Copyright Wccftech
Starbreeze Entertainment is passing the torch of maintaining Payday 2 onto Sidetrack Games, so that Starbreeze can focus more on Payday 3. Sidetrack Games will take over future updates for Payday 2, including fixing any bugs that may come along, adding quality-of-life updates, and just overall keeping the game running and live for players to enjoy. "Sidetrack (formerly known as the M.U.G. Team) is a talented team with deep roots in the Payday modding community," Starbreeze writes in its announcement on the Payday 2 Steam page. "Their work on RAID: World War II showed that they have the skill and perseverance to deliver quality updates over a long time. They know the Payday 2 engine inside and out, and they've already gotten started. The first update goes live this Thursday, October 23, and is focused on the stability of the game and improving the overall player experience." "Collaborating with Sidetrack Games allows Starbreeze to maintain full focus on Payday 3, while Payday 2 continues to deliver value for all players with the dedicated, expert support they deserve." Starbreeze also states that it'll host a live stream on Thursday, where it will delve further into the details around its collaboration with Sidetrack Games. This is the latest update for Payday 2 since the DLC subscription service that Starbreeze introduced, and later had to apologize for due to Starbreeze also decreasing the discount on the Infamous Collection for Payday 2. Basically, it made the previous avenue for acquiring all of Payday 2's DLC more expensive, to make the subscription service more appealing. Starbreeze restored the Infamous Collection discount to where it was before the subscription service was released. As for where Payday 3 fits into this, it's clear that Starbreeze wants to focus its efforts on making Payday 3 more appealing for Payday fans, since many of them still haven't moved off of Payday 2. The studio cancelled its Dungeons & Dragons-based co-op game in order to focus more on Payday 3, and now it has passed off maintaining Payday 2 to put more time into Payday 3. However, even with the extra space to work on Payday 3, it'll still take years for it to be anything close to what Payday 2 is. The sheer quantity of DLCs available to Payday 2 players will take years to match, never mind just hitting the same quality bar as the ones players love in Payday 2. Payday 3 also, as far as we know, still won't include everything that players want from it, now that Starbreeze has confirmed it won't be working on an offline mode for the game. In any case, Starbreeze seems committed to making up for the abysmal launch that Payday 3 had, which was plagued by scores of technical and server connection issues, and a gross lack of content. We'll see where Payday 3 stands a year from now, and if Starbreeze has begun to make inroads in their journey to make Payday fans play Payday 3, which, two years after release, struggles to get more than 3K concurrent players on Steam.
