starbreeze then invested $8 million in a so-called “revolutionary” game engine named Valhalla, which turned out to be more of a fancy renderer than a functional game engine. This caused immense disappointment and frustration for Overkill’s developers, who found it impossible to work with.
During this time, Starbreeze was also developing a game based on The Walking Dead. Overkill spent years trying to adapt Valhalla to their needs, resulting in continuous development delays. Eventually, they realized Valhalla was unsalvageable and made the switch to the Unreal Engine, significantly setting back the project.
They discarded years of work and started again from scratch, leading to a predictable failure that launched unfinished. Announced in 2014, the game finally released in late 2018. Plans to port the game to consoles in the following year fell through when Skybound Entertainment terminated their contract with Overkill due to disastrous sales. Ultimately, the game was discontinued and delisted by the end of February 2019.
Since then, Starbreeze has squandered millions on virtual reality startups like InfiniEye, funded a virtual reality theme park in Dubai for whatever fucking reason and purchased another VR company named Norzon.
Overkill had to put Payday 3’s development on the backburner for several years as they attempted and failed to develop other titles. Meanwhile, Starbreeze continued to waste money on frivolous expenditures. Despite being in development for years, Payday 3 underwent a radical transformation, emerging as a live service title, a significant departure from its predecessor.
Payday 3 turned into a live service title that requires a constant internet connection. While it introduces some improvements over the decade-old Payday 2, such as the ability to open and close doors and use a lockpick, the game overall felt unpolished.
Released on September 18th, 2023, Payday 3 faced overwhelming criticism, primarily because players couldn’t even play the game. It seemed that Overkill or Starbreeze had neglected to secure adequate server hosting. As a result, players trying to access the always-online heist shooter were unable to connect or kept getting ejected from lobbies.
Payday 3 features only a fraction of the total heists available in Payday 2, launching with just eight missions compared to Payday 2’s initial 12 heists. Over the years, Payday 2 quickly expanded to offer over 70 different missions, making the limited content in Payday 3 a significant downgrade.
The game also introduced a radically altered in-game leveling system. Instead of earning experience points by completing heists, players now gain experience by completing challenges, similar to other live service titles.
This change forces players to use weapons they may not be accustomed to or generally dislike in order to progress, or more rather it was a means of keeping them active on the game and grinding to level up.
In contrast, Payday 2 offered a vast arsenal of well over a hundred different weapons, ranging from akimbo shotguns and wads of money to giant spoons and rocket launchers, all of which are absent in Payday 3.
The grenade launcher did make a return in Payday 3, but it’s now gatekept as an “Overkill” weapon. This serves as an additional weapon that can be equipped in a third, separate slot, acting more like a special ability. To use your Overkill weapon, you must complete objectives or kill enemies to build up the ability. Additionally, there are only two Overkill weapons to choose from, limiting player options significantly.
As of today Payday 3 has only 26 weapons, five of which are locked behind DLC paywalls. This approach feels counterintuitive for a live service game. Not only did Payday 3 release in an unfinished and broken state, requiring players to be online at all times with no offline mode available, but Starbreeze and Overkill also chose to sell additional DLC, such as the Syntax Error and Boys in Blue expansions, rather than focusing on fixing the game and providing free content to players.
The game died in record time. From a peak of almost 78,000 concurrent players on Steam at launch, it quickly lost over 90% of its player base by October 27 and has never recovered.
Despite their efforts with “Operation Medic Bag,” which aimed to introduce an offline mode and make significant adjustments to the progression system by reverting to experience points instead of set challenges, the game continued to struggle. Notably, the so-called “offline” mode still requires an active internet connection.
Payday 3 is dead. There’s no salvaging this pile of shit. The game launched with less than a tenth of the content compared to Payday 2, fewer heists, weapons, masks, and customization options. You play the game for a handful of hours and you’ve pretty much experienced everything it has to offer, it has no variety and is a monumental downgrade versus Payday 2.
Any new content additions are infrequent and come with additional charges. For instance, you pay for the Syntax Error or Boys in Blue DLC and get access to a single heist, a couple of new weapons, and a handful of masks, gloves, and suits. That’s all.
The game is a disaster. Players have all but abandoned it because there’s barely any point in playing when Payday 2 offers so much more without forcing you to be online all the time. So, imagine my surprise when Overkill’s community manager, the infamous Almir Listo, outright begged players to come back and play this shitty game if they want additional content in the future.
Almir, the community manager for Overkill since the days of Payday 2, hosted a heartfelt stream on July 5th. He essentially blamed the community for the mediocrity of Payday 3, claiming that the game’s failure is due to players simply refusing to play it.
