Payday 3 Confirmed as Starbreeze Acquires Franchise Rights

Starbreeze made an announcement that it has purchased full rights to the Payday franchise from 505 Games, confirming Payday 3 casually in the process as part of the $30,000,000 deal.

The deal for Payday that ran a receipt totaling about $30,000,000 worth of shares, meant that the franchise's future will now be exclusively in the hands of developers Overkill Software. If this doesn't seem like big enough news, the studio then continued on and confirmed Payday 3 as they talked about parts of the deal.

505 Games will continue to share revenue generated by Payday 2: Crime Wave on consoles, and will continue to retail a 33% revenue share from future Payday 3 sales, up to a maximum of 40 million dollars. It's clear enough that both studios and the former publisher think that a third iteration of the franchise is going to sell, and if the amount of downloadable content from the second game is any indication, it likely will.

This is what Bo Andersson Klint, the CEO of Starbreeze said about his move on acquiring the franchise: “Payday is very close to my heart, and has laid the foundation for Starbreeze success in recent years. We’re very excited to bring our heisters home to the safe house.”

Klint went on, saying that the company will continue to support Payday 2 with additional content for the next 18 months, and gamers shouldn't worry that the acquisition means that Payday 2 will meet an instant retirement.

The studio accumulated much controversy last year after an event called Crimefest that introduced paid stat-boosting content into the game. Starbreeze has justified the move by saying the new content is not pay to win at all, ensuring gamers the revenue made from that title will be put toward extending the franchise's longevity, which as it happens, has now been given an 18 months lifespan.

Whether the content introduction was influenced by publishers or not remains to be confirmed, but as it seems, giving the developers more control on their own game usually ends up being a good thing.

For now, any potential heist crews or gameplay enhancements Payday 3 will include remains a mystery, though many fans hope to receive more news at E3 2016.