It’s actually sad seeing Almir so clearly stressed out and waffling questions constantly. He’s always seemed like a cool dude but you can tell ever since PD3 launched he’s always got a gun to his head from the corporate higher-ups
This whole situation with PD3 has been the fault of Starbreeze mismanagement and it shows. I do also feel bad for Almir, considering he's the face of Payday as many knows it.
@@mercce6750 Nah. Overkill has shown time and time again that they are incompetent as well, especially during Payday 2. It has nothing to do with management.
No, I will not. I played PD The Heist when it released and had a large amount of excitement when 2 was announced and played that beta. Seeing payday 3 fumble this hard. I'm no longer buying anything from starbreeze without reviews being out for a couple of days. And if they went belly up, I'd only feel bad for those who actually run the day to day operations. The higher-ups who ran this shit into the ground can watch as I purchase Den of Wolves. Seeing all the damn DLCs for payday 2 should've been my first red flag.
I've said it many times but I feel Baxter will destroy Starbreeze. The team is already spread thin and development already is rather slow on Payday 3 and them promising Baxter in 2026 and another game in 2028 to the shareholders was an incredibly stupid move. The CEO stating they will move more and more devs from Payday 3 to work on Baxter as the release date draws near is just plain and simple self sabotage. Starbreeze is so desperate to be a developer AND publisher of a diverse portfolio, but they can't handle it, looking at their track record. They can barely keep their most succesful IP alive. Everything they touch, they screw up. If Payday 3 was in a great spot with a lot of concurrent players they could try their hand at a new game but as it stands now I can just see them skeleton crewing Payday 3 again and I can't see Baxter succeeding leaving Starbreeze in a position where they have to crawl back to pump out Payday 3 DLC to a community that won't fall for it anymore. They have completely lost focus on what is important. As you said before: ''I wish Starbreeze would stop putting themselves in these underdog positions.''
One thing I think will really hold project Baxter back is the simple fact that’s it’s being made by starbreeze, after Payday 3 no one will want to buy a starbreeze game at launch again, I would not be surprised if Baxter launched to Concord level numbers purely because of that reputational damage
Absolutely. Payday 3 was probably the worst game launch in recent memory. Not just because of the mechanical state of the game, but also Starbreeze's behavior towards fans complaining about the very serious issues the game had. Not to mention their continual releases of paid DLC when the game is still barely finished, even a full year after release. At least Cyberpunk, for all its failings at launch, didn't have any DLC until the game was fixed. No one was being asked to pay extra money on top of the purchase price for a broken game
@@filmandfirearms exactly, in most videos now Payday 3 is synonymous with “Game nobody wants to play” why would anyone buy another game by the same people in the same genre
To add to that, the last Starbreeze game was what, Walking Dead? That launched even worse and almost killed the company with full on financial crimes taking place at the studio. I don't think you can even buy the game anymore. They haven't just burned goodwill on their one core franchise, they also now have a reputation on the worker side for having fucked production cycles, and on the consumer side for launching fucked games back to back. That's essentially a death spiral just waiting to happen for the next game. I know I for one as an example still haven't bought PD3. I played it on game pass at launch because I didn't trust Starbreeze with my money, and nothing I've seen since then has convinced me to actually get it on my main platform to play with friends.
Also, Hi-rez is having an obsessive hyperfixation on smite 2, leading to their other games (liked more somewhat) to be left in life support (like paladins), and people are not happy
I used to be a big Rogue Company player when that first launched as it was pretty solid, but support essentially died after I think barely a year. I took a break for like 3 months and came back to an absolutely dead game. Granted, RC wasn't exactly pushing big numbers but it still had a very solid foundation they could have explored if it hadn't launched trying to be third person CS in its modes.
oh man, I also have spent thousands of hours in Payday and Smite I don't think I have a reason to go back to smite after they announced smite 2, locked access behind a paywall and then stopped updating smite while smite 2 is nowhere near ready
+ all your skins won't be there!! That's what kills it for me, having paid money for it and effectively losing that investment with Smite 2 - Not even T5s :(
@@darkshadow5581Yes, the give Legacy gems, which cover half of the price of new skins. As to the reason the old skins aren't there, it because they moved to a new engine, and some other things.
@@darkshadow5581 They're called "Legacy gems" but are pretty much coupons :( You can use them to get up to 50% off any purchase, it's super misleading and infuriating
the way they were all 'we fucked up and we're gonna fix it' in the interview but answered the baxter question with 'well we're not gonna invest in the game if you guys don't play it' had me ready to jump ship. Den of wolves can't come out soon enough I need my heisting fix
Please, for the love of all that is holy, do more of these kinds of "deep dive into the industry" videos. Absolutely engrossing, engaging to listen to, and informative to a fault. You're doing gods work.
That interview section is crazy to me. They talk about PD3 as if it is a living being who they are not responsible for. "If its not fun, we won't invest more on it". Brother, you made the game. Whether fun or unfun depends on the amount of work you do on the game, not the other way round. What they really meant was "If its profitable, we'll keep working on it, and if not we will abandon it"
I've never been able to forgive Hi-Rez after how they treated both Global Agenda AND (more importantly) Tribes Ascend, both games I loved. Abandoning a project the moment the next one seemed like it was gonna make more money, no matter how popular the previous one was. I'm sure Smite would have suffered the same fate if Paladins actually popped off bigger than it did.
Thing is, paladins could totally be popping if the devs gave it some love. People are not happy with OW rn, Paladins would have been a great replacement with some Polish and updates. As it stands, a waning playerbase is being milked with skins for characters in a game that barely works.
I'm curious about a comparison between the differences between the franchise changes from Payday: The Heist to Payday 2 vs Payday 2 to Payday 3. The core issues for "advancing" a live service game comes from needing to entice enough players who either had no interest in joining the old game *and* enticing your old players to not abandon the series as "you have to start a new game and start over" is a pretty strong "quit point" for many long-term players (especially those who have spent a lot of money on cosmetics and expansions). A major part of the failure of Payday 3 has been that it has not done anything to show longtime Payday fans that it is worth abandoning Payday 2 over, while also not really doing much to draw in new players. Payday 2 on the other hand was able to leverage the break from "fixing" Payday: The Heist to rebuild the brand into a stronger position.
It's a sad sight to say the least. Even the "we'll work on Payday 3 until it's not fun" is such a cop out response because they control when the fun stop. I really tried hanging on to the hope that Payday 3 will one day be as good as Payday 2 was but now with the Baxter project in place, i know it's a lost battle.
@@finlaytemple1744 Sure, i misspoke, in my language "know" as a diffirent meaning. But yeah you're right, we can't know for sure that it's doomed, that won't stop me from not being surprised when Payday 3 dies out because the devs want to go all in on project Baxter. Also the whole video is about how making a game in an position of weakness is a bumpy road. So i don't know for sure if they're gonna fail but theres a lot of clues about it.
@rasensenpai9400 obviously baxter won't benefit payday development but if it's managed well it could have no effect, I'm at the point with payday were speculation either positive or negative does really do much for me, that's just my opinion obviously
14:20 I like how the way this statement ("it's all too common in the game industry of late") is positioned so it can refer to both mass layoffs *and* having to re-learn that you need a functional game before you can monetize.
A better comparison for Smite 2 would be Overwatch 2. Though this time there actually is a major engine overhaul rather than just a relaunch of the same game.
As someone in the Hi-Rez ecosystem (Paladins RUclipsr 💀), I was very surprised to see the Payday/Smite failure collab in this video! Hi-Rez just announced they're shutting down DKO and RRR, meaning they only have Smite, Paladins, and ROCO left. ROCO ain't looking too good, and Smite 2's start has been rocky to say the least. I'd be curious to see an analysis/timeline video of how Hi-Rez went downhill, because they've sunk and burned many, MANY games that could've been massive successes. After all, Paladins hit 60k peak players on Steam back in the day, and RR achieved 100k peak players and was played and enjoyed by Ninja - kind of a big deal for a battle royale! In an alternate timeline, these two games would be much more successful, but Hi-Rez's biggest strength is creating masterpieces and then killing them in the most disappointing ways possible.
