Starbreeze Studios, the developer of Payday 3, is reportedly laying off a number of its staff. Though Starbreeze itself hasn't made an official statement, employees working at the company have shared the news on their own, with some former Payday 3 developers left reeling as they look for new work.
Payday 3, Starbreeze's latest game, has seen a number of troubles since its launch in 2023. Payday 3 saw mixed reviews from critics at launch and holds a mixed review average on Steam from players to this day. Although the studio has taken steps to try and improve upon the title and regain its fanbase through the release of new updates and heists, it's struggled to find its footing, and the loss of these jobs may be part of more bad news for the company.
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Starbreeze Studios Hit By Layoffs Again
Unfortunately, some game developers are now looking for work after being laid off by Starbreeze Studios. Starbreeze QA Alexander Pereswetoff-Morath posted on his LinkedIn account that "many" workers at Starbreeze had received news that they were losing their positions, and that he was looking for new jobs, expecting that he would be on the list of those being axed at Starbreeze. Another Starbreeze dev, Senior Tech Producer Sabina af Jochnick, shared that her role had been "identified as at risk of redundancy," so she too would be looking for work elsewhere in anticipation of losing her position.
Starbreeze hasn't made an official statement regarding the layoffs, so it's not known how many people are losing their jobs yet. However, the writing may have been on the wall regarding these new terminations, given Payday 3 and Starbreeze's recent history. Starbreeze laid off around 15% of the company between 2024 and early 2025, followed by more jobs lost in late 2025 following the cancellation of Starbreeze's Dungeons and Dragons game, dubbed Project Baxter. Financial reports in 2024 also indicated that the company had experienced a loss of $18.5 million USD, so there have been troubles for quite a while.
Payday 3 Struggled to Regain Fanbase
After announcing in 2025 that Starbreeze had acquired the publishing rights to Payday 3, the developer shared that doing so would help them to accelerate content development and "pursue broader strategic opportunities for the Payday franchise." Shortly after on May 26, 2025, a new heist was released for Payday 3 in the form of Party Powder, the Delivery Charge heist DLC was added after that, and the game closed out 2025 by releasing the awaited Skill 2.0 update.
It seemed like things might have been getting better for Starbreeze and Payday 3 for a while in 2025, but it didn't see a major revival of the playerbase, at least on Steam. At the time of publication of this article, Payday 3 has seen a 24-hour peak of just 686 concurrent players on the Steam platform. Looking back at its update history, the Party Powder heist release saw the concurrent player count rise to just shy of 3,000, with additional smaller spikes around June, July, and September. However, when the 2.0 Skills Update released, Payday 3 couldn't quite reach 2,000 concurrent players on Steam. Comparatively, when the game first launched, it saw nearly 78,000 concurrent players on the platform.
While Starbreeze has had problems with delivering what players want in Payday 3, which has complicated matters, the developer is far from the only game studio in recent history to see layoffs, and it's unlikely to be the last. In 2025 alone, Amazon Games, EA, Microsoft, Ubisoft, Niantic, Square Enix, and many more laid off game developers and other staff. With 2026 having barely kicked off, it's likely that many similar stories will transpire over the course of the year.
Payday 3
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 63 /100 Critics Rec: 25%
- Released
- September 21, 2023
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ // Blood, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Strong Language
- Developer(s)
- Overkill Software
- Publisher(s)
- Starbreeze Studios, Prime Matter
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- FPS
