Embracer Group has published their Q2 earnings report, where they expect PAYDAY 3 to fall short of the management’s expectations until the next year. Read on to learn more.
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PAYDAY 3 Expected to Underperform
Recouped Investment Costs, But At Risk Going Forward
Embracer Group has published their Q2 earnings report, and it states that "PAYDAY 3 had a positive Adjusted EBIT(Earnings Before Interest, Taxes) contribution with the invested recouped in Q2." This means that they were able to recoup its development costs from their "successful" launch, which had earned SEK 441 million (around $41 million) in net sales. However, even with how the game amassed over 3 million players within the first two weeks of launch, it received a flurry of mixed reviews due to matchmaking difficulties, putting its future revenue opportunities at risk.
"We expect [PAYDAY 3] to contribute positively in FY(Fiscal Year) 2023/2024, but below management expectations, due to a softer launch where an unforeseen error relating to external matchmaking software impacted the experience for gamers." Later on in the report, they pointed out that Payday 3 and another game, "Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy," impacted Embracer Group’s net sales in the quarter with a 5% decrease compared to the previous year’s Q2.
Besides matchmaking, the game had a rough first month, as it was filled with exploitable bugs, a meager set of playable heists and weapons, and new systems that turned off a significant portion of the playerbase. Most notably, gamers who purchased special editions of PAYDAY 3 were unable to receive their special pre-order bonuses.
Not a single update was pushed for over a month after the game was out. The first patch was delayed after periods of weeks-long silence from the developers. The lack of updates meant that players were running rampant with the game’s base state filled with bugs and exploits. To top it all off, pre-order bonuses could still not be given out 5 weeks after post release, and had to wait until the game’s first update on November 2 to receive them.
PAYDAY 3 Updates and Moving Forward
The game’s first official update finally came on November 2, where countless bug fixes were listed and implemented.. The aforementioned pre-order bonuses were finally rolled out throughout the following days.
On November 14, a developer’s update video was uploaded to the official PAYDAY Youtube channel, where Andreas Häll Penninger, the lead producer of the game, detailed the game’s rocky launch and hardships they faced.
Penninger shares, "To make a long complicated and technical story short, we found a critical error in our backend update pipeline just after the game went live. As a result of this, there was a significant risk that any update we made could affect the player saves and progression. We had to ensure that the test environment functioned as intended before we could proceed with publishing the update."
They did not wish to keep delaying the update for so long, and they mentioned that it was just as frustrating for them as it was for the players.
After fixing the critical errors and addressing the setbacks, they now look towards the future where they promise to deliver all the updates they intended, and more. Within the month they will be releasing the first free content update that will contain two free new heists, "Cook Off" and "Murky Station." They are legacy heists ported over from PAYDAY 2, and were adapted to PAYDAY 3 due to being fan favorites. PAYDAY 3 is very mechanically different from its predecessor, and the team has ensured that playing the heists might feel a little different, but will still feel like "you’re truly re-experiencing these classic heists."