You brought up some fair points. What I'm afraid of, is that this end may come earlier than anticipated with March 2025 and Deep Silver/Plaion possibly pulling out of their deal on being the publishers for the game. Yes, Payday 3 is recovering and not all hope is lost, but will that be enough? I'm still hoping they don't just leave the IPs they have dusting in the archives of abandoned franchises and just give them to someone else, if this supposed end comes.
Oh look, another person who has been cursed to enjoy games/franchises that seem to suffer from prior success. I too was a SMITE lad and someone who loved Payday 2, and I also loved Kerbal Space Program. Then Payday 3, SMITE 2, and KSP 2 happened and well... I'm certainly hoping Payday 3 can break the curse I seem to have accidentally placed on these franchises, and while things are certainly looking up at least, for now I'm not going to hold my breath.
Cod zombies moment. Amazing insanely creative series being forced to be stuck to call of duty and activison until all the super talented people involved leave and now its corpse is being strung up pretending to still be alive. Not to say I do not enjoy the modern entries, BO6 looking succulent, but they definitely lack the soul the other games had.
For me my biggest issue with baxter is that starbreeze have yet to make a game that isn't just payday with a skin over it. Raid WW2 was ww2 payday and the walking dead game was just zombie payday, I hope that baxter isn't just d&d payday because historically it just seems to result in an underbaked game that is directly competing with the one im already playing resulting in whatever the opposite of the whole rising tides raise all ships saying is. Quite frankly if they couldn't deliver a great game back in the payday 2 days when they had nothing to worry about I dont trust them to deliver one now after the past several years of turmoil.
It’s seems starbreeze only wants to make 4 player co op games, which is strange because they don’t seem to very good at them with the exception of the first 2 payday games
Looking at how the playerbase has dropped again even after some decent updates, the upcoming year one bundle + update is, imo, either going to be THE turning point or the last big push before investors start losing faith
This video reminds me of the NWI situation/scandal with Insurgency: Sandstorm Been of fan of both Payday and Insurgency. Insurgency is now a lost cause because of shitty NWI practices for that game Collecting information about 2026/Baxtor and the lack of commitment for Payday 3 Really sad for what has happened to "replayability games" into just cash-grab slop into looking like AAA games.
If payday 3 fails then its on the devs. A decade of payday 2 showed what was and wasn't liked and they still shit the bed. I guarantee the new armor system and a few other design choices were to try and bring in more modern FPS audience, who lets be honest aren't interested in the game anyways. They sat on their hands for months talking about feedback and change rather than actually doing anything, features that are now in or being added in that should've been in since day one isn't something to praise them over. I'm tired of games being disappointing due to dev laziness, sure shitty management and decisions from them can factor into things but there's a point where that isn't the case, and cant be used as an excuse to underdeliver.
The problem i have with pd3 is why? Why buy it over pd2? If they had took more time and carried over all the heists and guns they could legally then id probably get it. But, as is, why? You cant really even say pd3 is a new experience. Its mostly pd2 just with a few differences. The game was just plain rushed.
Not to be a devil's advocate but Payday going towards more monetization is somewhat expected? Just look at Payday 2 and it's 100s of dlc. But even despite that they cannot continue to release dls for free, I think it's fine if we have new heisters (they are also cosmetics at this point), masks and such for money, not sure how I feel about legacy heists being re-introduced and being paid tho.
One thing that also makes Baxters failure more likely is player mentality. While Payday 3 might be on the road of recovery, a lot of players either learned or reinforced the "Do not buy it immediately , wait before buying how the game turned out". After all, payday 3 only got better AFTER months of content, so why buy early when it probably will be a buggy expensive mess on release. Better wait a couple of months for the price to go down and the game to be worth it. However when you are developing a game from a bad position, from an "All or nothing" standpoint you simply cannot wait out these players. The only solution is to either SOMEHOW get back the goodwill, which is hard with a bad track record, or make the game good ON RELEASE. Which is made harder if you have investors rushing you.
Honestly in a way the non answer says everything rather than just being a non answer it reads like a mass exodus of resources to Baxter held under contractual lock and key to hope Baxter will break even even though it'll kill SBZ. The non answer approach is most likely to avoid breach of contract
Man, you're so right about the non answer. Really making me lose faith in the future of payday if they're already shifting focus to the next game. Also yes to more videos like this youve got good takes we wanna hear.
There's something I started thinking about as you were talking, something I always intuitively thought but never consciously considered before: The ultimate problem is that executives are trying to treat video games like any other entertainment industry, but you fundamentally CAN'T do that because video games are an interactive medium. You get a lot of slop when it comes to shows, and when it comes to movies, and other things. And you also get a lot of it when it comes to video games, but there tends to be a bit of a difference, in my experience. Now I'm not saying bad/flawed/predatory games can't be successful, obviously: You're going to get ones that catch people for one reason or another (and that's usually, unfortunately, a level of addictiveness due to predatory design). But Video Games are an interactive medium, meaning there is a lot more investment on the end of a consumer. You can't just put on a game and watch it in the BG (well, for some you can, but idle games have their own specifics in how they appeal to people). There's very little investment when you start watching a show or movie, even when it comes to time, since it's all too easy to start doing something else, especially if it doesn't catch your interest. But when it comes to games, yea, sure, there's SOME multitasking, usually watching something in the BG for me, but your hands are occupied, there's skill and such involved on various levels. Not to mention the upfront cost of games compared to shows or movies: gaming is an expensive hobby, and relatively few games have demos for you to try and see if you like it before buying. Refunds can also be a pain, if they're even possible in the first place. All of that means that a consumer can't usually treat video games as just a random pick-up they can chance on. The upfront cost, time, physical involvement, and all of that means that people are a lot more discerning about whether they'll even attempt to play a game, and word spreads. I think that's ultimately what's biting/going to bite these companies in the ass, especially as sentiment and overall trust as a whole continues to sour. More and more people are going to stick to companies they do trust and wait until they hear from others about whether or not the game is worth trying (and therefore paying for). While it's important to take risks, you can't just treat games like movies or shows that have a very low barrier to entry and low risk for consumers.
9:44 Tbh I would say that they should focus on PAYDAY or have a small group working on a prototype of a new game that they can release as a beta and if the players like it they can have a bigger team on that game but still continue doing PAYDAY.
A development company needs to diversify. To be dependent on only one product is extremely risky and also a bad utilization of resources. Developing a game is a totally different thing from maintaining it. PD3 is now in the maintenance phase where new content and fixes is developed, but not a new game. That's why they need Baxter - to allocate those types of resources to that game. Of course some resources are shared between the projects, but the key is to have two or three games in different phases to be able to be as effective as possible, and to spread the risks over time. That's also why they are publishing other games like Roboquest and The Tribe Must Survive - to utilize those resources they already have, but is a bit on the back burner between their own launches.
How ever in order to make a successful live service game. You have to dedicate significant resources which leads to less diversity in games since you have to put your eggs in one basket for it to succeed.
if they keep locking the majority of the new content behind a paywall, in a game that already people are already having a hard time playing, this game isnt gonna make it. there's gonna have to be some sacrifices and some proper work done if this game is gonna get off the ground properly.
you're not understanding then, they need money to make shit even free dlc. If they dont have money pouring in and they are not profitable then they can't make dlc that is free.
