This Ceo Just Paid The Price For Payday 3 Failure
Of course we've seen the likes of Verman Tide, right? That's a really good example, and you know, in this case, of course, Warhammer, so multiplayer. DND by the payday people you can sort of see that going well and also I mean you think of dark tight it's a game that's kind of in and around this genre that sort of similar to bayday 3 just had a really screwy initial launch anyway there's payday there's project Baxter and they're going with a new CEO now as for the old CEO well his whole situation is honestly kind of fascinating because it was directly tied to the almost complete collapse of the company in 2018, it was a crazy situation so they did work on over kills The Walking Dead and that was expensive the game completely failed it was basically one of the Laughing stocks of gaming at the time and they ended up being so overstretched that they came very close to insolvency.
Now this was then exacerbated, by them purchasing Studios and Publishing rights and they got publishing rights for massive games like say Psychonauts 2 which eventually would be a Microsoft thing whenever they purchased the developers of that and also System Shock 3 right so they acquired all of this expensive stuff to get out of this problem well to buas ended up leading and they basically laid off a quarter of their Workforce, they sold off many of those teams and they sold off loads of those rights and by doing that they were able to pay down their debtors so essentially they had this period of just crazy like reconstruction of the company and Midway through that Tobias shogren took lead okay now he was appointed in 2019.
In an interim role because of the former CEO. UM Nar basically had ill health, and sadly, he actually passed away shortly after in 2021. Now the stuff with Tobi is relevant because while he was leading, they basically had very interesting things going on with Payday 2. It was taking a bit of an uptick, and then, as he explained to the game industry, biz with the pandemic, it just kind of really took off, so what they ended up doing was four premium DLC's alongside some free content, and all of that actually had Payday 2 in like 2019 or 2020, actually putting out numbers that were very close to the game's initial launch, which is absolutely crazy, so that was going pretty amazingly, and then of course development of Payday 3 was going on, and they secured a 50 million euro deal for that game, of course recurring.
I suppose the recurring villain of the channel is the embracer group, and in theory, all of this stuff paid off because, with the launch of Payday 3, they had their first profitable year since. 2018 so very much a big success on paper but as those steam player counts suggest, yeah not really a massive success in the long run so they had great financial success initially for payday 3 but that is absolutely not driving financial success, you know after then because nobody's playing which means if you make DLC for it what's the point I mean no one will give a [ __ ] reading between the lines and looking at this I think the implication is that Tobias shogren was a strong like leader for wartime, not necessarily for peace time right that he could shepher the company through periods of significant chaos and upheaval, right that was like working out well but that obviously something has not worked out with payday 3 ultimately.
There was a go no-o decision for payday 3; they decided to hit go to hit launch, and they probably should have seen this kind of thing coming, so that lack of foresight, and of course, a lack of foresight on payday 3, which really would be the future of the company that's evidently the sort of thing that they just felt is unacceptable, and therefore, he is leaving; he is gone, and this is one of the few times where a gaming executive has actually faced direct consequences, for per performance that happens so rarely.
Of course, now somebody new is taking over; they're called Jurgen Goldner; they're a 40-year industry vet; they had 2 years as CEO of Focus Entertainment from 2018 to 2020. So I suppose maybe some history will repeat here, maybe the inm CEO will steady the ship and retain their captaincy, maybe a new CEO will come in after this inim, but I suppose the main thing here is that Star Bree's developers are not immediately paying that price; it at least looks like that's falling on management first, and really the reason why we wanted to cover this story as a team is because this is really what should happen in so many cases a game ends up just you know struggling, and then what happens is cost cuts and reductions to the team.
As an example, take Halo. I mean, I love Halo. What happened, though, with Halo Infinite was insane; 343 was clearly understaffed. When it came to Halo Infinite, they were just able to stumble across the finish line. It turned out they had made a really fantastic game with multiplayer. The core nuts and bolts they had were amazing, but they just didn't have the resources to continue, and, you know, to continue and deliver.
It is one of the most fumbled bags in history. And then, what did we see? Well, we saw hiring freezes and job cuts at 343, so basically they were stripped of the resources that they needed to actually fix up the situation they were put in so many other cases in games. The story we're talking about today would basically be that Payday 3 was a disaster, and they've cut maybe 10 percent of the development team, and they've really tried to strip down their costs.
Of course, you could see the short-term sense in that, but the long-term is that they can't just go back to making Payday 2 DLC forever; they need to make Payday 3 like the game that eventually people will be playing, so if you are just really shortsighted. Caught a whole bunch of your developers, well you're just killing payday 3 so here it seems like leadership is actually having to take responsibility, with this person no longer being CEO and like the developers get to continue working in Payday 3 because they know that's long-term future and I suppose they know that if they absolutely you know cut their team to Ribbons they just be killing their future it does seem that of all the different Pathways that we could be taking this is probably one of the ones that's got a better chance of payday 3 eventually being rehabilitated, getting DLC getting more features and being a game that people want to play and I really do want that to happen I think the payday games are pretty fantastic.
You know the core fantasy is great, so if the more modern version of that could be a really good game, I think we would all be winners. Okay, that's it for today's story. I just thought it was an interesting one to stop by. I'm sure, at the very least, they'd like to know. Anyway, that's it for me.
We'll be back tomorrow. I'll see you,
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