Payday 3 may get an offline mode for solo play as developer explains server issues

This is no secret at this point Payday 3 had one of the most turbulent starts to a live game in recent memory. The game suffered from constant connection issues, matchmaking issues, and various other stability issues that made it unplayable for most players over the weekend.

Developer Starbreeze has struggled with these issues, but that hasn’t stopped sentiment around the game from deteriorating, which is particularly evident in Payday 3’s Steam user reviews.

Payday 3’s servers went offline yesterday your first maintenanceand will go offline again for three hours on Friday morning. Starbreeze said that yesterday’s maintenance had already resulted in “positive trends,” but warned that matchmaking issues would remain.

What caused all of this is apparently the third-party dating service that Payday 3 relies on. In a press release, the developer said the service “encountered an unforeseen error” that caused “an unrecoverable situation” for the third-party service.

An updated version of the matchmaking software has since been deployed, but this ultimately led to more instability in the matchmaking infrastructure. “The partner continues to work to improve and stabilize Payday 3’s online systems,” Starbreeze said.

The developer said it is currently “exploring all options, both short and long term.” This means that Payday 3 may change its matchmaking service provider in the future, but the game may become less reliant on online services.

Payday 3 requires a constant internet connection, even for players who want to enjoy the game alone with bots. This is one of the reasons why any problems with the launch server were more devastating than they could have been if there was an offline mode.

However, Starbreeze stopped short of confirming an offline mode. That said, It is a possible option is being examined.

“We are disappointed with the issues our player base faced during our launch weekend, but we are confident in our core product and the quality of Payday 3 – and all available metrics point to that,” said Tobias Sjogren, CEO of Starbreeze.

These metrics include over 218,250 concurrent players across all platforms and a peak of 1,347,510 daily active users.

“We still have a lot of diligent and consistent work to do to regain the trust of the community, but we will work hard,” he added.