@@willskidman i understand. but you cant expect people to want to buy content for your game when the base game isnt fun or fun enough to be worth spending what they're asking. there are still many issues with the game since launch that havent been adressed, and if they want to turn head, they're going to have to put the pen to the paper
The problem is that Starbreeze lost the masterminds behind Payday. They are long gone and that shows. Besides mismanagement, greed, lies and incompetence, Starbreeze doesn’t want to make games for the games sake. They make games to make money. Payday 3 is just a lifeless shell of a game. The Payday franchise used to be fun because of the cool characters, a crazy story, memorable voice lines, great music and so much more. You felt that those guys (Overkill) had fun developing Payday. That’s why the community was that strong supporting them and loving the game. Payday 3 lacks in all departments. People are tired of half assed UE4 asset calladuty clones. It’s just not enough. Starbreeze has shown, that they are not capable of developing good games and they won’t succeed in hyping known ips and selling mediocre games. I hope the Payday franchise will find a new home soon, with devs that are enjoying developing, respecting their ip and their community.
The absolute emotional roller coaster these types of videos are is insane. I can’t believe how melancholy this is, I mean you have a pretty good point. Video games used to be passion projects and enjoyable, now triple A studios just don’t care anymore, quantity over quality really does explain the current market. It’s rare nowadays to find a good game that doesn’t shove monetization down your throat. If you have to make a game just to keep the lights on, then you aren’t making a game. You are making a plead for help. Bad decisions get you nowhere and companies shouldn’t expect the consumer to gobble up everything they send your way. Re using the same concept will only get you so far. I wish I had something positive to say today but, I really don’t. Starbreeze still has a chance. I just hope they take it.
I used to play Paladins competitively. Everything you said about Hi-Rez in this video hits close to home for me. For what they’ve accomplished, the company has always been horridly mismanaged, and constantly made me wonder why I enjoyed Paladins so much during beta and early release years. Nowadays it feels like a husk of the game I once thought I could make at least a side gig out of.
I wonder how theoretically possible it would be for Diesel Engine to be “upgraded” to a modern standard. Better stability (first and foremost), better graphics, better controls, easier to design for, etc. Obviously this would have to be done by its creators, but I wonder how a return to PD2 would go, but a specifically a modernized one with an updated engine (under the bold assumption it would launch well).
I mean they could’ve just took their time to really put work into learning the engine and making a quality product with pay day 3 but you know what happened
If it's any indication of the chances of Project Baxter, I am very heavily entrenched in D&D media and consumption, and I had absolutely no idea that Wizards had partnered with Overkill/ Starbreeze at all.
I cannot play coop shooters alone, it's just not fun to me, I still remember joining random PD2 lobbies to see failed joining game, you've been kicked or game crashing most of the time, same with HD, therefore I play those games mostly when either I convince a friend, or they ask me.
Yoo i’m a huge smile fan didn’t know that about you. Need then at add ne zha soon. Payday on the other hand needs more heists ,weapons, customizable masks and characters
Smites situation is brought on by the fact they sunset Smite a whole year earlier than they should have. Smite 2 needed to happen because every patch on the old framework broke like 15 things, the UI ran on adobe flash of all things and the game looked old in 2015. Is it a position of weakness? Sure, but because they dropped Smite 1 when they did. Starbreeze has a common issue of fully cashing out on its good will, and making baffling decisions to cut corners and make the most money possible. Hirez has been proving as of late theyre responsive on feedback(You dont uproot your entire dev timeline to effectively catch up to the modern standard and make tangible improvements in days, without that being the case), starbreeze on the other hand only uses feedback as a metric.
0:47 And I am cursed too because games I have played my entire life was bad sequels that were made just to get cash and it will continue to be like that.
Same point could be made about Fallout new vegas, but the final product is not the "fast food" live-service or Singularity by Raven software which had budget limitations and limited dev time but the final game doesn't have doesn't have outfit dlcs and a single new dlc level each month. So i doesn't necessarily agree with your point of milking games and cutting losses from fans
Development cycle aside, can we just take note of the fact PD3 would be in a far better spot if they had never decided to go with online only. To be honest, I wish I had resisted buying the game as soon as I heard about the supposed inclusion of Denuvo. If we, the community, had the opportunity to make our own mods, heists, guns and other content PD3 could've been the best payday easily. Obviously they wanted to keep console updated with PC, but I'm sure they could've done that by setting the groundwork of their game to be centred around customisation, modding and player control. I mean just look at black ops 3, there are thousands of player-made maps some even as good as the base game's. Imagine a payday where we could be heisting a McDonald's for their food all while an army of ronald McDonald police try to stop you. Payday 3, for me, seemingly regardless of future updates, is a shining example of the popular phrase: "What could've been."
You see all the telltale signs with Payday 3 that you saw with pd2. I made the dumbass mistake of buying console because it's a new engine, so of course they won't fuck over the console players with updates again 🙄🤦 If the PC build isn't 50 updates ahead of the console build, then payday 3 as a whole is just shit. They haven't fixed the door between the break room and the lobby in diamond heist yet. I know it's a crazy amount of code to make a door work, but I'm sure they'll eventually get to it
I really agree that the most important thing for Baxter's success is to make Payday 3 the best possible, it is the only thing they are really know for, if their flagship sinks why would people who never played Payday get on board for Baxter? I will sadly sink with the ship, but Call to Action 2.0 does not smell good, even though the game is currently in a good direction, really hope the investors just let Starbreeze cook for as long as it needs at the very least for both games and stop trying to push undercooked stuff
Stop being so me. I have played Smite since it's console release all those years ago but quit after Smite 2's announcement. I just didn't wanna bother fighting more sweaty try-hards in casuals and their skins getting pumped out over the quality and fun of the game. They stopped experimenting with new mods, new ideas, and engaging us with fun or goofy content. Now the most we'll get is a returning Corrupted Arena or a skin. Blegh.
The problem wasn’t that payday3 released unfinished, it’s that it was specifically advertised as finished combined with the fact that it release unfinished. Thousands of good games released in early access and used the methods Payday3 has at improving, which is taking player feedback to set a direction for the game, but if you’re gonna do that you better charge early access prices, not charge full release price and most of all don’t try to hide the fact that your game is completely unfinished. Of course there could be a ton of reasons why Starbreeze decided to do this, which I agree with the points in your video, this was done mainly because Payday 3 was made in order to cash out on Payday 2s fan base one last time. Unfortunately too many game companies think that this is the best way to make money, I don’t know when these corporate morons will realize that the best way to make money is to make a really good game, it’s that simple.
The D&D game is going to be bad. Hasbro/WotC suck. The main reason BG3 is as good as it is (aside from the talent of the devs) is that Larian was given the freedom to make the game how they wanted without Hasbro/WotC interference. The contract for BG3 was made a long time ago and the company is very different now. Modern WotC is extremely greedy and malicious. Their modern products cut corners (ai art, general lack of effort put into new books, etc) and their management see customers as obstacles to money. There's no way this game will come out not chock full of crappy microtransactions.
Paladins was a great game in itself with a history before the hero shooter trend really took off It got left out to dry and lost majority of its players after they tried to make the game pay to win and then one update later walked back on the decision
Honestly I buy Payday 2 crime edition to play all the DLC's (or so I thought) I checked there are only like 8 original maps 3 holiday maps and 2 DLC'S Crossover I thought wait this is not right where all the DLC's in console and I check on steam and all DLC expansion is right there and I was confused 😵💫 a minute and check on RUclips on Payday news and find out that they already cut off and leave the console Payday player stranded for content and ignore the console players and leave them to rot the moment I heard this I was saddened cause I wasted funds on a half-baked game and I don't have a strong PC for payday 2 on PC so I just deleted and go to payday 3 and hope console don't get left behind like 2 happened.
Makes me feel sad. Thank god it's raining again. It's a perfect fit. Just watch this video during the rain. I have the gold edition and until now I did not even launched pd3 for fear&greed. You know why? Because every single time starbreeze releases something it is a mess. I'm sorry to say that, but there was no content drop so far that did not led to nebula error. They truly killed it and I feel personally insulted from the advertisement of implementing a server browser in a multiplayer game one year after release. Who sits there and thinks: that is a good idea. And it happens all the time, couldnt belive it were they did the same thing with the unready button. Imagine someone selling a game and a month later release an update with fancy graphics in the annoucment and the feature "Now you are able to play it". I wanted to love pd3, but now I hate it.
