PAYDAY 3 Release: The Story and Reception So Far

PAYDAY 3 Release – The long-awaited sequel of the co-op heisting game has finally come out from its beta. Payday 3 game is the direct sequel to the critically acclaimed Payday 2 by Starbreeze Nebula.

Similar to its predecessor, Payday3 is a first-person shooter co-op game revolving around heists to various venues including banks, art galleries, and more. The game now runs with Unreal Engine 5, ditching its original Diesel Engine that they have been using since the original pay day games.

Story so far

The story takes place right after the ending of Payday 2, where the gang went their separate ways leaving the limelight of life of crime— once again retiring into the anonymous.

Unfortunately, those retirement doesn’t last forever however as double crossing leads to another and the gang ends up losing all of its money forcing them to return to the game. Payday 3 features the 4 original characters from the first Payday game (“Dallas”, “Chains”, “Wolf”, and “Hoxton”) and 2 additional characters; including “Joy” from Payday 2 and “Pearl”.

The setting itself will mainly take place around New York. However, as the game progresses it will likely take a similar approach to its predecessors, where it expands to other locations as the story develops.

Reception on release

As of today, the game is rated 5 out of 10 on Steam with a “Mostly Negative” overall review. It is in all honesty not a surprising result as it has been plagued by various controversies during its development with it being a live service exclusive as one of them.

What does it mean to be a live service? To put it simply, it means that players need internet access anytime they want to play the game even if they want to play with bots.

This also means that if the game server or studio happens to shut down, the game will end up being unplayable as the server that the game connects to is no longer available. Rendering the game to be practically “dead”.

And this was what exactly happened to them as the Payday 3 servers went down during its day 1 release because the server was unable to handle the incoming traffic. While the issue itself has been addressed, people need to wait for days before this and it really shows how bad it is for the game to be made as a live service only.

One other complaint that players currently express on the Payday 3 review is about its exp progression. In its previous iterations, players exp reward scales with the difficulty that they take so let’s say a kill in “normal” difficulty will be worth less to kills in “overkill” and it makes more sense because the “overkill” difficulty is harder than “normal”.

In Payday 3 however, they shifted its method of getting an exp heavily to achievements. If it doesn’t sound obvious, this means that the game limits its players from playing the game however they want to be. 

This will eventually cause an issue as aside from players will end up feeling that they are dictated to play the game “as the developers wants to be”, it will also mean that players will eventually run out of achievements to viably level up their characters.

Bottom line

With Payday 3 early access has come to an end, the game has finally met its proper Payday 3 release date of 21 September 2023. Unfortunately, the game is not in its good state right now as it’s currently sitting in a “Mostly Negative” Steam review.

This is because the developers have decided to tie the game to a live service only; meaning that it requires users to have a steady internet connection to play the game— even if they wanted to play solo. Now, the irony comes from the fact that during its release, their server went down which made the game literally unplayable on day 1 as players were endlessly greeted with a Payday 3 matchmaking error prompt.

Alongside that, there is also an issue with its exp progression as it’s now tied heavily to achievements instead of difficulty. The good news though, is that they have finally ditched the Diesel Engine and opted to the Unreal Engine 5 which should release them from the game limitation when they update the game later down the line.

Payday 3 supports a cross-platform as it is available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Payday 3 Xbox. A Payday 3 game pass is also available.