Starbreeze resumes Payday 2 development, new paid DLC on the horizon

Overkill parent company Starbreeze is restarting active development on Payday 2, walking back its plans to stop creating DLC and updates for the long-running game as the company works to emerge from turbulent financial difficulties.

Starbreeze CEO Mikael Nermark explained as much in a post to Payday 2’s Steam page, offering a candid look at the state of the company and how it plans to handle the game and its trove of DLC moving forward.

“On December 3rd, we only had projected cash reserves to run the company until mid-January 2019. This was how serious the situation had become,” he writes.

“Since then we’ve been able, through extremely hard work and commitment by all of our employees, been able to stay afloat, clean up our business and start thinking about our future and the future of Payday. We’re not entirely there yet, but we are starting to look ahead at what’s next.”

It’s not terribly surprising that Starbreeze is bringing Payday 2 out of semi-retirement and announcing plans for both paid and free updates. Despite ending active development in late 2018, Payday 2 has continued to bring in millions for the struggling company.

Shortly before it was announced the game would cease development, Payday 2 was responsible for $2.3 million in quarterly sales. Even in the report released this August, Payday 2 alone brought in around $1.5 million in sales.

However the new content plans for Payday 2, explains Nermark, involve going against some of the earlier statements the company made about how the game’s future DLC would be handled. While updated plans for Payday 2 include both free and paid updates, the company had previously released the Ultimate Edition with the promise that it would include access to all DLC launched for the lifetime of the game.

“To get it out of the door immediately; yes, I know we’re breaking a promise. We do not do so with ease or take this lightly,” writes Nermark. “At one point in time, our company believed that the interest and engagement in Payday 2 would decline over time, as new internal games were released. Resources were needed on new projects and production of Payday 2 was scheduled to stop and no more updates to come.”

With new content again on the table, the company is replacing the Ultimate Edition promise with a Payday 2: Legacy Collection that includes all DLC released during or before 2018. The ability to purchase individual DLC has also been reinstated.