I don't mind if they go back to paid Heists, Characters and Weapons. I understand that development costs money and the newer ways of monitization isn't too valuable. I rather pay for heists, weapon packs and characters like in Payday 2 as long as they are worth it. Don't mind paying $15 for a good heist.
"Operation Medicbag turned a corner" A 180° corner maybe? Is that even a thing? Is anything *really* any different? Meanwhile, snipers are still copypasted from OTWD and are still horrdenous at sniping, tasers don't tase, cloakers have to see through walls to do anything, dozers don't bulldoze, they stand stilll, naders nade nothing. What a corner! And who's responsible for that... Bo is that you? Meanwhile, the game design is still horrendous. Oh boy, three more heists where I search for lost phones and where a machine turns bad bags into loot bags... yipee... Meanwhile, every gameplay update has to be balanced around a still incomplete armor system that is still being worked on by the same "senior" game designer who left it incomplete and who, by some coincidence, is level 0-76 in PD2 and has only completed 3 out of 9 heists in PDTH. Is it the publisher's fault? The progression system, which could've been inspired by PD:TH's, nuked and replaced by cheap, big numbers to make easily impressionable young men impressed by how fast they level up, because not one of these people cared to look back at the original. Whose fault is this? Let me guess... Sony's? Microsoft's? Yeah sure, Bo gambled the entire company for the sake of a VR pet project and it cost the company its stability. Sure, SBZ management shows signs of hubris so big, we could see it from a time before this video happened. But not a single word about devs that don't even care to play PD:TH and PD2 just to see what it's like to play something fun? Just so they can understand what they're supposed to make? "Oh they have hours on their dev accounts" yeah ok. Oh and speaking of Bo, what about the item store? You know, the cash cow system Bo has nothing to do with? We knew it was coming even before release. What's wrong? Suddenly you feel like talking about it over a year after release, long after most of its items have been given away? Bizarre. Why not talk about it sooner? And in more detail? Wha happun? What about the money invested in their "training" they semi-recently got certification from? Does it help learn game design? Or the extensive use of outsourcing? Like that ugly MS paint rectangle logo, outsourced. Or like most of the outfits and enemy models? Outsourced to a foreign land with ten times cheaper salary? Or those plane tickets? The constant platforming of cheaply influencable influencers for the sake of affordable, low-effort marketing? Lots of spending, not a lot of earning. The dissimulated use of AI-generated images? You made a big fuss about Vlad's face at some point, which I refuse to believe isn't AI painted over by a human. What about the use of actors' likenesses without their consent? Mira Furlan can't complain about it, she's dead, but a crappy AI portrait of her still sits above the name of Butcher. No? Don't want to talk about those? Guess you only deep-dive into pools that go up to your knees. Maybe you'll dig deeper when you run out of content to monetize. See you next video in which you reference another book 99.7% of your viewerbase hasn't read.
The thing is, I broadly agree with a lot of your Payday 3 critique, but this video wasn't meant to be about that, hence why I didn't touch on it much. This video was made to look into the business dynamics of these studios, not really gameplay design issues. Funnily enough, it wasn't even inspired by the situation at Starbreeze, but rather Hirez. I was shocked by their similarities and so made this by working backwards to something my audience my be interested in. I'm not really sure what you're insinuating in your comment? We don't necessarily agree on the efficacy of OMB at this point, but I don't know if discussing the majority of the other points you make here would have added anything to the video, other than potentially making it unfocused. The outsourcing is another symptom of a game made in a hurry and on a tight budget. The AI stuff, all hearsay. I've spoken extensively about the MTX item store. It's hardly been taboo on the channel and I don't have an agenda here. I look forward to seeing you discuss them on your own channel because I think there's substance to doing so in the right video, which you've already proven has the potential to reach a similar-sized audience.
As a long time smite player I'd say it was both a go for more money and the fact smite 2 NEEDED to happen. Smite one is on unreal 3, an old ass engine that is heavily limiting what they were able to do and by season 10 they'd pushed as hard as they could. Unreal 5 opens up a world of possibilites for the game and new characters and items they can add. Is smite 2 rough right now? yes, but they've also doubled down on improving at a faster rate, since the release of closed alpha they've dropped a lot to improve the game and are now set on having 50 gods by January, atp I'm extremely optimisitc about smite 2 future.
13:36 with the new battlefield game coming watching this video made me very worried cause the new one will have the same fate as the 2 game you mention EA sent all Devs including some NFS devs in the development cycle and Dice is not looking for anything new to make the new interesting ever since the disaster of 2042 EA and Dice are trying to find a way to relight the magic candle of battlefield with the new one and will be develop not with new things for the Battlefield series like ideas and sequel and things to make this series to the next level but only made out of weakness and dispersion to save this franchise from dying.
I do want to have hope for Payday 3 and I want to play and buy DLC to support it, but they haven't provided hardly anything worth paying for, or it's just insanely overpriced content. I haven't even purchased the base game since it left Game Pass, because there's nothing there I can't get from any other co-op shooter on game pass, and I say that wanting to support Payday till the end. But it costs way too much for how little content is actually there. Live Service really has killed almost every franchise or developer I've ever loved. I can't support a game that doesn't respect our time or money.
I wouldn't mind more videos like these at all, though I also definitely don't want to lose your input on PD3 updates personally.
It’s actually sad seeing Almir so clearly stressed out and waffling questions constantly. He’s always seemed like a cool dude but you can tell ever since PD3 launched he’s always got a gun to his head from the corporate higher-ups
As much as I hate the game, i cannot hate the devs
This whole situation with PD3 has been the fault of Starbreeze mismanagement and it shows. I do also feel bad for Almir, considering he's the face of Payday as many knows it.
@@BeefNuggetStew
I can hate them double for you.
@@mercce6750
Nah. Overkill has shown time and time again that they are incompetent as well, especially during Payday 2. It has nothing to do with management.
@@ninochaosdrache3189 it's both
Payday fans will do anything to keep the franchise alive, they really are dedicated fans, meanwhile starbreeze is like "nah, we doin baxter now"
@@redtheyiffer it’s an abusive relationship at this point
tf2 fans be like
No, I will not. I played PD The Heist when it released and had a large amount of excitement when 2 was announced and played that beta. Seeing payday 3 fumble this hard. I'm no longer buying anything from starbreeze without reviews being out for a couple of days. And if they went belly up, I'd only feel bad for those who actually run the day to day operations. The higher-ups who ran this shit into the ground can watch as I purchase Den of Wolves.
Seeing all the damn DLCs for payday 2 should've been my first red flag.
other dead game franchises wishes they have payday fans because the amount of fumbles being forgiven is amazing
I've said it many times but I feel Baxter will destroy Starbreeze. The team is already spread thin and development already is rather slow on Payday 3 and them promising Baxter in 2026 and another game in 2028 to the shareholders was an incredibly stupid move. The CEO stating they will move more and more devs from Payday 3 to work on Baxter as the release date draws near is just plain and simple self sabotage.
Starbreeze is so desperate to be a developer AND publisher of a diverse portfolio, but they can't handle it, looking at their track record. They can barely keep their most succesful IP alive. Everything they touch, they screw up.
If Payday 3 was in a great spot with a lot of concurrent players they could try their hand at a new game but as it stands now I can just see them skeleton crewing Payday 3 again and I can't see Baxter succeeding leaving Starbreeze in a position where they have to crawl back to pump out Payday 3 DLC to a community that won't fall for it anymore.
They have completely lost focus on what is important. As you said before: ''I wish Starbreeze would stop putting themselves in these underdog positions.''
