Payday 3 drops to shockingly low player count, 4 months after launch

Despite only releasing back in September 2023, Payday 3 is already struggling to maintain a player base with the FPS title hitting fewer than 250 players on Steam just four months after launch.

The latest instalment in the Payday series was released back in September 2023 but with a constant online connection required and a variety of technical issues, it was met with a negative reception. Now four months on, Payday 3 still sits at a “mostly negative rating” on Steam and according to Valve’s statistics, it has dropped below a 250 player count.

Check out the Payday 3 trailer below!

The Starbreeze FPS sequel struggled to recover after its negative launch and despite also being available on Xbox Game Pass and receiving various fixes, it is still failing to pull in players. So much so that Starbreeze have recently announced drastic measures aimed at improving Payday’s latest entry.

The drastic measures will include a “strike team” consisting of veteran Payday developers who will be brought in to fix Payday 3. This will hopefully combat the title’s unfinished in-game features, unstable servers and lack of offline mode as well as a myriad of other issues which have yet to be addressed.

It is perhaps unsurprising that fans of the series have turned their attention back to Payday 2 which was released back in 2013. As a result, the Payday 2 player count has slowly increased to 26,000 active players on Steam in recent days which is a sharp contrast to those currently playing the 2023 sequel.

With Payday 3 reportedly losing 60% of its player base in just 30 days, it is going to take a miracle to make it the game Starbreeze originally planned for it to be. However, it is reassuring to see that they are not giving up on it.

Payday 3 is currently available for PC, PlayStation and Xbox.