Starbreeze hasn’t declared Payday 3 useless but, but it surely’s launching one more spin-off this yr—this time on Roblox

Payday studio Starbreeze has introduced a brand new partnership with Gamefam, “the main immersive gaming and media firm for Gen Z and Alpha communities,” to develop an all-new Payday sport throughout the realm of Roblox. The as-yet untitled sport, which is able to “supply gamers a definite new entry level into the Payday universe,” is about to debut later this yr.

This can really be the second Payday sport on Roblox, following Notoriety: A Payday Expertise, developed by Moonstone Video games and launched in 2024.

“Our major aim is to entertain our gamers, and meaning giving them much more methods to take pleasure in Payday content material and immerse themselves on the planet of heisting,” Starbreeze chief development officer Matt Dixon stated. “Partnering with Gamefam offers us the potential and experience to construct one thing new that sits completely alongside what Moonstone has created with Notoriety. We’re dedicated to being the place our gamers are.”

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That squares with what Payday stated in March when it introduced a brand new Payday VR sport: That it needs to “increase Payday by means of chosen licensing partnerships and new leisure codecs.”

Nevertheless it additionally leaves the studio with the nonetheless very massive drawback of the place the gamers should not, which is to say, Payday 3. Starbreeze imposed layoffs, cancelled no less than one undertaking in growth, and even handed Payday 2 off to a special developer so it might concentrate on saving the ostensible Payday flagship, but Payday 3’s concurrent participant counts on Steam stay abysmal.

That is just one metric, sure, however examine it to the 13-year-old Payday 2, and hoo boy, it would not look good.

These new VR and Roblox video games do not imply that Starbreeze is transferring away from Payday 3: They’re licensed to exterior studios, so other than some manufacturing oversight, they’re just about another person’s sport to make.

However the transfer to non-traditional platforms is fascinating, notably within the context of the Payday 3 struggles: If these Roblox efforts are a success in ways in which Starbreeze cannot duplicate in a traditional standalone sport, it might imply we’ll be seeing extra of this sort of factor sooner or later as Starbreeze and different devs look to leverage Roblox’s huge built-in viewers.

Gamefam, for the document, “has been the go-to Roblox accomplice for main sport publishers together with Sega (Sonic Pace Simulator) and Ubisoft (Brawlhalla) and world manufacturers together with Previous Navy, Intuit, Paramount and FIFA,” Starbreeze stated. So there’s that, too. Extra data on this new Payday sport will likely be introduced “forward of launch.”