Starbreeze lays off a bunch more people as it cancels its co-op D&D game and shifts focus to building Payday 3 into a 'modern live-engagement game'

Starbreeze has cancelled the co-op Dungeons and Dragons game it announced in 2023 in order to focus its resources on the Payday franchise—and also reduce its resources, because yes, the cancellation of the game also means layoffs.

Approximately 44 employees will be put out of work in what Starbreeze CEO Adolf Kristjansson said was "a difficult but necessary decision" that is expected to return the company to a positive cash flow in 2026.

"Our strategy is clear: Payday is one of the most iconic IPs in gaming, with unmatched reach and potential," Kristjansson said. "By focusing our investment and talent here, we can accelerate delivery, engage players with more content, and reinforce Starbreeze’s position as the clear leader in the heisting genre.

"This is about sharpening our focus to create the strongest long-term value for our players, our people, and our shareholders.”

Project Baxter, as the D&D game was known internally, was meant to be "the next AAA title in [Starbreeze's] niche of cooperative multiplayer games," which sounds vaguely Payday-like, but also "a completely new project, in a completely new genre, compared to Payday." The mystery of what Starbreeze actually intended will remain, however, because we never saw anything more of it than that initial announcement and a couple of very generic pieces of fantasy-styled concept art.

The cancellation and layoffs come just over a week after Starbreeze rolled out a new subscription service for Payday 2 DLC, when Starbreeze's head of commercial Gustav Nisser said the company is "increasing our focus on Payday as a whole and Payday 3 in particular." And that is definitely the plan: In a separate strategy update, Kristjansson said Starbreeze is "doubling down" on Payday.

"Our goal is to keep Payday evolving as a modern live-engagement game, and to open new ways for players to experience the heisting genre through Heisting Experiences and Special Operations. By focusing on delivering lasting value to players, we strengthen the foundation that drives sustainable growth for Starbreeze."

The big challenge for Starbreeze is that while the 12-year-old Payday 2 remains very popular, the supposed successor, Payday 3, is decidedly not. It appears to remain the focus for Starbreeze's strategy, though: The studio said Payday 3 "is being developed into a scalable live-engagement platform to engage millions of players worldwide," and "will evolve into a modern live-engagement game through ongoing technology upgrades, expansion and refinement of the player experience, and enhanced engagement models designed to be both fair and sustainable."

The Payday 3 development will also be expanded to about 50 employees by the end of 2025 (Starbreeze didn't say how many people are on the Payday 3 dev team now, so whether that represents a doubling in size or a couple of extra people is unknown), "and continue to grow in line with increased player engagement."

For now, though, it's another 44 game developers out of work in the name of maximizing shareholder value, and just another day in a videogame industry that seems determined to eat itself whole. The layoffs at Starbreeze come one day after Funcom announced layoffs of its own, just a few months after putting out "the biggest release" in its 32-year history, and two days after Avalanche closed its Liverpool studio and laid off a bunch of other people, which seemed to be fallout from Microsoft's July layoff of roughly 9,000 people, when Xbox boss Phil Spencer said the company's gaming business has "never looked stronger."

For a deeper dive into why driving shareholder value is such a big contributor to the current mess that is the videogame industry, I'd urge you to check out our analysis of the recently announced $55 billion acquisition of Electronic Arts, and why it has everyone terrified.