One thing I think will really hold project Baxter back is the simple fact that’s it’s being made by starbreeze, after Payday 3 no one will want to buy a starbreeze game at launch again, I would not be surprised if Baxter launched to Concord level numbers purely because of that reputational damage
Absolutely. Payday 3 was probably the worst game launch in recent memory. Not just because of the mechanical state of the game, but also Starbreeze's behavior towards fans complaining about the very serious issues the game had. Not to mention their continual releases of paid DLC when the game is still barely finished, even a full year after release. At least Cyberpunk, for all its failings at launch, didn't have any DLC until the game was fixed. No one was being asked to pay extra money on top of the purchase price for a broken game
@@filmandfirearms exactly, in most videos now Payday 3 is synonymous with “Game nobody wants to play” why would anyone buy another game by the same people in the same genre
To add to that, the last Starbreeze game was what, Walking Dead? That launched even worse and almost killed the company with full on financial crimes taking place at the studio. I don't think you can even buy the game anymore.
They haven't just burned goodwill on their one core franchise, they also now have a reputation on the worker side for having fucked production cycles, and on the consumer side for launching fucked games back to back. That's essentially a death spiral just waiting to happen for the next game.
I know I for one as an example still haven't bought PD3. I played it on game pass at launch because I didn't trust Starbreeze with my money, and nothing I've seen since then has convinced me to actually get it on my main platform to play with friends.
Yeah. Really, anyone who still buy Bexter after Payday 3 and their Walking Dead game is an idiot and deserves it.
@@jimbob1862 yeah there’s a reason they stopped using Overkill after the walking dead game’s collapse, wanted to hide the fact they made it
Also, Hi-rez is having an obsessive hyperfixation on smite 2, leading to their other games (liked more somewhat) to be left in life support (like paladins), and people are not happy
Stop me if you heard this one before
I used to be a big Rogue Company player when that first launched as it was pretty solid, but support essentially died after I think barely a year.
I took a break for like 3 months and came back to an absolutely dead game.
Granted, RC wasn't exactly pushing big numbers but it still had a very solid foundation they could have explored if it hadn't launched trying to be third person CS in its modes.
That's the MO for Hi-Rez. They always have abandoned their games.
oh man, I also have spent thousands of hours in Payday and Smite
I don't think I have a reason to go back to smite after they announced smite 2, locked access behind a paywall and then stopped updating smite while smite 2 is nowhere near ready
+ all your skins won't be there!! That's what kills it for me, having paid money for it and effectively losing that investment with Smite 2 - Not even T5s :(
@@Desertskullman it's been a bit since I last read any news about it, but don't they offer gems for your old skins?
@@darkshadow5581Yes, the give Legacy gems, which cover half of the price of new skins. As to the reason the old skins aren't there, it because they moved to a new engine, and some other things.
@@darkshadow5581 They're called "Legacy gems" but are pretty much coupons :( You can use them to get up to 50% off any purchase, it's super misleading and infuriating
@@darkshadow5581 yes you get 2x the amount of gems you have used, but you can only use them to make a purchase 50% off
kinda funny how you used the Payday 3 "Pump and Dump" song for most of the video :P
the way they were all 'we fucked up and we're gonna fix it' in the interview but answered the baxter question with 'well we're not gonna invest in the game if you guys don't play it' had me ready to jump ship. Den of wolves can't come out soon enough I need my heisting fix
Please, for the love of all that is holy, do more of these kinds of "deep dive into the industry" videos. Absolutely engrossing, engaging to listen to, and informative to a fault.
You're doing gods work.
Wake up babe, Kknowley is doomposting again (it's a joke, please don't get angry)
I'm angry now
Angery!!!
You shouldn’t told me to not be angry because now I’m obligated to be big mad 😡
Please when purple1884 comments: 🤬
im fucking enraged
That interview section is crazy to me. They talk about PD3 as if it is a living being who they are not responsible for. "If its not fun, we won't invest more on it". Brother, you made the game. Whether fun or unfun depends on the amount of work you do on the game, not the other way round. What they really meant was "If its profitable, we'll keep working on it, and if not we will abandon it"
I'm glad you held back and didn't call it Project Backshots at any point.
A herculean effort!
Project Backshot Blew Me Away
I've never been able to forgive Hi-Rez after how they treated both Global Agenda AND (more importantly) Tribes Ascend, both games I loved. Abandoning a project the moment the next one seemed like it was gonna make more money, no matter how popular the previous one was. I'm sure Smite would have suffered the same fate if Paladins actually popped off bigger than it did.
Thing is, paladins could totally be popping if the devs gave it some love. People are not happy with OW rn, Paladins would have been a great replacement with some Polish and updates. As it stands, a waning playerbase is being milked with skins for characters in a game that barely works.
Insert "How does it feel to live long enough to see all your favorite franchises go down in flames?" meme here.
I'm curious about a comparison between the differences between the franchise changes from Payday: The Heist to Payday 2 vs Payday 2 to Payday 3.
The core issues for "advancing" a live service game comes from needing to entice enough players who either had no interest in joining the old game *and* enticing your old players to not abandon the series as "you have to start a new game and start over" is a pretty strong "quit point" for many long-term players (especially those who have spent a lot of money on cosmetics and expansions).
A major part of the failure of Payday 3 has been that it has not done anything to show longtime Payday fans that it is worth abandoning Payday 2 over, while also not really doing much to draw in new players. Payday 2 on the other hand was able to leverage the break from "fixing" Payday: The Heist to rebuild the brand into a stronger position.
It's a sad sight to say the least. Even the "we'll work on Payday 3 until it's not fun" is such a cop out response because they control when the fun stop. I really tried hanging on to the hope that Payday 3 will one day be as good as Payday 2 was but now with the Baxter project in place, i know it's a lost battle.
Well... you don't
@@finlaytemple1744 I don't understand your response ? Elaborate ?
@rasensenpai9400 you don't "know" anything, none of us do, let's not brand any speculation positive or negative as concrete or guaranteed
@@finlaytemple1744 Sure, i misspoke, in my language "know" as a diffirent meaning. But yeah you're right, we can't know for sure that it's doomed, that won't stop me from not being surprised when Payday 3 dies out because the devs want to go all in on project Baxter. Also the whole video is about how making a game in an position of weakness is a bumpy road. So i don't know for sure if they're gonna fail but theres a lot of clues about it.
@rasensenpai9400 obviously baxter won't benefit payday development but if it's managed well it could have no effect, I'm at the point with payday were speculation either positive or negative does really do much for me, that's just my opinion obviously
At this point, my hope is that should Payday fall, a newcomer takes its place with a vision of what made it good.
14:20 I like how the way this statement ("it's all too common in the game industry of late") is positioned so it can refer to both mass layoffs *and* having to re-learn that you need a functional game before you can monetize.
A better comparison for Smite 2 would be Overwatch 2. Though this time there actually is a major engine overhaul rather than just a relaunch of the same game.
I definitely preferred the old title, the new one makes it sound like a moistcritkal video, and there’s already enough moistcritkal videos
Same, or SomeOrdinaryGamers'
Yeah the old title was something along the lines of “Developing games from a position of weakness” and now it just sounds like a pyro video
@@Nate-kc2wf yeah I saw the old title, I hope he changes back
As someone in the Hi-Rez ecosystem (Paladins RUclipsr 💀), I was very surprised to see the Payday/Smite failure collab in this video! Hi-Rez just announced they're shutting down DKO and RRR, meaning they only have Smite, Paladins, and ROCO left. ROCO ain't looking too good, and Smite 2's start has been rocky to say the least. I'd be curious to see an analysis/timeline video of how Hi-Rez went downhill, because they've sunk and burned many, MANY games that could've been massive successes. After all, Paladins hit 60k peak players on Steam back in the day, and RR achieved 100k peak players and was played and enjoyed by Ninja - kind of a big deal for a battle royale! In an alternate timeline, these two games would be much more successful, but Hi-Rez's biggest strength is creating masterpieces and then killing them in the most disappointing ways possible.
Where's my Dead Game outfit, Overkill
You brought up some fair points. What I'm afraid of, is that this end may come earlier than anticipated with March 2025 and Deep Silver/Plaion possibly pulling out of their deal on being the publishers for the game. Yes, Payday 3 is recovering and not all hope is lost, but will that be enough?
