The creators of PAYDAY 3 will buy back the publishing rights to the game
A year and a half ago, developers from Starbreeze released the cooperative shooter, PAYDAY 3. During this period, publishing rights to the game were owned by PLAION, a subsidiary of Embracer Group. However, these rights are now returning to the original creators of the title.
PAYDAY 3
Starbreeze announced that it reached a deal with PLAION regarding the acquisition. To finance the purchase, Starbreeze will issue 147,676,204 Class B shares, with a total value of 33 million Swedish kronor (3.44 million dollars). Embracer Group will acquire all the issued shares.
Notably, 29 million Swedish kronor (3 million dollars) out of this amount will be used to settle an unspecified old debt to PLAION related to PAYDAY 3. The details of this debt are not disclosed.
Starbreeze explained that this deal would accelerate the creation of new content for the game and overall enhance the development of the franchise.
The company also emphasized that buying back the publishing rights does not imply the end of collaboration with PLAION. On the contrary, both parties aim to build a long-term partnership and collaborate on PAYDAY projects in the future.
It is worth recalling that PAYDAY 3 underperformed compared to Starbreeze's expectations. Upon release, the game faced such significant criticism that the company had to form a separate team to improve the shooter, and later it even changed its game director. In recent months, the daily active players of PAYDAY 3 on Steam have rarely exceeded a thousand people, while the second installment of the series consistently maintains over 20,000 active players. Nevertheless, in 2024, PAYDAY 3 generated twice as much revenue for Starbreeze compared to PAYDAY 2—82.9 million Swedish kronor (8.65 million dollars).