Payday 3 will be out in 2022 or 2023

Starbreeze says Payday 3 will be released in 2022 or 2023. The developer is already going to enter into agreements for the distribution of the game next year and expects to receive income from it. That should bring the company back on its feet financially.

Starbreeze mentions the release period of Payday 3 in a message about the expected future cash flow. There are no new details about the game, the studio said two years ago that the game was in production.

According to Starbreeze, agreements will be signed for the distribution of the game in the first half of 2020 and the studio says it will receive an initial payment from a “publishing partner”. That money is used for further development. Starbreeze does not mention which party it is in talks with, but it could be Epic. Epic is known to financially support developers in exchange for temporary or permanent exclusive publishing rights in the Epic Games Store.

Starbreeze also expects revenue from a deal to publish Payday: Crime War, a smartphone game for Android and iOS. That deal will also be completed in the first half of next year, and money will also become available that will be used for development.

Partly due to the income from those upcoming deals and through income from the sale of other publishing rights, Starbreeze expects to get a positive cash flow again. The developer and publisher is in the middle of a reorganization after the company ran into financial problems last year.

In recent years, Starbreeze bet big on the flopped game Overkill’s The Walking Dead. That game had been in development since 2014 and came out in 2018, but was hardly sold. The company that owns the rights to The Walking Dead terminated its contract with Starbreeze after which all further work on the game was halted and planned console versions were scrapped.

Starbreeze became known with its games Payday and Payday 2. The latter was released in 2013 and received various expansions. The game was also released for the Switch in 2018, after it had already appeared for the PlayStation 3 and 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One and for Windows. According to Starbreeze, the rights surrounding the Payday franchise are worth 1600 million Swedish kronor, converted about 147.3 million euros.