I'm still hoping they don't just leave the IPs they have dusting in the archives of abandoned franchises and just give them to someone else, if this supposed end comes.
Oh look, another person who has been cursed to enjoy games/franchises that seem to suffer from prior success. I too was a SMITE lad and someone who loved Payday 2, and I also loved Kerbal Space Program. Then Payday 3, SMITE 2, and KSP 2 happened and well... I'm certainly hoping Payday 3 can break the curse I seem to have accidentally placed on these franchises, and while things are certainly looking up at least, for now I'm not going to hold my breath.
Cod zombies moment. Amazing insanely creative series being forced to be stuck to call of duty and activison until all the super talented people involved leave and now its corpse is being strung up pretending to still be alive. Not to say I do not enjoy the modern entries, BO6 looking succulent, but they definitely lack the soul the other games had.
For me my biggest issue with baxter is that starbreeze have yet to make a game that isn't just payday with a skin over it.
Raid WW2 was ww2 payday and the walking dead game was just zombie payday, I hope that baxter isn't just d&d payday because historically it just seems to result in an underbaked game that is directly competing with the one im already playing resulting in whatever the opposite of the whole rising tides raise all ships saying is. Quite frankly if they couldn't deliver a great game back in the payday 2 days when they had nothing to worry about I dont trust them to deliver one now after the past several years of turmoil.
It’s seems starbreeze only wants to make 4 player co op games, which is strange because they don’t seem to very good at them with the exception of the first 2 payday games
Looking at how the playerbase has dropped again even after some decent updates, the upcoming year one bundle + update is, imo, either going to be THE turning point or the last big push before investors start losing faith
This video reminds me of the NWI situation/scandal with Insurgency: Sandstorm
Been of fan of both Payday and Insurgency.
Insurgency is now a lost cause because of shitty NWI practices for that game
Collecting information about 2026/Baxtor and the lack of commitment for Payday 3
Really sad for what has happened to "replayability games" into just cash-grab slop into looking like AAA games.
I'd love more of you just talking about the industry
If payday 3 fails then its on the devs. A decade of payday 2 showed what was and wasn't liked and they still shit the bed. I guarantee the new armor system and a few other design choices were to try and bring in more modern FPS audience, who lets be honest aren't interested in the game anyways. They sat on their hands for months talking about feedback and change rather than actually doing anything, features that are now in or being added in that should've been in since day one isn't something to praise them over. I'm tired of games being disappointing due to dev laziness, sure shitty management and decisions from them can factor into things but there's a point where that isn't the case, and cant be used as an excuse to underdeliver.
I’ve gotta say i really appreciate your market analysis, it’s really refreshing from seeing a lot of “why game good/bad” style videos
The problem i have with pd3 is why? Why buy it over pd2? If they had took more time and carried over all the heists and guns they could legally then id probably get it. But, as is, why? You cant really even say pd3 is a new experience. Its mostly pd2 just with a few differences. The game was just plain rushed.
Saw bellona in the thumbnail and knew I was in for a double treat
Smite 2 has a different problem: Deadlock
Not to be a devil's advocate but Payday going towards more monetization is somewhat expected? Just look at Payday 2 and it's 100s of dlc. But even despite that they cannot continue to release dls for free, I think it's fine if we have new heisters (they are also cosmetics at this point), masks and such for money, not sure how I feel about legacy heists being re-introduced and being paid tho.
One thing that also makes Baxters failure more likely is player mentality. While Payday 3 might be on the road of recovery, a lot of players either learned or reinforced the "Do not buy it immediately , wait before buying how the game turned out". After all, payday 3 only got better AFTER months of content, so why buy early when it probably will be a buggy expensive mess on release. Better wait a couple of months for the price to go down and the game to be worth it. However when you are developing a game from a bad position, from an "All or nothing" standpoint you simply cannot wait out these players. The only solution is to either SOMEHOW get back the goodwill, which is hard with a bad track record, or make the game good ON RELEASE. Which is made harder if you have investors rushing you.
Honestly in a way the non answer says everything rather than just being a non answer it reads like a mass exodus of resources to Baxter held under contractual lock and key to hope Baxter will break even even though it'll kill SBZ. The non answer approach is most likely to avoid breach of contract
Man, this transition effect between clips is very pleasant
I really hope OVK doesn’t just give up on the game. It needs vision, and we can give them that.
Project Baxter as GaaS is up against Baldur's Gate 3. It's basically been donezo potato ever since the announcement, there's no way it won't fail.
Man, you're so right about the non answer. Really making me lose faith in the future of payday if they're already shifting focus to the next game. Also yes to more videos like this youve got good takes we wanna hear.
There's something I started thinking about as you were talking, something I always intuitively thought but never consciously considered before: The ultimate problem is that executives are trying to treat video games like any other entertainment industry, but you fundamentally CAN'T do that because video games are an interactive medium.
You get a lot of slop when it comes to shows, and when it comes to movies, and other things. And you also get a lot of it when it comes to video games, but there tends to be a bit of a difference, in my experience. Now I'm not saying bad/flawed/predatory games can't be successful, obviously: You're going to get ones that catch people for one reason or another (and that's usually, unfortunately, a level of addictiveness due to predatory design). But Video Games are an interactive medium, meaning there is a lot more investment on the end of a consumer. You can't just put on a game and watch it in the BG (well, for some you can, but idle games have their own specifics in how they appeal to people). There's very little investment when you start watching a show or movie, even when it comes to time, since it's all too easy to start doing something else, especially if it doesn't catch your interest. But when it comes to games, yea, sure, there's SOME multitasking, usually watching something in the BG for me, but your hands are occupied, there's skill and such involved on various levels. Not to mention the upfront cost of games compared to shows or movies: gaming is an expensive hobby, and relatively few games have demos for you to try and see if you like it before buying. Refunds can also be a pain, if they're even possible in the first place.
All of that means that a consumer can't usually treat video games as just a random pick-up they can chance on. The upfront cost, time, physical involvement, and all of that means that people are a lot more discerning about whether they'll even attempt to play a game, and word spreads. I think that's ultimately what's biting/going to bite these companies in the ass, especially as sentiment and overall trust as a whole continues to sour. More and more people are going to stick to companies they do trust and wait until they hear from others about whether or not the game is worth trying (and therefore paying for). While it's important to take risks, you can't just treat games like movies or shows that have a very low barrier to entry and low risk for consumers.
9:44 Tbh I would say that they should focus on PAYDAY or have a small group working on a prototype of a new game that they can release as a beta and if the players like it they can have a bigger team on that game but still continue doing PAYDAY.
Love to see more gaming industry insight
I love hearing the business side of things when it comes to game development. Keep up the good work!
I'm still salty 'bout the Payday mobile games, especially the first one… damn, they had something interesting going on!
Press F to Pay Respect
A development company needs to diversify. To be dependent on only one product is extremely risky and also a bad utilization of resources. Developing a game is a totally different thing from maintaining it. PD3 is now in the maintenance phase where new content and fixes is developed, but not a new game. That's why they need Baxter - to allocate those types of resources to that game. Of course some resources are shared between the projects, but the key is to have two or three games in different phases to be able to be as effective as possible, and to spread the risks over time. That's also why they are publishing other games like Roboquest and The Tribe Must Survive - to utilize those resources they already have, but is a bit on the back burner between their own launches.
How ever in order to make a successful live service game. You have to dedicate significant resources which leads to less diversity in games since you have to put your eggs in one basket for it to succeed.
if they keep locking the majority of the new content behind a paywall, in a game that already people are already having a hard time playing, this game isnt gonna make it. there's gonna have to be some sacrifices and some proper work done if this game is gonna get off the ground properly.
And we will be the ones doing the sacrifices.
you're not understanding then, they need money to make shit even free dlc. If they dont have money pouring in and they are not profitable then they can't make dlc that is free.
