The dark clouds are slowly moving away from Payday 3, as the game hosts submit a new record in Steam concurrent players for 2024, courtesy of the Boys In Blue expansion.
Back on Friday, Payday 3 received its Chapter 2 expansion “Boys In Blue,” along with a new update that finally delivered one of the highly anticipated features since the release day of the game: A Solo Mod that does not put you in a matchmaking queue!
The new content and this new Solo Mode seem to be enough for a portion of the community to give Payday 3 a second chance and return to play it again. This helped Payday 3 to hit a peak concurrent players of over 3,000 on Steam for the first time in 2024.
Previously, the highest amount of concurrent players on Steam for Payday 3 in 2024 was around 1,600 players. So, it is safe to say that the amount is now doubled, but it is not big enough to call it a comeback for the game.
Even now Payday 2 has more concurrent players than Payday 3, and it’s not even close. Payday 2 hit nearly 50K concurrent players on Steam this month, which is the highest for 2024, and it’s well over what we call “record-breaking” for the current year in Payday 3.
When Starbreeze launched Payday 3, the game hit nearly 70K concurrent players in the first month, but it didn’t take long for the players to stop playing the new installment as it was plagued with serious problems that forced to community to ditch all the new content and better visuals and come back to the same old Payday 2.
Payday 3 launched without an offline mode, which was quite baffling, but the biggest problem was the fact that you had to stay in a matchmaking queue to play solo with AI teammates. As hilarious as it may sound, the problem remained there until very recently, when the Boys In Blue update arrived and delivered Solo Mode, which removes the matchmaking queue for playing with AI teammates but still requires a stable and persistent internet connection.
The current Solo Mode carries a “Beta” tag next to it at the moment, as the developers try to turn it into a completely functional offline mode, where you can play solo without an internet connection.
The lack of offline play was not the only problem with Payday 3 though. The developers also changed the way the progression system used to work. The new system would only grant Infamy Points to players in return for completing a certain list of challenges, without factoring in the difficulty level that the mission is completed.
Lacking a meaningful risk-reward equation, the community became frustrated over the new progression system shortly after launch, but the developers refused to apply changes quickly as they said they would need more time to evaluate the feedback and design a new progression system.
Starbreeze updated the progression system in May 2024 by giving more value to the number of quality loot bags the players secure rather than challenges. The developers now consider the full removal of the challenges from the game. They will introduce only a limited number of high-difficulty challenges instead of another sort of reards rather than Infamy Points.
So, with the game moving in the right direction slowly, it is expected that Payday 3 win the community’s trust back, but it will surely take some time, and with Payday 2 offering many more heists than Payday 3, it is difficult to convince them all to play the new installment while they already enjoy the older content.
