After a decade of support for Payday 2, the long-awaited heist simulator’s sequel Payday 3 is finally out in the wild. However, the majority of fans have yet to move on from the content rich second game over to the latest installment.
Following frequent Payday 3 server errors, Nebula login issues, and two bungled launches in a row, many fans are simply not playing Starbreeze’s follow up. Instead, they’re still playing the second game.
At the time of writing Payday 2 currently has six times the concurrent players of its new successor on Steam alone. Not counting the game’s other PC releases and (frankly horrid) console ports, the second game is still leaps and bounds more popular than the third Payday title.
Moving over to the Steam Charts player tracker for the second game, over 40,000 players are enjoying the 2013 heist game. In comparison, just over 6,000 players are playing the sequel.
This massive difference in player numbers also applies to the game’s “24-hour peak”. While much higher for the third game at 15,000 players, Payday 2 still has over 40,000 concurrent players at its height.
Despite games like Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 demolishing concurrent player records on Steam, Starbreeze’s latest has yet to make a dent. Payday 2, which has been given away for free numerous times, has a concurrent peak of almost 250,000 players. Meanwhile, the third game sticks at just 69,000.
Payday 3 has been criticised for its horrendous launch, a massive lack of content compared to its predecessor, as well as its always online nature. While the game’s developer is looking into fixing its latter issue, there’s still a number of errors that plague the title.
Starbreeze’s Payday 3 is now available on Xbox Series, PS5 and PC via Steam, Xbox App and Epic Games Store.