Game is essentially abandoned here is why...

[Fast]

https://corporate.starbreeze.com/en/press/press-releases/2023-11-16-starbreeze-ab-publ-interim-report-january-september-2023/


PROJECT ”BAXTER”

As we now scale up the development team for Baxter, primarily with employees who previously worked on the development of the base game PAYDAY 3,

we ensure that we make the best use of our resources going forward. The pre-production work is proceeding according to plan, recruitment to strengthen the team with specific skills is constantly ongoing and we are of course looking forward to telling you more about the project together with our license partner. There is no intrinsic value in keeping things secret, as soon as the timing is right for us and our licensing partner, we look forward to telling – and showing more – of Project Baxter. It is, as previously mentioned, one iconic brand whose DNA is characterized by collaborative experiences and storytelling in an expansive world – in a completely new environment compared to PAYDAY but with the DNA that Starbreeze has excelled in over the past decade; cooperative multiplayer games.

PAYDAY 3
With the launch completed, PAYDAY 3 now enters its next phase; live service. This means that the team focuses on continued development of both new features as well as improvements requested by our players, and frequent deliveries of new content. We know the potential we have within our existing PAYDAY community and it is our job to deliver a product that attracts new players as well as our PAYDAY 2 players. In November, two new free heists will be launched for PAYDAY 3. These are two community favorites that have been refreshed and adapted to take advantage of the possibilities in PAYDAY 3. Along with them comes new first person animations,weapons, skins and a host of improvements based on feedback from our players. Production on next year's content is already underway, with our already announced four DLCs being just a subset of what we plan to release.

Its essentially a skeleton crew working on the game. And the focus is on paid content.

[ColinDJPat]

Keep those wallets crying heisters 👊🏻😎

[Undefined]

Is Baxter another game?

If so, working on another game while your flagship title is a dumpster fire is a recipe for bankruptcy.

[Fast]

Originally posted by Undefined:

Is Baxter another game?

If so, working on another game while your flagship title is a dumpster fire is a recipe for bankruptcy.

Yes its due out in 2026, they also have a second unnamed project for "2027 and beyond" where further payday 3 developers were moved onto, meaning the amount of devs working on this games is potentially within the single digits.

[Undefined]

Originally posted by Fast:

Originally posted by Undefined:

Is Baxter another game?

If so, working on another game while your flagship title is a dumpster fire is a recipe for bankruptcy.

Yes its due out in 2026, they also have a second unnamed project for "2027 and beyond" where further payday 3 developers were moved onto, meaning the amount of devs working on this games is potentially within the single digits.

Yikes.

Good find. This looks like the beginning of the end for Starbreeze.

[Moray Eel]

What if project baxter is walking dead 2...

[Wandering Flare]

Can't blame them, people have clearly voted with their wallets that they want just the promise of a game to throw 40-90$ at them. Gotta make it an MO now.

[Undefined]

Originally posted by Moray Eel:

What if project baxter is walking dead 2...

Metaphorically speaking, that's what it is

[Undefined]

Originally posted by Wandering Flare:

Can't blame them, people have clearly voted with their wallets that they want just the promise of a game to throw 40-90$ at them. Gotta make it an MO now.

If people were smart, they would be using Gamepass to try these games out before buying them. That's what we used to do back in the day with rentals.

But good luck persuading the masses who pre-order games that have as many red flags as PD3 had.

[Old Shoe]

Originally posted by Wandering Flare:

Can't blame them, people have clearly voted with their wallets that they want just the promise of a game to throw 40-90$ at them. Gotta make it an MO now.

lol you can't vote with your wallets in the modern day, if the company is big enough they can get away with anything or make their game suddenly diverse for ESG credits. everyone knew this game was going to be a dumpster fire long before anything was leaked.

either way you are funding a massive billion dollar machine that worsens the industry. either you pay for gamepass and fund Microsoft or you fund Starbreeze.

[Fast]

Originally posted by Undefined:

Originally posted by Wandering Flare:

Can't blame them, people have clearly voted with their wallets that they want just the promise of a game to throw 40-90$ at them. Gotta make it an MO now.

If people were smart, they would be using Gamepass to try these games out before buying them. That's what we used to do back in the day with rentals.

But good luck persuading the masses who pre-order games that have as many red flags as PD3 had.

TBF i got the gold edition for £34 which was cheaper than the standard edition for steam, and whilst its more than gamepass, I didnt think the game would be THIS BAD... AND DIE IN 3 MONTHS ...ANd i do like my games on steam...
Lesson learned i guess.

[Undefined]

Originally posted by Fast:

Originally posted by Undefined:

If people were smart, they would be using Gamepass to try these games out before buying them. That's what we used to do back in the day with rentals.

But good luck persuading the masses who pre-order games that have as many red flags as PD3 had.

TBF i got the gold edition for £34 which was cheaper than the standard edition for steam, and whilst its more than gamepass, I didnt think the game would be THIS BAD... AND DIE IN 3 MONTHS ...ANd i do like my games on steam...
Lesson learned i guess.

Yeah, it seems like it was a gamble on a good price with the hope that the game would be good enough to overcome all of its problems. Personally, though, I just thought the game sucked and would've only bought it (before launch) for about $5-10 at most for the gold edition. And, again, just gambling that they would turn things around afterwards.

[EVONiEE 疾風迅雷悪魔]

Originally posted by Undefined:

Originally posted by Wandering Flare:

Can't blame them, people have clearly voted with their wallets that they want just the promise of a game to throw 40-90$ at them. Gotta make it an MO now.

If people were smart, they would be using Gamepass to try these games out before buying them. That's what we used to do back in the day with rentals.

But good luck persuading the masses who pre-order games that have as many red flags as PD3 had.

yea, tragic. there are 30k+ people on steam bought silver / gold edition (from concurent player on early access release day)

[BitsOfSkin]

But OP... pretty much all the heist/heister/cop/npc assets for the core game were already made by third party developers, so nothing's really changing.
Why else did you think this game feels so lifeless?
It's a Frankenstinian creature, cobbled together from other people's work, with "final assembly" done in-house by Starbreeze's developers.
It's a bit like how some manufacturers buy all their ♥♥♥♥ in China, ship all of the parts to America or Europe, do final assembly in-house and then pretend their product is "Proudly made in the USA/EU".

Mind you, I am not excusing how they've handled this game (because it's atrocious, and the more we learn, the worse it gets), but pretending that their Dev team moving on to "project baxter" is a big deal...
Nah Pimp, the game is as mediocre as it is for a reason, and it'll be hard for them to do much worse.



(inb4 they manage to prove me wrong)

[Hatfield]

Why the ♥♥♥♥ would they go on developing new ♥♥♥♥ when their crown jewel is also garbage in it's current state.

[Fast]

Steam is their largest platform as per their presentation. their max concurrent was 220k, with 77938 from steam. Second to this was gamepass though we dont know the exact numbers we know it wasnt too dissimilar based on the comments in their statement.
meaning you can work out the retention rate of the game.

for example.

right now is 770 players the max concurrent on steam was 77938 so :

770 / 77938 * 100 == 0.98% retention rate on steam.

So overall the retention rate is around 1% or thereabout.

For clarity, EA, 2K and Ubisoft consider anything Under 10% Retention rate within the first 12 months of a live service games life an abject failure. EA uses that terminology.