Payday 3 Developer Boots CEO Following Poor Performance

12.03.2024 - 23:25 / thegamer.com / Tobias Sjögren

Developer Starbreeze has booted its CEO Tobias Sjögren, as Payday 3 continues to disappoint. Sjögren will be immediately replaced by interim CEO Juergen Goeldner, with the company's chairman saying that it needs "a different leadership".

Launching last September, Payday 3 has been a disaster for Starbreeze, with its Steam reviews currently falling under "Overwhelmingly Negative". Its player count is abysmal too, with fewer than 300 playing on Steam at the time of writing.

As reported by CGMagazine, this ousting comes after former CEO Sjögren announced that he would step down at the end of last year. It seems that Starbreeze wants to start implementing changes as soon as possible, as Sjögren's departure is effective immediately, and the company is now seeking a new, permanent CEO.

"The company has a clear strategy centered around creating attractive games on our own and licensed IPs," says Starbreeze chairman, Torgny Hellström. "The board’s consolidated assessment is that the execution of strategy needs a different leadership.

"On behalf of the board of directors, I would like to thank Tobias Sjögren for his achievements during the past three years."

At the time of writing, Payday 3's 24-hour peak player count is 378. Payday 2's is 31,866.

Payday 3 is mentioned in a statement from the interim CEO, but only briefly. It seems that Starbreeze is looking towards its next projects, despite Payday 3 being an always-online game.

"After launching Payday 3, the company is well-positioned to leverage the strengths of the organization to monetize and develop the IP portfolio," says Juergen Goeldner. "I am looking forward to assuming an operative position and, together with the management, ensure the execution of this strategy."

It's not clear how ongoing support for Payday 3 will be affected by this change of CEO. It's still receiving updates, as you'd expect from a constantly online game, but that might not last much longer if Starbreeze decides to cut its losses to explore other projects.

With that being said, Starbreeze acknowledged that fans are disappointed with the state of the game back in January, and laid out its plan to turn things around. This would have been after it knew it would be looking for a new CEO, so there's a good chance that future support is still planned. If that support doesn't get the PC playerbase into more than three figures though, it's not clear how sustainable that will be going forward.