Swedish publisher Starbreeze has fully acquired the rights to the Payday franchise, for the princely sum of $30 million. Somewhat inevitably, Payday 3 has been confirmed as a result.
Thanks to this deal, Starbreeze will get full rights to the Payday franchise for all future developments and commercialization, which includes Payday 2 and Payday’s mobile versions.
The publisher explained in a press release that they will receive “full net revenue” from Payday 2 on Steam retroactively from May 1. Starbreeze and former publisher 505 Games will continue to split the revenue on console versions of Payday 2.
The press release continued:
Furthermore, 505 Games will retain a 33 percent revenue share of Starbreeze’s net revenues from future sales of Payday 3 capped at $40 million, and after Starbreeze has fully recouped its development and marketing costs.
No further details were shared on Payday 3. Beyond the fact that it’s definitely happening, we’ve got nothing in terms of a release window or features just yet.
But this is by no means the end of Payday 2 just yet. Developer Overkill Software revealed in a video (which you can see below) that the game is doing away with the dreaded microtransaction completely.
Overkill also promised to support Payday 2 with regular new content for at least another 18 months, which would probably suggest we have around that long to wait for Payday 3 to hit.
Perhaps Starbreeze and Overkill are hoping we’ll save up the money we no longer have to spend on microtransactions so that we can buy Payday 3.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.