After a difficult first year, Payday 3's director of games is stepping down

Starbreeze announced earlier today that Miodrag Kovacevic would be stepping down from his role as game director for Payday 3.

Starbreeze announced that "Mio is stepping down from his former role of Game Director and will focus his efforts as designer elsewhere in the Project", while Payday lead producers Andreas Penninger, and global brand director Almir Listo are "the creative forces behind the upcoming update."

Payday 3's creative leadership shift comes at the end a rough first year for the coop crime-shooter. As Tyler Colp noted in our Payday 3 Review, catastrophic server issues rendered the game unplayable upon release. Misguided progression schemes also left players feeling that the sequel was a step backward. The attempts to improve the situation only seemed to cause more chaos, as patch deployment problems caused a week-long delay in Payday 3's initial update.

Kovacevic's resignation as game director wasn't the only leadership change that came out of the Payday 3 turmoil. Starbreeze CEO Tobias Sjogren resigned in March 2024, six month after Payday 3 was released. According to a press release issued by Starbreeze Chairman Torgny hellstrom, Sjogren's departure was a result of a frustrated board. Hellstrom stated that "the board's consolidated opinion is that the implementation of strategy requires a new leadership." Sjogren said that Payday 3 sales were "significantly lower than we would have liked" before he left.

Payday 3 has struggled to gain momentum with its players, despite regular updates and the addition of new heists since its disastrous launch. By October 2023 its concurrent player count had fallen below Payday 2 and has remained lower ever since, according to Steamdb. Payday 3 has less than 700 players at the time of writing. This is less than 10% of Payday 2’s 8,700 players.