@@willskidman i understand. but you cant expect people to want to buy content for your game when the base game isnt fun or fun enough to be worth spending what they're asking. there are still many issues with the game since launch that havent been adressed, and if they want to turn head, they're going to have to put the pen to the paper
Was not expecting a lesson in business theory but it's appreciated
The problem is that Starbreeze lost the masterminds behind Payday. They are long gone and that shows. Besides mismanagement, greed, lies and incompetence, Starbreeze doesn’t want to make games for the games sake. They make games to make money. Payday 3 is just a lifeless shell of a game. The Payday franchise used to be fun because of the cool characters, a crazy story, memorable voice lines, great music and so much more. You felt that those guys (Overkill) had fun developing Payday. That’s why the community was that strong supporting them and loving the game.
Payday 3 lacks in all departments. People are tired of half assed UE4 asset calladuty clones. It’s just not enough. Starbreeze has shown, that they are not capable of developing good games and they won’t succeed in hyping known ips and selling mediocre games. I hope the Payday franchise will find a new home soon, with devs that are enjoying developing, respecting their ip and their community.
The absolute emotional roller coaster these types of videos are is insane. I can’t believe how melancholy this is, I mean you have a pretty good point. Video games used to be passion projects and enjoyable, now triple A studios just don’t care anymore, quantity over quality really does explain the current market. It’s rare nowadays to find a good game that doesn’t shove monetization down your throat. If you have to make a game just to keep the lights on, then you aren’t making a game. You are making a plead for help. Bad decisions get you nowhere and companies shouldn’t expect the consumer to gobble up everything they send your way. Re using the same concept will only get you so far. I wish I had something positive to say today but, I really don’t. Starbreeze still has a chance. I just hope they take it.
I used to play Paladins competitively. Everything you said about Hi-Rez in this video hits close to home for me. For what they’ve accomplished, the company has always been horridly mismanaged, and constantly made me wonder why I enjoyed Paladins so much during beta and early release years. Nowadays it feels like a husk of the game I once thought I could make at least a side gig out of.
Personally, I love the deep-dive videos. Can't wait for more!
I wonder how theoretically possible it would be for Diesel Engine to be “upgraded” to a modern standard. Better stability (first and foremost), better graphics, better controls, easier to design for, etc. Obviously this would have to be done by its creators, but I wonder how a return to PD2 would go, but a specifically a modernized one with an updated engine (under the bold assumption it would launch well).
It would be like Bethesda and starfield, sure the engine is “upgraded” but it’s still the same one from 2006 that was outdated even then
I mean they could’ve just took their time to really put work into learning the engine and making a quality product with pay day 3 but you know what happened
If it's any indication of the chances of Project Baxter, I am very heavily entrenched in D&D media and consumption, and I had absolutely no idea that Wizards had partnered with Overkill/ Starbreeze at all.
I’m praying for pd3
I really liked this video! I’d love to see if you’d do more videos on the gaming scene with your perspective!
I cannot play coop shooters alone, it's just not fun to me, I still remember joining random PD2 lobbies to see failed joining game, you've been kicked or game crashing most of the time, same with HD, therefore I play those games mostly when either I convince a friend, or they ask me.
the management of payday 3 got me like ver vvx
Oh dang, and here I thought they were already doing a ton of baxter work and thats why payday 3s stuff is undercooked
Yoo i’m a huge smile fan didn’t know that about you.
Need then at add ne zha soon.
Payday on the other hand needs more heists ,weapons, customizable masks and characters
Smites situation is brought on by the fact they sunset Smite a whole year earlier than they should have. Smite 2 needed to happen because every patch on the old framework broke like 15 things, the UI ran on adobe flash of all things and the game looked old in 2015.
Is it a position of weakness? Sure, but because they dropped Smite 1 when they did.
Starbreeze has a common issue of fully cashing out on its good will, and making baffling decisions to cut corners and make the most money possible.
Hirez has been proving as of late theyre responsive on feedback(You dont uproot your entire dev timeline to effectively catch up to the modern standard and make tangible improvements in days, without that being the case), starbreeze on the other hand only uses feedback as a metric.
Ah yes, microtransactions and DLC, a thing I did not buy from PD3. I'm sure this time it'll work.
0:47 And I am cursed too because games I have played my entire life was bad sequels that were made just to get cash and it will continue to be like that.
Same point could be made about Fallout new vegas, but the final product is not the "fast food" live-service or Singularity by Raven software which had budget limitations and limited dev time but the final game doesn't have doesn't have outfit dlcs and a single new dlc level each month. So i doesn't necessarily agree with your point of milking games and cutting losses from fans
Can't wait for the next Update 🔥🔥🔥
Ok penguinzo
After redownloading payday 2 after playing payday 3 for so long, ill just say ill never play another starbreese game unless they truly fix payday 3.
Played SMITE back in Beta on Xbox with over 2k hours. Smite 2 is a huge slap in the face to me and I’m not going back.
If a company is reliant on a sole product, and said sole product is itself suffering because of that, maybe it's better to have no studio at all.
Payday needs an adult swim show I can already see the vision
Development cycle aside, can we just take note of the fact PD3 would be in a far better spot if they had never decided to go with online only. To be honest, I wish I had resisted buying the game as soon as I heard about the supposed inclusion of Denuvo.
If we, the community, had the opportunity to make our own mods, heists, guns and other content PD3 could've been the best payday easily. Obviously they wanted to keep console updated with PC, but I'm sure they could've done that by setting the groundwork of their game to be centred around customisation, modding and player control. I mean just look at black ops 3, there are thousands of player-made maps some even as good as the base game's. Imagine a payday where we could be heisting a McDonald's for their food all while an army of ronald McDonald police try to stop you.
Payday 3, for me, seemingly regardless of future updates, is a shining example of the popular phrase:
"What could've been."
You see all the telltale signs with Payday 3 that you saw with pd2. I made the dumbass mistake of buying console because it's a new engine, so of course they won't fuck over the console players with updates again 🙄🤦
If the PC build isn't 50 updates ahead of the console build, then payday 3 as a whole is just shit. They haven't fixed the door between the break room and the lobby in diamond heist yet. I know it's a crazy amount of code to make a door work, but I'm sure they'll eventually get to it
That statement by Almir is so out of touch, wow. I am really just baffled by the audacity.
The title of this video reads like the name of a chapter of a Machiavelli book
I really agree that the most important thing for Baxter's success is to make Payday 3 the best possible, it is the only thing they are really know for, if their flagship sinks why would people who never played Payday get on board for Baxter? I will sadly sink with the ship, but Call to Action 2.0 does not smell good, even though the game is currently in a good direction, really hope the investors just let Starbreeze cook for as long as it needs at the very least for both games and stop trying to push undercooked stuff
Stop being so me.
I have played Smite since it's console release all those years ago but quit after Smite 2's announcement. I just didn't wanna bother fighting more sweaty try-hards in casuals and their skins getting pumped out over the quality and fun of the game. They stopped experimenting with new mods, new ideas, and engaging us with fun or goofy content. Now the most we'll get is a returning Corrupted Arena or a skin. Blegh.
The problem wasn’t that payday3 released unfinished, it’s that it was specifically advertised as finished combined with the fact that it release unfinished. Thousands of good games released in early access and used the methods Payday3 has at improving, which is taking player feedback to set a direction for the game, but if you’re gonna do that you better charge early access prices, not charge full release price and most of all don’t try to hide the fact that your game is completely unfinished.
Of course there could be a ton of reasons why Starbreeze decided to do this, which I agree with the points in your video, this was done mainly because Payday 3 was made in order to cash out on Payday 2s fan base one last time. Unfortunately too many game companies think that this is the best way to make money, I don’t know when these corporate morons will realize that the best way to make money is to make a really good game, it’s that simple.
