A decade ago, Payday 2 launched – and for a time, it was a really addictive, if basic, online co-op experience.

Based around carrying out dangerous, high stakes heists and robberies, Payday 2 saw players team up in gangs and carry out their criminal missions.

Though these would usually start out with players casing a joint, it didn’t take long for each job to turn violent, with nearly every stage turning into a version of the LA street shootout from Michael Mann’s 1995 crime epic, Heat.

With its waves of cops and special operatives being sent in to nullify you and your crew, it often felt a bit like a more down to earth Left 4 Dead, with an awful lot more gunfire and none of the zombies.

Numerous expansions and upgrades came to Payday 2, which saw controversy back in 2015 when paid-for loot boxes were added to the game, causing some serious player backlash, leading to massive PR headaches – and, eventually, the complete removal of all micro transactions.

So you would think, given the terrible time that the developers went through during that period, that they’d have sharpened up and made sure that everything was ready and in place for the launch of Payday 3, which was set to finally update what had become a tired and dated formula.

I would love to be sitting here and informing you of how much fun I had with Payday 3 after its launch last week – but I’ve yet to be able to play it.

Launch was nothing short of disastrous, with players in many cases unable to even get past the mandatory signing up for a third party account before playing the game.

Myself among them.

Having to even set up another account to play the game had already left a bad taste in the mouth; not even being able to get past that and actually sign up was an extra slap in the face.

Even if players got past that point, they were having difficulty playing due to the fact that player demand seemed to break the game’s servers – leading the devs to issue several apologies and statements to players.

Has the damage already been done, however?

For me, I’m certainly in no rush to go back to the game – especially after middling (at best) reviews, all of which are based on actually playing the game, rather than the current expectation of not even being able to connect.

So yeah, this one’s likely to go down as a case study; how not to launch a game.

Given how Payday 2 itself was able to bounce back after its own difficulties, we may yet see Payday 3 overcoming the tough launch period.

However, we’re talking about a game that already had a loyal fanbase at that point; Payday 3 hasn’t even managed to get that far before pissing off its potential playerbase.

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