Reports indicate that Starbreeze Studios, the company behind the game Payday 3, is reducing its workforce. While Starbreeze hasn’t officially confirmed the layoffs, current and former employees, including some who worked on Payday 3, have shared the news and are now seeking new jobs.
As a big fan of the Payday series, I’ve been pretty disappointed with how Payday 3 has done since it came out last year. It didn’t get the greatest reviews, and even now, players on Steam are pretty divided about it. The developers have been working hard to fix things and add new content, but it feels like it’s still struggling to really click. Honestly, with reports of job losses, it’s starting to feel like there might be even more trouble ahead for Starbreeze.
Starbreeze Studios Hit By Layoffs Again
Several game developers recently lost their jobs at Starbreeze Studios. Alexander Pereswetoff-Morath, a QA tester at Starbreeze, announced on LinkedIn that many employees were being laid off, including himself. Sabina af Jochnick, a Senior Tech Producer, also shared that her position was likely to be eliminated, and she is now seeking new opportunities.
Starbreeze hasn’t officially announced layoffs, so the number of job losses is currently unknown. However, these cuts aren’t entirely unexpected, considering the performance of Payday 3 and the company’s recent challenges. Starbreeze previously reduced its workforce by about 15% between 2024 and early 2025, and further job losses occurred in late 2025 when their Dungeons & Dragons game, Project Baxter, was cancelled. Financial reports from 2024 also revealed a loss of $18.5 million, indicating the company has been facing difficulties for some time.
Payday 3 Struggled to Regain Fanbase
In 2025, Starbreeze regained the publishing rights to Payday 3, which allowed them to speed up the creation of new content and explore more possibilities for the Payday series. Following this, they released the ‘Party Powder’ heist for Payday 3 in May, then added the ‘Delivery Charge’ DLC. The year concluded with the highly anticipated Skill 2.0 update.
Honestly, I was hoping things were turning around for Payday 3 and Starbreeze. It felt like there was a little bit of a comeback happening in 2025, but it hasn’t really stuck. As of today, I checked Steam and there were only about 686 of us playing at peak hours. They released the Party Powder heist and we hit almost 3,000 players, and there were a few smaller boosts around June, July, and September. But even with the big 2.0 Skills Update, we couldn’t even break 2,000 concurrent players. It’s a huge drop from launch, when nearly 78,000 of us were all online at once. It’s a bit disappointing, to be real.
Starbreeze, the company behind Payday 3, has faced challenges meeting player expectations, but they aren’t alone. Layoffs are becoming increasingly common in the gaming industry. Just last year, major companies like Amazon Games, EA, Microsoft, Ubisoft, Niantic, and Square Enix all reduced their workforces. And with the new year just beginning, we can expect to see more of these situations unfold throughout 2026.
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2026-01-22 05:34