The D&D game is going to be bad. Hasbro/WotC suck. The main reason BG3 is as good as it is (aside from the talent of the devs) is that Larian was given the freedom to make the game how they wanted without Hasbro/WotC interference. The contract for BG3 was made a long time ago and the company is very different now. Modern WotC is extremely greedy and malicious. Their modern products cut corners (ai art, general lack of effort put into new books, etc) and their management see customers as obstacles to money. There's no way this game will come out not chock full of crappy microtransactions.
Payday 3 couldve stood on its own feet if it didnt get kneecapped by that launch and the lack of options in weapon choice
Paladins was a great game in itself with a history before the hero shooter trend really took off
It got left out to dry and lost majority of its players after they tried to make the game pay to win and then one update later walked back on the decision
Honestly I buy Payday 2 crime edition to play all the DLC's (or so I thought) I checked there are only like 8 original maps 3 holiday maps and 2 DLC'S Crossover I thought wait this is not right where all the DLC's in console and I check on steam and all DLC expansion is right there and I was confused 😵💫 a minute and check on RUclips on Payday news and find out that they already cut off and leave the console Payday player stranded for content and ignore the console players and leave them to rot the moment I heard this I was saddened cause I wasted funds on a half-baked game and I don't have a strong PC for payday 2 on PC so I just deleted and go to payday 3 and hope console don't get left behind like 2 happened.
CAUSE ITS PAYDAY
I SAID IT'S FOCKEN PAYDAY MOTHERFU-
GOTTA GET INTO THE VAULT
@@Lucios1995 fight back the police assault
👊😎
Makes me feel sad. Thank god it's raining again. It's a perfect fit. Just watch this video during the rain. I have the gold edition and until now I did not even launched pd3 for fear&greed. You know why? Because every single time starbreeze releases something it is a mess. I'm sorry to say that, but there was no content drop so far that did not led to nebula error. They truly killed it and I feel personally insulted from the advertisement of implementing a server browser in a multiplayer game one year after release. Who sits there and thinks: that is a good idea. And it happens all the time, couldnt belive it were they did the same thing with the unready button. Imagine someone selling a game and a month later release an update with fancy graphics in the annoucment and the feature "Now you are able to play it". I wanted to love pd3, but now I hate it.
Man this reminds me of a video Jamesblack47 would make.
I don't mind if they go back to paid Heists, Characters and Weapons. I understand that development costs money and the newer ways of monitization isn't too valuable.
I rather pay for heists, weapon packs and characters like in Payday 2 as long as they are worth it.
Don't mind paying $15 for a good heist.
"Operation Medicbag turned a corner"
A 180° corner maybe? Is that even a thing? Is anything *really* any different?
Meanwhile, snipers are still copypasted from OTWD and are still horrdenous at sniping, tasers don't tase, cloakers have to see through walls to do anything, dozers don't bulldoze, they stand stilll, naders nade nothing. What a corner! And who's responsible for that... Bo is that you?
Meanwhile, the game design is still horrendous. Oh boy, three more heists where I search for lost phones and where a machine turns bad bags into loot bags... yipee...
Meanwhile, every gameplay update has to be balanced around a still incomplete armor system that is still being worked on by the same "senior" game designer who left it incomplete and who, by some coincidence, is level 0-76 in PD2 and has only completed 3 out of 9 heists in PDTH. Is it the publisher's fault?
The progression system, which could've been inspired by PD:TH's, nuked and replaced by cheap, big numbers to make easily impressionable young men impressed by how fast they level up, because not one of these people cared to look back at the original. Whose fault is this? Let me guess... Sony's? Microsoft's?
Yeah sure, Bo gambled the entire company for the sake of a VR pet project and it cost the company its stability. Sure, SBZ management shows signs of hubris so big, we could see it from a time before this video happened.
But not a single word about devs that don't even care to play PD:TH and PD2 just to see what it's like to play something fun? Just so they can understand what they're supposed to make? "Oh they have hours on their dev accounts" yeah ok.
Oh and speaking of Bo, what about the item store? You know, the cash cow system Bo has nothing to do with? We knew it was coming even before release. What's wrong? Suddenly you feel like talking about it over a year after release, long after most of its items have been given away? Bizarre. Why not talk about it sooner? And in more detail? Wha happun?
What about the money invested in their "training" they semi-recently got certification from? Does it help learn game design?
Or the extensive use of outsourcing? Like that ugly MS paint rectangle logo, outsourced.
Or like most of the outfits and enemy models? Outsourced to a foreign land with ten times cheaper salary?
Or those plane tickets? The constant platforming of cheaply influencable influencers for the sake of affordable, low-effort marketing? Lots of spending, not a lot of earning.
The dissimulated use of AI-generated images? You made a big fuss about Vlad's face at some point, which I refuse to believe isn't AI painted over by a human.
What about the use of actors' likenesses without their consent? Mira Furlan can't complain about it, she's dead, but a crappy AI portrait of her still sits above the name of Butcher.
No? Don't want to talk about those? Guess you only deep-dive into pools that go up to your knees. Maybe you'll dig deeper when you run out of content to monetize.
See you next video in which you reference another book 99.7% of your viewerbase hasn't read.
The thing is, I broadly agree with a lot of your Payday 3 critique, but this video wasn't meant to be about that, hence why I didn't touch on it much. This video was made to look into the business dynamics of these studios, not really gameplay design issues. Funnily enough, it wasn't even inspired by the situation at Starbreeze, but rather Hirez. I was shocked by their similarities and so made this by working backwards to something my audience my be interested in.
I'm not really sure what you're insinuating in your comment? We don't necessarily agree on the efficacy of OMB at this point, but I don't know if discussing the majority of the other points you make here would have added anything to the video, other than potentially making it unfocused. The outsourcing is another symptom of a game made in a hurry and on a tight budget. The AI stuff, all hearsay. I've spoken extensively about the MTX item store. It's hardly been taboo on the channel and I don't have an agenda here.
I look forward to seeing you discuss them on your own channel because I think there's substance to doing so in the right video, which you've already proven has the potential to reach a similar-sized audience.
As a long time smite player I'd say it was both a go for more money and the fact smite 2 NEEDED to happen. Smite one is on unreal 3, an old ass engine that is heavily limiting what they were able to do and by season 10 they'd pushed as hard as they could. Unreal 5 opens up a world of possibilites for the game and new characters and items they can add.
Is smite 2 rough right now? yes, but they've also doubled down on improving at a faster rate, since the release of closed alpha they've dropped a lot to improve the game and are now set on having 50 gods by January, atp I'm extremely optimisitc about smite 2 future.
Dude doesn't known how to make money. So we back milking negativity, you might as well make it desirable for 17 min.
I really liked this script. Ah well, can't win them all.
Oh boy, more Payday 3 autopsy videos.
If you liked Smite you should check out Deadlock if you havent already
13:36 with the new battlefield game coming watching this video made me very worried cause the new one will have the same fate as the 2 game you mention EA sent all Devs including some NFS devs in the development cycle and Dice is not looking for anything new to make the new interesting ever since the disaster of 2042 EA and Dice are trying to find a way to relight the magic candle of battlefield with the new one and will be develop not with new things for the Battlefield series like ideas and sequel and things to make this series to the next level but only made out of weakness and dispersion to save this franchise from dying.
I do want to have hope for Payday 3 and I want to play and buy DLC to support it, but they haven't provided hardly anything worth paying for, or it's just insanely overpriced content. I haven't even purchased the base game since it left Game Pass, because there's nothing there I can't get from any other co-op shooter on game pass, and I say that wanting to support Payday till the end. But it costs way too much for how little content is actually there. Live Service really has killed almost every franchise or developer I've ever loved. I can't support a game that doesn't respect our time or money.
I hope you're wrong about the year of Monetisation. I really do.
Anyone able to tell me if they cant use the houston character pack even after installing it? Im on xbox had no ability to fix it
That just means you are punching above your weight class
If you lack the funds to make it happen, dont make it
I wonder if ive ever arachne cringe ganked kknowley and never realized it
if only they understood what needed to be done