It seems Starbreeze has been hit by a wave of layoffs
The company Starbreeze, known for the PAYDAY franchise, has laid off part of its staff. This news was shared by its former employees on LinkedIn.
PAYDAY 3
The scale of the layoffs at Starbreeze is unknown. According to those affected, the company parted ways with "many" specialists, but they did not specify the exact number. It is worth noting that as of September 30, 2025, Starbreeze employed 156 people.
Starbreeze itself has not publicly announced these new layoffs.
The last few years have not been particularly successful for Starbreeze. Part of the blame lies with the unsuccessful launch of PAYDAY 3 in September 2023, shortly after which the company even had to remove CEO Tobias Sjögren. Due to subsequent financial problems, Starbreeze has since conducted several major staff reductions.
In particular, in October 2025, Starbreeze announced plans to part with 44 full-time and freelance employees—however, in this case, the reason was not difficulties with PAYDAY, but the cancellation of a game set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe codenamed Project Baxter.