Payday 3, a live service game that costs $40, requires an internet connection, has minimal content, and offers additional paid DLC expansions instead of enhancing the base game, has failed to meet expectations.
The major failure of Payday 3 is that it doesn’t live up to the standards set by its predecessor, which was supported and expanded upon for years after its release. Despite allegedly having a decade of development, Payday 3 launched with less content than Payday 2 and faced numerous issues, including connection problems, egregious DLC practices, microtransactions, and FOMO marketing tactics.
Almir is trying to rally the community by stating that Overkill and Starbreeze need their support now. He urged players to play the game immediately rather than waiting for more content to be added. Almir emphasized that if players want Payday 3 to exist in two years, they must proactively engage with the game now, even if they don’t enjoy it or have already exhausted its content.
The future of Payday 3 looks bleak, with no updates planned throughout July. Instead, there will be two more paid DLCs in August and September, alongside a single free heist.
Almir even encourages players to buy the DLC if they feel Overkill has particularly listened to community feedback. They’ve undermined any hope of fleshing out the base game and bringing players back naturally, similar to the resurgence of No Man’s Sky.
I understand why Almir is practically begging fans to play Payday 3 and buy DLC. As a community manager, his role is to persuade the community to spend money and invest time in the game. Payday 3’s launch sales were initially strong, with nearly 80,000 players attempting to connect at release.
Some managed to get refunds, but the vast majority were left “holding the bag” as player retention and game sales plummeted within a month. Hardly anyone new is buying the game, and players are infrequently returning to check for new content of which there isn’t any.
Aside from the two DLC heists, Starbreeze and Overkill have recycled two additional heists from Payday 2, bringing the game’s total to 11. Players have every right to return occasionally to see if anything of interest has been added, but the lack of substantial new content and the reliance on paid DLC has left many disappointed.
To add salt to the wounds of disappointed fans, Almir delivered an emotional speech, claiming that Overkill had worked “so hard” and were “working so hard,” emphasizing that the team cannot continue making Payday 3 without the support of the franchise’s fans.
Given that the game is a live service, always-online installment where even the “offline” mode requires an internet connection and the fact that it stopped selling less than a week post-release, most players who couldn’t get refunds have abandoned the project. Guilting them into playing otherwise the game “will die” will not work.
Hardly anyone is buying the DLC. Starbreeze and Overkill are not generating a profit from Payday 3, yet they seemingly have to continue developing the game if they ever want to recover from their missteps.
Almir’s so-called emotional speech suggests that players can’t just “check back in a year or so” to see if Payday 3 is finally worth their time. Overkill and Starbreeze are almost certainly on the brink of collapse; they need people to play the game now, to stop playing Payday 2, and to give their unloved $40 always-online flop a second chance by playing the game and spending money.
Essentially, he’s implying that it will be the players’ fault if the game fails to the point where Starbreeze pulls the plug on Payday 3 altogether. “If you don’t play the game now, don’t be surprised if there’s no game in three years’ time.” Payday 3 died due to the changes made by Overkill and Starbreeze that subverted the successful formula laid out with Payday 2.
Players have been begging for a true offline mode since the game’s release almost a year ago. Up until recently, matchmaking in Payday 3 even lacked the ability to “unready” and remove yourself from starting a heist.
A year after release, they’ve added four heists—two of which are DLC. The other two, Cook Off and Turbid Station, are recycled from Payday 2 and were added in November 2023.
The game theoretically has $100 worth of DLC, and the community manager is now pleading for people to return to Payday 3 and buy these DLCs. He claims that without this support, they won’t be able to make the game better, despite Overkill having already invested countless millions and years into its development.
They’ve even had to publicly post an enormous plan of fixes called “Operation Medic Bag” to address just a fraction of the many problems the game has.
Anyone saying it was always going to seem shallow compared to Payday 2, which had over 10 years of content, or making excuses by reminding us of Payday 2’s rough launch, are being completely disingenuous.
These apologists suggest we should accept Payday 3’s lack of content, the fact that the game itself is legitimately inferior instead of playing Payday 2 because “both had rough launches.”
For comparison, ten months after release, Payday 2 had added 19 new weapons and 8 new heists. Payday 3 is severely lagging in terms of additional content post-release. It’s no wonder tens of thousands of fans, including myself, would rather play Payday 2.
You reap what you sow. Almir’s desperate pleas for players to return to Payday 3 will almost certainly fall on deaf ears. Players and fans waited years for this embarrassment. We needed content and deserved a finished game, not barren live service shite offering less content than Payday 2 had at release. The game is dead and will never be salvaged.
