Starbreeze Studios considering to develop Payday 3 offline mode after the disaster that happened during launch day.
The developers of Payday 3 addressed the game’s ongoing server and matchmaking issues in a livestream this week. They assured the fans that they had not confirmed an offline mode, but they are evaluating every possibility going forward, so it could come to that if things got worse.
Brand Director Almir Listo and Lead Producer Andreas Häll Penninger answered inquiries from the Payday 3 community on Twitch, in the first of a series of troubleshooting and feedback streams airing at 8 am PST. The next stream will be happening soon and Listo revealed that they will continue this series until “we are in the clear and are seeing the game progress the way we intended.”
“We are here today because launch has not gone well,” Listo begins. “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.
“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.”
Penninger apologized for the disastrous launch. “This launch, like Almir said, did not go as expected. We understand that many of you are extremely frustrated and angry. We are too. We are proud of the game. We know that many of you enjoyed the game that have managed to play it, and we are doing our utmost to solve the current situation.”
Listo also said that the studio is now currently evaluating all options, both short and long-term. For the short-term, the team’s focus is to ensure the player experience. The long-term to evaluate a new partner for matchmaking services, and make Payday 3 less dependent on online services.
“What it means is everything is on the table for us right now.” Listo said. “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.”
Penninger then added, “We’re constantly monitoring what you guys want to see. Obviously, offline mode is one of those things. We’re also seeing a lot of requests for the game itself, quality of life and so on. We are seeing that, we are evaluating that.”