Payday 2 may predate Payday 3 by a decade, but the former still remains popular while the latter has struggled. Now, publisher Starbreeze has lined up Sidetrack Games to work on Payday 2 updates on PC and keep those players satisfied.
Sidetrack was previously known as the M.U.G. Team in the Payday modding community, and the studio also worked on updates for RAID: World War 2 after that game’s lifecycle came to an end. According to Starbreeze, Sidetrack’s first Payday 2 update will go live on October 23, with a focus “on the stability of the game and improving the overall player experience.” Future updates are planned for “quality-of-life improvements and general game fixes.”
Starbreeze will host a livestream on October 23 that lays out the details of the patch and invites the player community to “help shape future improvements.” With Payday 2 now in the hands of Sidetrack going forward, Starbreeze will primarily be working on updates for Payday 3. Payday 2 still has has tens of thousands of players at any given time, according to SteamDB. However, Payday 3 has trouble cracking 1,000 concurrent players.
Earlier this month, Starbreeze canceled its Dungeons & Dragons game and laid off workers in a renewed push towards the Payday franchise and other heist games. The company also added a Payday 2 subscription service that gives players access to the DLC for a monthly charge. Starbreeze went on to apologize for raising the Payday 2 DLC bundle to $170 and subsequently reverted the price back to $118.
