Payday 2 Is Back in Development

Payday 2 is back, the game’s publisher, Starbreeze, said in a statement on Friday. The game [...]

Payday 2 is back, the game's publisher, Starbreeze, said in a statement on Friday. The game never technically went anywhere since people could and did still play it, but Starbreeze and developer Overkill Software said last year that the pair would be ending the development of Payday 2 after numerous extensions at the requests of the community kept the content coming. The duo announced on Friday that it's reverting that decision and will keep working on the game, but it's also walking back its promise of an all-encompassing Ultimate Edition as it asks its players to pay for more DLC.

Starbreeze CEO Mikael Nermark shared an update about the game's development in a post on the Steam Community page. Nermark gave a quick overview of the publisher's period of reconstruction following poor sales of Overkill's The Walking Dead and said that the company found ways to stay afloat. It appears that one of the ways Starbreeze will make sure it maintains that stability and possibly more is by returning to what works with Payday 2.

The plans for reigniting Payday 2's development include more updates for the game, some of which will be free while others you'll have to pay for. The first of these updates is already in the works, though Nermark couldn't hint at what that content would look like yet.

Those who own the Payday 2: Ultimate Edition may be scratching their heads at the idea of paying for more DLC. Payday 2 has no shortage of extra content for players to purchase, and the Ultimate Edition was supposed to be an option that could be purchased with a guarantee of owners getting free content from that point onward. Nermark said Starbreeze knows it's breaking its promise by selling more content and said that it does "not do so with ease."

The CEO explained the reasoning behind the edition by saying Starbreeze anticipated interest and engagement in the game would decline and that it needed to devote development resources to other games. Now that development of Payday 2 is back on, Starbreeze said it needs players' support to keep the content coming.

"Now we're breaking the Ultimate Edition promise of forever-free-content," Starbreeze said. "The reasoning for this is plain and simple: We want to move forward and make more of PAYDAY 2, and to do so we need your support to continue producing content. New DLCs will be a mix of paid and free updates."

Replacing the Ultimate Edition is the Legacy Collection which Starbreeze says is still the best way to get anything released in 2018 or prior. Individual DLC items are purchasable again starting Friday.

0comments