Payday 3 News: Starbreeze Ceo Fired
Today we've got some pretty big news for Starb Entertainment as a company, one that I didn't really see coming, but now that I see it. I kind of understand why, unfortunately, the now former CEO Tobias Herrian has been removed from his position as CEO, and the most damning thing about this article is that there's no mention of resignation; there's no mention of it being Tobias's own decision, so it feels, and as you'll see further in this article, it's very much a joint decision of the board based on the poor performance of Payday 3, so I want to talk about this.
The board of directors of Starb has appointed the current board member, Jurgen Goldner. Hopefully, I'm saying that the interim CEO of Starb is taking office with immediate effect, and a recruitment process for a permanent CEO has been initiated.
Jurgen has spent 40 years in the gaming industry and has held several executive positions; his last one was CEO of Focus Home Interactive. Jurgen Goldner has been a board member of Star Brees since 2023. But here's a quote from the chairman of Star Brees Cyhrom: I think this is how you say that again.
Sorry, I'm not the best with Swedish names, but this statement is the most damning thing and the most interesting thing to pick up on. The company has a clear strategy centered around creating attractive games on our own and licensing IPS. The board's consolidated assessment is that the execution of strategy needs different leadership.
Jurgen Goldner has been on the board since 2023, and with over 40 years of industry experience, this is a strong interim solution. Tobias will be available at Star Brees for a smooth transition. Tobias doesn't have any kind of statement here; instead, we get Toley saying a bit more on behalf of the board of directors.
I would like to thank Tobias for his achievements during the past three years. He took over the Helm of Stars in a challenging phase of its journey, and we wish him well for his future endeavors. Jurgen himself said Star has a strong history of developing and publishing games globally. After launching Payday 3, the company is well positioned to leverage the strengths of the organization to monetize and develop the IP portfolio.
I'm looking forward to assuming the opposite position and, together with the management, ensuring execution. Of this strategy jurgen's role as a board member and the nomination to Chairman has not been affected by this appointment so right now he's still on the board of directors and he was as interim CEO this lines up with the previous announcement when Tobias her was announced to be the permanent CEO of starbur, there was about a what was this five month gap between October and March 2020 2021 where he was the interim CEO to expect Jurgen to be in the position for a little bit but it notes that only when Tobias was appointed as permanent CEO that he was taken off the board of directors so this is all very standard but I just wanted to compare this because there's some very interesting statements here first off the board's Consolidated assessment is the execution needs a different leadersh ship and then Tobias will be available to starb for a smooth transition, now when the previous CEO to Tobias M nmar resigned.
He was just put up on the article as resigning due to personal reasons, as we now know that was due to his illness before he passed away, unfortunately, but it was made quite clear that M had made the decision, and M didn't say anything in here, but it was clear that he'd made the resignation. That was it.
It's not necessarily surprising that Tobias didn't have something to say in the article because even when M had resigned himself, he didn't have a statement; he just left. But the fact that it isn't noted in any way that Tobias resigned or anything like that makes it very clear that the board of directors made the decision for him.
If you've ever watched The Apprentice, you know that when a task goes wrong, you blame the project manager, and as I've said numerous times when I flamed Bar Anderson for the terrible decisions he made with Starb as a company who was the CEO before Mike, we're really doing some CEO history here unfortunately.
When pay A3 fails as badly as it has over the last five or six months who else are you going to look to other than the man who was in charge of the company it's a shame because I have met Tobias I've interviewed him he is a lovely guy but I honestly can't really say I'm surprised by this decision, there's no part of me that reades and says this seems unfair, because is you shoot for the leader the leader is the one making a lot of the big decisions much like Bo was when he sank star Brees so I can't say I'm surprised that they're looking for new leadership but I've just switch camera sides I'm going to look at their financial report over here so it's a bit more of a flashbang, so we're going to zoom in real quick and have a look at these figures because I just think it's important to bring them up and there's a couple other things I want to point out so you can compare here the Q4 statement between October and December and compare it to 2022.
As well as the whole year 2023 to 2022, so year ends first, you can see Star Bre is in a much better place in 2023 than they were in 2022; they're making profit before tax compared to making a loss in 2022, cash flow is much higher, net sales per employee is much higher, and earnings before tax are all much better, but quarter on quarter in 2023.
Title: Boulders Gate 3 Fan I hope it's good, but who knows? After payday 3, we'll have to just wait and see. However, they did say as a company in their presentation, and this was the presentation that goes alongside the report that payday 3 sales and activity were significantly lower than they wanted to see.
When a company acknowledges that in their financial report, you know it's serious because they're not going to beat around the bush. Financial reports are there to be serious to the investors, the board holders; they've got to state the pure hard facts. So this is a pure hard fact, and it's not a good one.
Tobias made a statement in here saying that they're going to make Payday 3 better; they're going to build on the game, improve it, and make it stronger, but unfortunately. That's going to be without Tobay; it seems very clear that he is not going to be working with Starre once they've made this transition over his Twitter hasn't said anything about him not being CEO anymore.
As far as I can see right now, it still says he's just the CEO, and there's been no change there, so maybe something will change further down the line. But the thing that I was most upset about with Star Brees having the problem with Payday 3 is that I didn't want the company to go under, not just because I don't want people losing their jobs regardless of whether people are responsible or not.
